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Betrayal at Krondor Man, Betrayal at Krondor. Alongside Albion(1995), it was absolutely one of the first RPG's I played and enjoyed, enough that I still appreciate a lot of things it does. Oh, yeah, and that guy on the cover? That's an elf. Elves in the BaK setting aren't barred from having sweet facial hair. BaK was produced by Dynamix(rest in peace, beautiful angels. If you don't know them, they later brought us Tribes and Tribes 2, they were an odd mix of RPG's, adventure games and sim games) back in 1993, and I want to say it was kind of ahead of its time in having a 3D world(even if the Y axis didn't see much use), digitized photos for characters, tons of animations, a really good soundtrack and probably one of the more intellectually demanding RPG combat systems of the time(for context, this released in the same year as Darkside of Xeen, yet looks generations younger).  Set in the world of Midkemia, it was developed and written in cooperation with the setting's primary author, Raymond E. Feist, and received a proper novelization about five years later(and is, in my opinion, one of the rare few videogame novelizations that aren't rancid dogshit). Midkemia itself is both a bog standard fantasy world(it has elves, dwarves, goblins and wizards) and has its own unique flourishes at points. Since Betrayal at Krondor is a canon installment set after four major novels in the setting, obviously some things will need explaining(but the game is actually quite good at explaining what needs to be explained without the player having read the books, I will, of course, provide huge, poorly-remembered lore dumps anyway.). Not everything about the setting and books have aged equally well(good luck finding a female character with meaningful agency in the first four books. In proper form for late 80's, early 90's fantasy writing by men, their roles are mostly to pine for their missing men and occasionally cry when said men happen to get their dumb asses killed), but at the same time they don't feature anything I recall as being outright gross(no racism, slurs, etc.) with the exception of one book(Jimmy the Hand) which I have opinions about, but since that was a cooperative work with another author, I'm willing to drop most of the blame for that on the other author since it doesn't seem to be Feist's thing in his other books.  I'd also say it was like... one of the first genuinely open-world RPG's, in my opinion. Like, yeah, the Final Fantasies and etc. eventually, grudgingly, let the player have an air ship once they'd exhausted about 80% of the game's content in a linear fashion. But this map? Like 80% of it, you can just wander off the path and go explore from day one. There are very few barriers, though some chapters are a bit less tolerant of loving around since you're meant to be under some sort of time pressure in-world. It's also absolutely possible to run off the path and wander into something that'll flatten you good. So, please, join me, as we find out whether this is another case of having my nostalgia shattered like plate glass being hit with a sledgehammer.  I do genuinely expect this to have held up much better than Albion, though.Main Cast  Gorath is hundreds of years old and has been having a pretty bad decade. He's divorced from two wives, he's got a handful of dead children, his entire civilization has descended into fascism and now he has to ask a bunch of idiot humans for help to stop them getting exterminated.  Locklear is smooth, mildly noble, has a sword, a moustache and a womanizing reputation. Despite looking young and untested, Locklear has seen more atrocities than most soldiers twice his age and spent a brief while as a blood-thirsty berserker after his first girlfriend got stabbed in front of him.  Owyn lives somewhere in the east where he mostly spends his time embezzling his father's money to pay for magic tutors. Now unfortunately stuck travelling with two hardened warriors that are being chased by assassins. Owyn's week could be going better.  Like Locklear, James is actually a canon character and not invented for the game. His specialties are being the canonically sneakiest character, being super good with a sword, super good at dealing with traps, a super smart administrator, generally more intelligent than anyone he's in the room with and full of snarky remarks that sounded a lot better to the author than they do to me. He's much better in this game since this is the first one where he's no longer a teenager, and thus considerably more tolerable. Probably helps that Feist didn't write him this time.  A snappy old wizard, Patrus is responsible for Owyn's early training in magic. It's hard to say if Patrus was a bad influence on him or if Owyn just sought out a teacher who was somewhat like himself. Patrus is perpetually crotchety, has little patience for people younger than himself and enjoys needling people when they're at their lowest. Despite being a bit of a prick, he's thankfully also quite funny and very useful at his job of doing awful magical things to the opposition.  Pug Condoin is the mightiest wizard in Midkemia. Has saved the world like a half dozen times, has helped defeat a kaiju made out of supermonsters that were ready to fight the gods and win, has travelled in time, has put up with Macros the Black several times, is an adopted son of the royal family. In this game he will be played by a doofus who's less competent than a 19-year-old who just happened to bumble into the plot after running out of ways to embezzle his dad's money. Spoilers Obviously, please don't talk about stuff that hasn't happened yet. With regards to the game world, since I'd rather like to be able to waste some time on big lore dumps, also please don't write a 200-page dissertation on elves before I even mention the difference between a Moredhel, Eledhel and Glamredhel. Trust that I'll get around to eventually explaining who all these doofuses(pointy-eared and otherwise) are and why some of them are A Big Deal. And of course, once I've brought something or someone up, its fair game for you all to start arguing about whether Tomas/Ashen-Shugar or Arutha/Murmandamus is the superior fanfiction pairing(no, I haven't looked up the Midkemia books on fanfiction.net, please don't tell me what the pro pairings actually are). Reader Participation Sometimes there will only be one path ahead, but usually there will be several. I'll leave it up to the thread as often as possible whether the party goes raring off after a dumb side quest, takes the long way around or scoots cross-country in a straight line to their goal. Update Schedule Probably a post every week or two weeks? I expect updates to be slightly shorter than they were for the Might and Magic games, and resultingly also more consistent since it'll be rarer that I have to sort through four hours of footage for each post. PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Dec 13, 2021 |
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Sep 10, 2021 09:37
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Randalor posted:So... what's so bad about Jimmy the Hand for someone who doesn't want to hate-read something bad? Okay so. Feist is generally pretty "fade to black" if there's some sort of sexual content going on, and in general there's very little horny in what he writes(that I've read, at least). But then Jimmy the Hand just kicks down the door and starts screaming "YEAH JIMMY'S BEEN FUCKIN' SINCE HE COULD BARELY WALK. BANGING ALL THESE OLDER LADIES. HELL YEAH. KNEE DEEP IN GILF VAGINAS. drat, HE'S SUCH A PLAYER." and it just kind of made me recoil at the time, so I've had no temptation whatsoever to re-read it to double-check the details. And aside from that I just recall it as being somewhat poorly written even once you got past that. idhrendur posted:Though I am on a Tolkien kick again lately, and those elf names are rather shamelessly ripped from Sindarin. Which is legit, Tolkien was shamelessly pulling from all kinds of sources and wrote about that model of cultural transmission! They'd be, in order dark elves, star elves, and loud elves (that is, orcs). Not sure if that actually corresponds to any of the lore, but interesting. Also, if that also means similar pronunciation rules then the dh in all of those is a voiced th, as in thee or they. This is actually interesting to me! I kind of figured Feist just did his own half-assed fantasy name work. Would love to hear more of what you spot as things continue.
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Sep 10, 2021 17:59
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Update 01: Angry About Elves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utoLvbR5P3U When you fire up the game, this is what scrolls past and, you know, I gotta say? I loving love it. I love the music in this game. Mind, this is from the CD version. I never played the floppy version, but I imagine it had a notably crustier soundtrack. Just try to tell me this doesn't make you feel fired up for some noble fantasy adventuring and goblin-chopping. It really has its own character, too. Mmm. Nostalgia. Afterwards, there's a bare-bones menu with nothing much to do except starting a new game, loading the game or quitting. So obviously I choose to start a new game and we're immediately thrust into the actual introduction for the plot.     Most of the game's dialogue and cutscenes are presented in this faux-parchment style to make it look like a ye anciente tome. It's atmosphere-building, but doesn't get in the way of being able to read or see what's actually going on. I wonder what interrupted Locklear, though?      Ah, yes, BaK wastes no time in establishing that, beyond having sweet facial hair, Gorath is an absolute badass, as the first thing he does is to grab an assassin and snap his neck like it's second nature to him.   And with that, we're thrust straight into the game after a brief glance at the world map showing us where we're starting. This chapter ends when we get to the southernmost white dot, Krondor, with Gorath in tow. Before we start doing anything, perhaps we should take stock of the interface, our available characters and our our available items.  First up, Locklear!  The brave and valiant leader with the team's most fabulous moustache to boot. Go on, tell everyone how great I am.Locklear is a solid all-rounder who isn't bad at anything, and is even the current best at some things, like, for instance, melee accuracy. We'll use him as a template to go through the skills: Defense: Not getting hit. Accy: Different types of Accuracy for Crossbows(no lame-o bows in this game), melee and casting(which Locklear, being a jock, has no access to). Assessment: Spending a turn to decipher the stats of an enemy in battle. Not a very useful skill since it's usually worth more to just bonk said enemy. Armorcraft: Repairing armor, which is pretty vital. Weaponcraft: Likewise for fixing your armor, EVERYTHING in this game deteriorates, pretty much. Barding: Belting our sick tunes to get paid for your trouble in inns. Haggling: Occasionally it's possible to negotiate with merchants for lower prices, but it's risky since they may simply refuse to trade with you if you push your luck. Lockpick: Speaks for itself, though it can be hard at first to tell which locks are pickable at all, and lockpicks are a limited resource. Scouting: Spotting ambushes and preventing enemies from getting the drop on the party. Uses the best party member's rank. Stealth: Once ambushes are spotted, turning the tables on the enemies and getting an initiative advantage. Uses the worst party member's rank. Stamina and health are actually the same pool, except that as you lose stamina, there's no loss of skills, but once stamina is tapped out and health is lost, every lost point of health weakens all skills, so badly wounding an enemy is actually as important as killing him, since near-dead enemies are a lot less dangerous than fully healthy ones. Characters reduced to 0 Health are out for the fight(and all party members hitting 0 Health is a loss condition), but are restored after the fight in the Near-Death condition that makes them fragile as newborn kittens until they get a healer's attention or spend a lot of time recovering. Speed is how many squares in a fight the party member can move(and is the only stat that never improves), Strength is how hard they hit in melee. All skills and stats are improved with use(though in the case of Health and Stamina, it's by resting rather than getting hit a lot), except for Speed, and there are also trainers around. You can also "mark" skills to give them a boost in gains at the cost of weakening the gains for all other skills. If you're a filthy powergamer(and who isn't, sometimes?) you mark skills before using trainers and skill books, and then unmark them again afterwards.  Owyn is, predictably, poor at most things that aren't casting spells, as is the classic mage, but don't underestimate him entirely. A well-placed staff bonk from a mage can sometimes be just as important as a spell, especially since spells consume stamina(and then if that's out, health) from the casting mage, so they're not for willy-nilly casting all the time.  I don't have anything to do with this quest! I just want to go home! Gorath, lastly, is both elfy and un-elfy. He's the best crossbow archer of the three, but at the same time also the beefiest and probably capable of snapping Owyn in half with one hand. Just look at that Strength.  Thank you for acknowledging the superiority of the Moredhel.Each of them also have a lore blurb describing them.   Locklear is the only pre-BaK canon character of these three and, I think, the only one of them to re-occur in any way. This blurb also sells his background a bit short, and I'll write up a Lore Effortpost after this one to elaborate on him.   Owyn's high Haggling rank is explained by the fact that he's a white-collar criminal with a history of embezzlement. It explains a bit about why he's off in the west of the central Kingdom of the Isles when his father's estates are in the east of the Kingdom.   The book elaborates a good deal on Gorath's backstory, and makes him even more of a badass than he is here. I'll also explain the differences between the book and the game as we come across them(and if I remember them). For now, suffice to say that he's at least a couple of hundred years old and has been doing a good deal of fighting in that time, so I can only assume that the reason Locklear's better at hitting stuff than he is, is because old age is starting to catch up with Gorath.  Lastly let's have a look at the interface and what random junk our brave heroes are hauling around. The interface is from the era where piloting your character around was reminiscent of being a tank commander, a shitload of controls taking up 3/4's of the screen and just a little slot to look out of. Immediately below the view area featuring rolling hills, a path, distant trees and Haseth's corpse is a compass, surrounded by four movement arrows you can use instead of the keyboard, by clicking them with the mouse. The visible buttons in the lower right are Cast Spells, Camp, Map and Menu. Clicking any of our three characters also opens up their inventory.     And everything in Betrayal has descriptive text, complete with the Fantasy-requisite elaborate descriptions of anything edible/potable. Gorath and Locklear start with armor and swords, while all Owyn starts with is his staff, and the party starts with no crossbows. Also of note are the green vials in Locklear's inventory, those are healing potions(slight difference from the book where they're just fantasy meth that gets forcefed to Locklear and Jimmy so they can complete a timed mission), which heal you faster than resting and are the only non-healer way to recover from the Near Death condition. Can we get on the road yet? We have a kingdom to save.Patience, we're almost done.   Then there's the map. The local map is literally just a bird's eye view of the party, though without magical help it doesn't indicate most of the stuff we're actually interested in, i.e. treasure and enemies. The world map is, on the other hand, pretty useful if you don't know the game like the back of your hand. It indicates most major roads and almost every settlement. White dots are major settlements while brown dots are hamlets and villages. The little wedge on the road in the upper left is, of course, the party.  Right, now that we're on the move, we have to attend to something important. Owyn: loot that corpse. Why me?! I'm older than you and Gorath is in manacles. Hurry up now.  Gorath apparently killed Haseth so hard it vaporized his equipment. Goddamn. In any case, always be careful when picking rations out of old graves, chests or moldy holes in the ground. The graphic doesn't change, but if you examine them, they may read as Rations(Spoiled) or Rations(Poisoned), which your characters will happily scarf down if nothing else is available, but which will very efficiently make them sick. Haseth also has some lockpicks, which is nice, we can use those. For picking locks.   Turning around, there's an easy to miss little campground behind where the party starts. Also, the new icon that pops up as the party crosses the path(footpaths are blue lines, proper roads are sandy), is the "follow road"-icon. If selected, the party is locked to on-road movement, which is nice for when you've cleared out an area and just want to zoom through.   I meant it when I said everything short of the loving trees has descriptive text.  This vague brown rectangle is a chest, that's where smart people put their really good, which is why the even smarter people(us) break them open to get at it.   This chest is just free stuff, but other chests can be... locked, trapped or coded. Coded chests are my favourite.   Sometimes the party will interrupt the action to have a little conversation about what's happening. I like it. There's actually a surprising amount of it, and it's good at character-building.  Since BaK has a shitload of text and I do not have a rip of the dialogue script, I'm gonna be pasting the text in this fashion. Hope it works for everyone.         Locklear's not taking any bullshit, despite his appearance and womanizing background, he's actually a battle-hardened veteran who's seen a ton of death up close, most of it involving the Moredhel. He's clearly not eager for a repeat performance.    While cutscenes, battles and large towns have music, the open world just has ambience, in this case a few tweeting birds.   For now, I'm heading south to show off some game functionality before I start handing the reins over to you dorks so you can ruin my day completely. It's clearly the intended route, in any case, and chock full of tutorial content like, in this case, another chest!    All coded chests are of Moredhel make, so without one along, or some other way to read their language, you aren't getting them open. Wait, this is real? Your people use this to hide valuables? It's an ancient and honourable tradition. ... ... ... Yes alright, one of the reasons we haven't destroyed all humans yet is that we keep getting robbed blind.This one is pretty simple, I do appreciate that these often have some in-world or at least slightly different riddles to the usual Sphinx-brand "what is a man"-bullshit.    It might not seem like a big deal, but it kind of is. Some armor for Owyn(though this suit goes to Locklear, who passes his super-beat suit of armor to the mage) and a sword for selling. Durability for items isn't just a binary fine/broken state, an item at 1% durability will perform considerably worse than one at 99% durability.  We hardly get another step down the road, though, before it's time for another tutorial to ambush us...    Just act natural until he goes away, Owyn.       After the first bit of conversation, we're then provided with an actual dialogue choice screen of shorts.  These are mostly just for deciding what we want to ask about, but there are some actual dialogue choices in the game, even if they're mostly just of a yes/no variety. Sadly, we can't make a party of Steves here, BaK distinctly limits what degree of un-virtuous behavior we can get up to. Asking about the Inns and Nearest Town mostly just make Owyn pretend that the reason and his friends are stumbling around the wilderness is that they've been on an insane bender and have absolutely no idea where they are, which even Phillip things is kind of absurd. However, when asking about the Inns, Phillip also suggests an alternative to paying for a bed...  I thought you were meant to be minor nobles. Locklear, are all human nobles like this? Generally most Kingdom nobles are more title than trust fund and survive on the generosity of the ones with some actual land to their names. It's been a rough few years since my father no longer trusts me near the account books, alright?  Yeah, these two are hardened, absolutely used to scrabbling around in abandoned houses for every last little item of value.  After that, we bid Phillip goodbye and continue on our way. Most "ambush" NPC's will still be around if you come by again, and will occasionally have new dialogue.  Another type of stash are these little lumps of disturbed ground, unlike in some games they require no shovels to unbury(that's strictly for graves. okay, so we can be a LITTLE bit Steve-ish in BaK), and can't be trapped, but tend to contain less excellent stuff than chests. This one just contains a (miraculously unspoiled) pack of rations and some Aventurine, a repair item for crossbows.     My feet are killing me. Are we there yet? Human, we're still weeks north of Krondor.  I think we'd better find a place to kick up our feet before he soaks our packs in tears. Hmmm, let's see...   While the "minor" settlements are in-world polygonal houses, the "major" settlements are all their own game screens, with their functions discovered by the cursor changing shape as you mouse-over the various parts of the painted background. Most also have at least one hidden thing, indicated by a magnifying glass. In this case, if we go fishing around the river...  We make bank! This is a small amount of money overall, but pretty big stuff for the early game.  At the back of LaMut is the local garrison...  And our first mention of the Tsurani(or rather their homeworld, Kelewan. Yeah, the Tsurani are kind of aliens)! While they're part of BaK's plot, we don't learn a lot of them during the game, but suffice to say that I would consider them a sort of mixture of feudal Japan(feuding nobles engaging in political, and sometimes literal, warfare, while paying lip service to a political figurehead they're trying to replace, some things about their architecture) and the Aztecs(some degree of blood sacrifice, a good number of ziggurats, very big on slavery), though I feel that they're nuanced enough to grow beyond their obvious inspirations. They're their own lorepost(or more likely, series of loreposts), but suffice to say that at the end of the first two Midkemia books, a number of Tsurani settled in the northwest of the central Kingdom, generally in the area around LaMut, whose reigning noble is a Tsurani Earl.    LaMut, of course, also features a store but, whoof, everything here is well above what we can pay for. We won't be setting up a firing line of archers for a bit yet.   And what would a town be without an inn? We can annoy everyone on this screen, so let's do so, from left to right... Some NPC's just want us to gently caress off, sadly.  The barmaid is where we can buy rations though, in most cases, you'll find plenty on the road and from looting enemies. Actually needing to stop in and buy food is a rarity. The function of getting drunk is somewhat hidden, while it's a general debuff, it helps characters who are resting heal faster, so getting drunk before going to bed is the intended style of play.   The third character from the left is Dubal An Loch, this suspiciously tall dwarf. I'm not exactly sure where the "Scottish dwarves"-thing started, it sure wasn't Tolkien, but Midkemia definitely rolls with it all the way.    One of Locklear's more character-defining actions is that when he was almost at ground zero of the world ending, he got himself locked in a basement with several women. He didn't have anything crude in mind when it happened(quite the opposite), but from there on out, he seems to have had his character pretty well-defined.     In the novelization, Locklear and company drop by LaMut and have much the same conversations as they do in the game, with the exception that Locklear states in no unclear terms that they are not going to do any monster-slaying sidequesting. Of course, in the game, we're perfectly free to go fight a bunch of sentient rocks underground. Next, there's the lute lurking ominously in the lower right, let's just-  Now, I know you can't actually get anyone lynched by playing too poorly, but the text certainly seems to imply it. You also literally get booted back to the main town screen for this, which is amusing to me. Still, we gotta duck in, because we're missing the fella behind the bar.    This line always puzzled me a bit. Like, what tipped you off, Locklear? The barmaid trying to sell you mugs of ale and brandy?   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.    And the ritual suicide feels like a very "inspired by surface reading of feudal Japan"-thing.   "Rift Gates" and "Grey Warriors" are lore options while "Combat" allows us to ask Sumani for some training in hitting stuff, it's pretty decent training, but also pretty expensive, at 75 gold, which is almost three times what the party actually has, and thus not even an option. So let's just milk Sumani for info before we leave LaMut. Asking about the Grey Warriors wouldn't be an option if we hadn't visited the garrison first, either.           Why would he assume we'd pursue this theft? It has nothing to do with us. Just think of all those poor gems, Gorath, suffering in some thief's pocket.In the books, Locklear does, in fact, pursue this mystery, simply because he figures that even if Gorath is a red herring, returning Makala's gems will prevent Prince Arutha from throwing him in the dungeons for abandoning his post. Also, the garrison is out on maneuvers and can't spare them troops for an escort, but a few garrison regulars help them try to throw the Moredhel off their track(though it doesn't help much). In any case, that's all of LaMut's content tapped for now, unless we need to pick up some high-caliber crossbows, so we can head back to the road.    If you can see that little clump of blue pixels among the trees, then good job! You can play Betrayal at Krondor! That there's our very first ambusher, and if he had friends, we'd be able to see those, too, as we got closer, but this brave fellow has decided to walk out on to the pitch and challenge us on his own. Now, the trick is, which the game tells you in the manual but not in-game, to examine this guy like you would anything else in the gameworld.   Now we've triggered AMBUSH MODE, which means that if our Stealth rating wins out, we'll get a first-round advantage against this guy.    Just as planned.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfgDeyjb4os I recorded the fight as a short video just so you can hear the music, since there certainly isn't any particularly tactical content in this and like half of it is me trying to remember what the three spells Owyn has do. Back in the image dimension... Owyn is up first, and early on, Owyn has one job, and one job only.  Despair Thy Eyes is a spell that always hits(but under rare situations seems able to fail or get resisted), and which causes the opponent to lose the next couple of turns while they're blinded. Owyn's other two combat spells at this stage are Invitation(pull an enemy closer to him, good for getting enemy casters or archers out of their back rows. enemies pulled adjacent to a player character can only move and melee attack, they cannot cast spells or fire crossbows) and Gift of Sung(sacrifices some of Owyn's Stamina/Health to replenish an ally's).  The screen(and the enemy) flash and that's how you know it's stuck. Now this guy is gonna wobble in place for two rounds, even if, say, someone walks over and starts hitting him with a sword. The other options down on the bar are to retreat(must be in the backmost row with no dead allies), defend(increases chance of not getting hit), assessing an enemy(try to figure out their stats), resting(passes the round recovering stamina) or setting the team to auto-battle. You'll rarely want to set fights to auto-battle.   Melee attacks can't be done horizontally, and if you're already in position, i.e. don't need to move to make the attack, you also get access to a Swing. In general the Swing is less accurate but does more damage, but the exact details vary a bit from weapon to weapon.   Gorath and Locklear make short work of him, though. Individual blue-cloaked Moredhel are just about the weakest enemy in the game.    Dead enemies roughly have the same positions in the overworld as they had on the battlefield, which can sometimes make searching them annoying if they died on the same tile, this guy just carried some spare change, another sword and another suit of armor, which is what most humanoid enemies will have. They'll generally drop the same stuff they use in combat if it's of a category that player characters can use(monstrous enemies will not, for instance, drop their clubs).  This is crazy! We're going to end up being killed before we get to Krondor! Cowardly as he is, the boy has a point. Going directly south to Krondor will be the path of most opposition. Hmmm... perhaps there's a smarter way.VOTE Which path will the crew attempt to take to Krondor? If you refer back to the OP post, the only blocked paths are across the Grey Towers, the Teeth of the World and the Grey Range. Making Tyr-Sog, Northwarden and Highcastle the northern most areas the party can reach for the time being. Alternately, if the party doesn't actually head for Krondor right away, should they... Investigate the Brak-Nurr or look into the gem-smuggling?
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Sep 10, 2021 22:41
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Update 02: Lore Dump 1 I'm trying to keep each of the lore dump subheadings somewhat concise because... goddamn, nothing in the Midkemia books is ever simple and concise. Thanks to time travel there's rarely ever just "a beginning" and the chronological start of things is often explained midway through the second book in a two-book sub-series. Let me know if you want me to ramble more about a particular subject, because Christ will I not run out of material any time soon. Locklear Locklear first appears in the third book, Silverthorn, where he and a young Jimmy the Hand have ended up as squires at Prince Arutha's court. They end up fast friends as Locklear is, himself, not the son of anyone important enough to put him high on the pecking order and he's impressed with Jimmy's street wits and the fact that he doesn't take poo poo from any bullies among the other squires. When Prince Arutha and his friends end up setting off on a top secret mission to save Prince Arutha's wife(who got hit in the back by a poisoned crossbow bolt during the wedding), Jimmy and Locklear figure out something's up and invite themselves along, almost getting killed along the way several times. After Princess Anita's life is saved, life goes back to normal until the fourth book, A Darkness At Sethanon. Once again, Locklear and Jimmy end up accompanying Prince Arutha on a dangerous expedition, this time into the Northlands, the heart of Moredhel power, where they end up in the besieged, militaristic city of Armengar. When the city is overrun, a girl that Locklear struck up a relationship with is killed by the invaders and he turns out to be a pretty dangerous fighter when he's sufficiently pissed off by an event like that. He ends up surviving the siege along with the other main characters, joining them in their rush to Sethanon where he ends up protecting more women in a besieged city when the walls come down. This time he succeeds, however, and most of his reputation as a ladies' man is from when the partially collapsed basement is excavated by the relief troops. The Tsurani The Tsurani are the Aztec/Japanese melange culture which are the apparent antagonists of the first two Midkemia books(Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master). They appear out of nowhere and lay siege to the Kingdom from within its borders, displacing Moredhel, threatening Elvandar and having no apparent end to their troops. The protagonists later realize that the Tsurani are being teleported in from their own world, Kelewan, which mainly differs from Midkemia in being much hotter and being much more poor in metals. The invasion of Midkemia is pushed by two things: the hunger for Midkemia's metals(which are insanely valuable on Kelewan) and political pressures(the Tsurani warlord has been backed into a corner by being unable to find anyone to persecute a war against for a while), and to maintain his political power he latches on to the idea of invading the Kingdom of the Isles. Most information about Tsurani history and culture are related when Pug, the main protagonist of the Magician novels, is captured at the end of Apprentice and spends several years as a Tsurani slave in Master until the Tsurani discover he has magical talent and elevate him to the role of one of their Great Ones(unlike in the Kingdom, there's no such thing as a wizard of low station among the Tsurani). A lot of magical bullshit later, the rift between Kelewan and Midkemia is collapsed, and the surviving Tsurani on the Midkemia side are made freemen of the Kingdom. Eventually, during A Darkness At Sethanon, the Rift is re-established, and from then on, Kelewan and Midkemia enjoy largely peaceful trade relations as the Tsurani Emperor, Ichindar, has no desire for war. If you dig more into the DEEP LORE, the Tsurani are humans, just like the humans of Midkemia are(aside from whatever genetic drift happens over thousands of years of interstellar separation), due to an ancient disaster that destroyed whatever was humanity's ancestral home. But explaining that, or why the Rift had to be blown up once, and during a peace conference at that, would require explaining the Valheru and Macros the Black and... hoo boy, we're not even a quarter of the way there yet. Suffice to say it involves multiples of time travel. The Tsurani are largely respectfully handled, with perhaps a bit of exoticism, and the occasional bit of heavy-handed "the Kingdom's pseudo-European meritocracy is a superior system of governance to the Tsurani's largely clannish, fundamentally primitive system of government. " but the Kingdom is also shown to have its weaknesses, with insane kings, internal politicking and so forth.The Moredhel Possibly unique among fantasy dark elves, the moredhel are almost physically identical to their non-dark brethren(the Eledhel, who live in the Green Heart), and their differences are instead largely ideological. When the Valheru empire collapsed, their slaves, the elves, split into two* factions, the Eledhel, who realized the Valheru were dangerous psychos and just wanted to live in peace, and the Moredhel, who thought the Valheru were on to something and wanted to reclaim all their ancient magic WMD's and rule the world. This also informed their reactions to humans, the Eledhel see them as fellow sapients, while the Moredhel see them as usurpers of Midkemia's lands and resources. During the Magician books, the Moredhel are largely a secondary danger, since they primarily raid around the edges of the action and are as threatened by the Tsurani as everyone else on Midkemia. During Silverthorn, however, they've gotten themselves a prophet, Murmandamus, who uses force and manipulation to unite the Moredhel factions into a single unified army that he leads against the Kingdom with blatant disregard for the lives of the soldiers under his command, slinging around ridiculous magical powers with little effort and largely seeming invincible all throughout Silverthorn and A Darkness At Sethanon, two books during which the moredhel largely seem to be completely insane beings composed of nothing but anger, murderousness and political jockeying. Betrayal at Krondor represents the first time we see one of them displaying positive emotions, making jokes, cooperating with humans that aren't greedy weapon-runners or mercenaries, etc. Of course, Murmandamus turns out to be a fraud(a shapeshifted lizard alien, literally, I'm not even joking) and he almost manages to end the world by loving with stuff he finds underneath Sethanon, but he gets stabbed at the last moment, which collapses the Moredhel war machine entirely. The Moredhel in Betrayal at Krondor have suffered insane losses in recent history, literally entire generations of Moredhel have ended up dead or maimed and they are distinctly on the back foot, they absolutely should not be a threat any longer. *Or so we're told during the Magician books. Of course there aren't just two kinds of elves, no author who starts introducing multiple brands of elves ever stops at two. You fool, you absolute rube, you will drown in elves of every kind.
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Sep 10, 2021 23:11
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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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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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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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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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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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Xander77 posted:That should be 7.5% or so with only these two skills tagged. That was with Barding tagged, and, yeah, I know that tagging would improve Sumani's lessons, I just thought I'd write the base rate. Xander77 posted:Oh, and someone knowledgeable commenting on my guide said that books still have a chance to boost your skills even after you've read them once? Anyway, it's at least once per character, which is different from "one-use". I don't quite understand the book thing, it's something like a single-digit percentage chance that a given character can benefit from them more than once to my understanding, which feels off, but is functionally almost the same as "one use per character."
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Sep 14, 2021 21:45
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Roxors posted:The fun thing about grave robbing is you can usually tell what will be buried in a grave based on the epitaph, which can feels bit like the chest riddles at times. Yeah, there's usually some sort of painful pun or homophone indicating what's buried in there, while the grislier/sadder grave names tend to be the dangerous ones.
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Sep 15, 2021 15:03
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The will of the people has been heard... the team will get another serving of greatly unwanted cardio training.
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Sep 16, 2021 01:15
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Also, since I'm not putting up the in-game description for EVERY item(sadly they can't all be as unintentionally funny as the pile-of-fruit one), if there's a piece of text you guys really want to see(like, I don't know, maybe you're desperate to know what Locklear thinks about a specific gem or something), let me know and I'll be sure to add it to an update or in between updates.
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Sep 16, 2021 10:29
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SOLarian posted:Hey Purple, can you put the pictures of the puzzle chest up unsolved and maybe put the solution below in spoiler tags? Or would that be too much work? I do like trying to guess the answers, but no problem if its too much. I could start doing that from now on, I suppose. It wouldn't be too much extra work.
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Sep 16, 2021 17:41
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Update 05: [Goblins] When we last left off, we were about one third along the east/west road running south of the Teeth of the World mountains, which amounts to roughly 1/9th of the total distance if we were going to take the longest possible route from Yabon to Krondor, i.e. going east to Northwarden, south to Silden, and then west to Krondor. The thing is, despite most quests and encounters for this region not being activated until later chapters, there is actually one Chapter 1 exclusive sidequest up here, which we'll be collecting before turning around, just to avoid tapping out the eastern north/south route several chapters early.    For some reason, at a couple of points, you get dialogue prompts to skip onwards along the route, possibly to make it feel longer than it actually is. BaK posted:Gorath stared down the pass.  This little skip nudges us about half of the way from Tyr-Sog to the small town of Eldpoint and...  Also right into another Moredhel patrol.  Up here the gloves are off, there are no more 1 or 2-enemy encounters, we're going to be outnumbered almost every time and winning surprise is important, not to mention that even the basic Moredhel Warriors up here tend to have somewhat better stats as well as usually at least one or two of them fielding crossbows. Since we do win surprise, however, this is basically the ideal use case for Flamecast.    Who needs Stardock when I can just read random pamphlets on how to cast destructive magic?In the novelization, the explanation for why Owyn doesn't know any battle magic is that, quite reasonably, Stardock doesn't want brawls or disagreements to turn into students throwing fireballs and lightning bolts at each other. However, the videogame is absolutely superior to the novel in that just this short bit into an early detour and he's already graduated to becoming a battlemage. So, anyway, Flamecast! It tosses a ball of fire that relies on Accy:Casting for its accuracy(though note that missed projectiles can still hit other targets, so it's best against tight clusters of enemies) and does up to 60 damage to the primary target if Owen sacrifices the maximum 20 Stamina to it. Even late in the game, this is enough to one-shot or cripple(enemies get the same stat penalties as the main characters do when they lose Health) the main target. The AoE effect is ~20% damage to enemies within two squares, which contributes to it being best to cast on round one. Firstly the enemies are likely to be clustered, and secondly they're likely to be far enough away that you won't fry your own party in the process.  For instance, this is how things look a round or two later. Hitting either of the nearly Moredhel with a Flamecast would fry both Owyn and Locklear, and is thus what the wise ancients would call "an absolutely dogshit stupid idea." In any case, except for a brief scary moment where one of the moredhel walk up to Owyn and start swinging at him, the fight passes without anything noteworthy happening.  So much for your genius plan, Squire. They're still after us, and in bigger numbers. Or they just snuck over the Teeth of the World to hurry on down and intercept us, but we ambushed them rather than the other way around.   I'd say about half the homes and barns near this road are, in this chapter, uninteractible, with their residents either unresponsive or simply not at home.  Taking anoter step here drops us right into an ambush, despite there being no visible enemies in-game. I'm unclear whether this is due to an insufficiently high Scouting skill, or whether some battles are simply pre-coded as being ambushes every time. Not even the huge Krondor FAQ seems to be of any help there.   Unlike the last fight, Owyn can't start it by nuking one of the enemies into the ground thanks to their instantly closing with the tougher boys and giving them two to one odds.  This leads to Gorath actually having all his Stamina worn away, which could have gone really badly. If he'd taken one more hit, it would've severely impacted his ability to hit back and to dodge attacks, and could possibly have lead to him getting his rear end kicked, plus one of the fighters was chasing Owyn around, preventing him from evening the odds with Despair Thy Eyes.   It also leads to the event of one of the Moredhel running for the hills, which is something you desperately want to avoid. Not because he'll return or bring reinforcements or anything, but because the game has a limited number of battles, and thus limited resources, and some of these blue-clad idiots carry things we desperately want to get our hands on for free rather than having to pay for them.    Once we're done tossing the bodies for spare change, we turn a corner in the road and encounter... an incongruous Grecian-style building.   What we've got here, is our first temple. Their main feature is curing hard-to-remove conditions like Near Death in exchange for hard-to-acquire resources like gold, the second thing is blessing your high-tier gear to make it even more high-tier(this is generally not worthwhile for a couple of chapters yet, though, as we're still pretty far from the top of the power curve and blessings are pricey) and the third... let's go poke at that mandala on the wall to our right. BaK posted:The design was odd. This is completely non-canon, by the way. In the canon, the only ones with access to teleportation are the Tsurani Great Ones(and Pug, because Pug has all the magic), and even then they need carefully prepared patterns to memorize and teleport to, or devices keyed to very specific locations. In general the temples feature... relatively little in the canonical stories, despite Midkemia having a fleshed-out pantheon... but I'll rant about the gods in the next lore post. For now, suffice to say that Dala is also known as the "Shield of the Weak" in-setting, a faith not explicitly devoted to fighting, but definitely as ready to crack heads if someone's loving with the defenseless as it is to handing out food to the homeless. All temples also have an option to go harass the head priest for attention. BaK posted:Locklear asked to see the high priestess. Despite being able to pick up this quest in Chapter 1 already, it can't be completed until Chapter 2 due to necessary NPC's not being interactible or encounterable until then, but it has a really good reward, so we absolutely want to keep it in mind. In any case, we don't have the money to bless anything(nor is it worth blessing anything at this point), no one's half dead and we don't have any other temples visited to turn them into teleport locations yet(not to mention the prices are absolute ripoffs.).  So we're going to take a detour to find grain for a temple? Well, no. But if we happen to stumble across a sack of grain anyway... we could probably use all the divine help we could get.  Oooooh, berries! Owyn, your pack is filled to the brim with rations. Aw c'mon, we're sparing like, two weeks for your dumb detour. Can't we spare ten minutes for my berries? Fine, fine, just be careful, some of these look odd...BaK posted:The leaves were dull. Shaded in dull browns and ochres, the bush wasn't much to look at, but it might yield berries that could be eaten. The first flavour text means the bush yields rations, the second means it yields green potions(restoratives!) and the third means it yields poisoned rations. Always remember to read the flavour text, kids, or at least to check what kind of rations you're picking up.  ...why would a wagon be a sign of an ambush? Maybe the moredhel are bringing so many guys for the next one that they need to cart them around. I refuse to believe they need a supply train to ambush us. If you doubt my elven senses, go ahead and take another step forwards.  Son of a bitch.   Mostly what this battle shows off is that battle fields can have different sizes and sometimes even shapes. The game doesn't play a lot with it, which is a shame, some battlefields with actual choke points and obstructions could have been interesting, but it does occasionally change the tactical calculus and, for instance, dungeon/cave battlefields tend to be narrower than overworld battlefields.  Ugh, now why are we going off-road? Since Gorath was right about the ambush, he might be right about the wagon, too, and while I doubt Delekhan's soldiers travel by wagon, stacked like barrels, they might have transported something else in among the cliffs...  Jackpot. Two chests just off the road. Generally overworld containers don't change from chapter to chapter, though the non-code ones, the locked ones, may be simply too difficult to pick early in the game, which is why they're usually our best chance of breaking the power curve in half even more than we already have.  COALS  And oh does this chest ever kick rear end. The Keshian Tapir(that huge scimitar up there), is the fourth most-damaging sword in the game(and third most damaging if you only count non-unique ones) and represents a massive damage boost for Gorath, while the amulet is an Amulet of the Upright Man which gives a +15% Lockpicking boost. Getting that in the first chapter of the game when the scale is 0 to 100, is pretty great!  SECRET  And the second chest contains crossbows good enough that now it's actually worth it to take the occasional potshot at enemies and let them waste the time closing in, rather than sending Locklear and Gorath ahead to brawl. Though I'd like to note that I am officially an idiot for not picking up that bowstring(an item that repairs a damaged crossbow to 100%).  FUTURE  The last chest contains a Medium crossbow which is a sidegrade to the red Tsurani crossbows. It does somewhat less damage, but has better accuracy.   I'm surprised they just left that undefended. Owyn!   This trap introduces a few new things, crystals and cannons. Cannons shoot fireballs at anything that moves past their "muzzle," doing 30 damage with each hit. Solid crystals provoke attacks, but also block them, so the solution to this trap is pretty simple.   Move the first-line crystal to the right so we can shuffle the second-line crystal one step forwards and block the second cannon as well. Another important note is that traps have no time limit, so if your characters are wounded at all, a hot pro tip is to wander into a trap and have them "rest" over and over until they're capped out on health and stamina, THEN "solve" the trap.     The next step of the road is quiet. Too quiet! You hold him down, Gorath, and I'll punch him until candy comes out.  Even with the advantage of ambushing the party, four moredhel fighters go down without too much difficulty since they don't immediately tie up Owyn, and he can thus get started on blinding them all while Gorath and Locklear fillet them mercilessly. This encounter is great, though, because one of the dead moredhel has one of the most important items for this stretch of the game. The best thing about it is that you might very well never know that it's important, on account of the game never actually deigning to tell you what its effect is.  Ow! drat! Just stop hitting the drat thing and I promise we won't kick your rear end. This is another place where a noteworthy gear upgrade is just casually stashed in a corner of the geometry.    Head off the road, walk into the hills, skip around the barn and poke at the little bit of disturbed dirt in the corner.  The Goblin Sticker within isn't as damaging as the Keshian Tapir, but is slightly more accurate and also has a +5% accuracy bless. I missed that it was Elven-typed, though, and should have absolutely given it to Gorath instead of the Tapir(which is human-typed).  Between all these magical traps and ambushes, though, I feel rather turned around. Let's go ask for directions at one of the actually inhabited houses in the area. BaK posted:The house was badly in need of repair, but it appeared as though someone might be living in it so Locklear knocked loudly and stood back to wait. You can tell these guys are actual protagonists because they actually respect squatters rather than turning them out for some lame reason like "the law." The chests they mention also exist, but they're both locked beyond Locklear's skill and also contain some surprisingly lame loot compared to all the chests we can effortlessly open at this stage.   Just around the corner we reach Eldpoint, which is largely notable for having one of the worst stores in the game, "Guds," which has an absolutely terrible selection of items AND buys basically none of what we find on any of the enemies, or in any of the stashes around the area. So instead, let's harass some of the other locals, one of them has a present for us.  BaK posted:Locklear knocked on the door. Sadly, we can't dress Gorath in high heels, but if we accept the offer, we get a pair of free Weedwalkers which, you might remember, are a +30% bonus to Stealth. Considering that Weedwalkers have a base price of 150 gold, that's a pretty big score for the early game.  It also, of course, has an inn, though sadly without any unique NPC's. Just the usual barmaid, lute and a few randoms. You'll probably not click on any randoms after the first time you try, since they generally just have very short dialogues that amount to: "And the NPC told Locklear to gently caress off and mind his own business," but there are actually several unique, but rare, and randomly assigned, dialogues for inn patrons which are worth reading. I'll toss in a few of them as the game progresses, like right now! BaK posted:A table was cleaned for them. We will, of course, also take a shot at barding and hope we don't get our asses tossed out again... BaK posted:Fortune smiled. It's the lowest tier of success possible, but it's still a success! This is more or less entirely down to the practice lute that Owyn hammered away at until it broke last update, it brought him just over the minimum requirement to get a reward. Only about a quarter of the maximum possible reward, but I have no idea how you'd get the 82 Barding necessary to get the max reward here in Chapter 1 without abusing one of the game's multiple free money tricks, the simplest of which relies on the fact that anything sold to a store can be bought back any number of times. Thus, if you break a high-quality crossbow entirely, you can buy an infinite amount almost for free, then buy bowstrings to repair them, and sell the repaired crossbows for more than the price of buying the wreck and the string.  At least you're finally earning your keep. You mean aside from the magic? If you two would stop squabbling, there are enemies up ahead. In the middle of Eldpoint? Indeed, it looks like we've arrived in the middle of a raid. Welcome to a new type of enemy: Trolls. They're, uh, nothing like trolls in the books, who are described as looking more like primates than people. These things are just tall people with some bad makeup and large sticks. They tend to be beefier than Moredhel, and hit harder... and almost zero of them carry anything, meaning that if you decide to spend your time hacking them to pieces, they're gonna provide some training, sure, but likely mostly waste your resources and perhaps paste the party. So instead, do the smart thing. Cover your ears, everyone! DINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG The secret power of the tuning fork is that it makes all trolls in a given battle instantly start fleeing from the battlefield. It's a supremely useful item that makes the game so much easier, sparing you a ton of quite annoying battles, and outside of perhaps one single piece of NPC dialogue somewhere, nothing ever tells you that the drat things actually have a use.  I'm going to be resolving all troll fights with tuning forks when possible, since the forks aren't exactly in short supply(we've got about 60 uses on the one we found) and there's never anything lost in doing so.      From Eldpoint to Highcastle, there's only one battle in our way, which is another pure troll encounter and thus removed with another Tuning Fork use. And thank God we're finally at Highcastle, I've had to pass up tons of mediocre items thanks to not being able to unload jack poo poo at Tyr-Sog or Eldpoint.   Despite being a border strongpoint, Highcastle has the spread of amenities: A shop, a tavern and a local noble to harass. The local interactible background item is the mentioned Cutter's Gap in the background... BaK posted:Rain slanted out of the sky. I'm not sure what Locklear's "reasons" could have been. A boondoggle attempt at travelling north and assassinating Delekhan to shortcircuit the entire plot? It would've been funny if it was an option.There's nothing exciting about the local store, it just has a ton of high-tier armor and weapons at prices sadly much too high for us to pay at the moment. So let's hit up the bar, play some tunes and get another bit of fluff dialogue.  BaK posted:Owyn played. Many of the "rare" inn dialogues seem to be minor game hints, like this one which tells you not to gently caress around in dungeons without rope. Now that everyone's had a chance to get drunk, let's talk to the local noble. BaK posted:A soldier let them in. So the plan is... to not have a plan? Exactly, no one would ever expect someone as brilliant as me to be acting randomly.Anyway, now that the party's inventory is unburdened, we have a change to kick over some things in the environs around Highcastle.    Firstly, and most importantly, we need to pretend roads don't exist and run more or less straight west away from Highcastle until we bump into a cliffside, which should also trigger another magic trap.   Now, this trap I don't quite get. You'll notice we've got all the previous elements here, plus a new one, transparent crystals. Fireball cannons will attempt to shoot at them, but their shots will pass through. If they hit one of the pillars for the lightning lines, they'll disable that entire line, but at the same time they can't shoot through the line itself, as the line will blast the fireball out of the air. Considering that we can't pull crystals, only push them, I'm lost as to how to solve this trap "perfectly." Ultimately, what I did was just having Owyn run past the cannon on the right(it's only 30 damage, he'll be fine!), with the solid crystal, so he could use it to block the top left cannon and walk past it. If the rightmost crystal was a transparent one, the solution would be super obvious, but since it's not... I don't have a drat clue. If someone else can use their tactical megamind to solve this one without frying Owyn halfway to a crisp, go ahead and let me know.   Of course, I also double gently caress it by pushing this crystal a step too far so Owyn has to eat two fireballs. Still, at least there's a reward for this!  While completing battles drops you out where you stood, completing traps always drops you in a fixed location, in this case more or less staring down three coded chests.  BARK  The contents of the chests are a bit... eh, though.  BREATH For instance this one just contains 28 rations. Nice stuff, but not exactly super vital.  YESTERDAY Instead, this one is the big score.  Another good sword, a high-quality emerald(worth about 100 sovereigns) and two bags of seemingly innocuous powder.  Though at least these come with some instructions. They go in Owyn's inventory, and we'll soon see that they're some of the best items in the game for handling battles where the party's outnumbered. Now, let's see about getting in the Baron's good graces. Those goblins he mentioned can't have gone far...   Excuse me, has anyone in here seen any rampaging goblins around?BaK posted:"Wonderful day, don't you think?" said the pleasant woman that came to the door. She's a hint leading us to the chests we just found. But since we already looted those, we'll just keep heading north.   Goblin campfires, do you think? No doubt, you can tell because they never follow proper campfire safety rules. ???? Draken-Smokey says only you can prevent forest fires.  There they are, it's the [goblins]! Prepare to meet your end, miserable [goblins]. Those aren't goblins, they're just guys in green shirts! Shut up, Owyn and eat your goblins.Ahem, so. These are obviously just digitized images of slightly shorter(or downscaled) humans in green clothes which are hilariously completely unlike Midkemia goblins, who are, oddly enough, blue-skinned, always black-haired, much shorter than humans and have black scleras. In some of the books they're also described a bit like smaller trolls, as in being somewhat simian in stature. Stat-wise they're also more or less completely identical to moredhel, which is another oddity since in the stories they tend to be described as generally being much less dangerous than both humans and moredhel, and generally only a threat in large numbers or if they manage an ambush.   These bastards are set up with two archers and also run right into the middle of our formation, so I decide to bust out the big guns and eat the friendly fire involved in Flamecasting the center goblin to reduce how much a threat he is to Owyn.   It mostly goes well, except that Owyn almost gets hacked apart and ends up with only 6 Health left, a goblin all up in his grill and it being able to act before Locklear or Gorath can get to it. So what do we do?  We pop it with one of those powder bags, of course. Nothing explains how they work, but they paralyze an enemy for an undefined number of rounds. It's like a better version of Despair Thy Eyes, especially since it also allows you to see that A) the effect has in fact, taken effect, and B) whether it's still active. As long as Owyn's carting around a few of these bags, we're pretty well guaranteed that he won't be taken to the own zone by personal space invading enemies.  Now let's pick through their carcasses for quest items.  BaK posted:Delekhan: Again, it's funny to have these perfectly literate goblins when most of the time they're portrayed as being hide-bound savages. Let's cart this back to Highcastle and see what Baron Kevin has to say about it.   BaK posted:Kevin met them at the door. 200 Sovereigns for killing 5 goblins is a really good score considering that up to this point, the party has maybe earned about 700 or 800 sovereigns total. With this, though, we've tapped out the Highcastle environs for the time being and it's time to head further east and north until we reach Northwarden.  That's for the next post, though, since Betrayal at Krondor is a surprisingly wordy game(and I am incredibly incapable of shutting up), and thus this post is already at 50k characters.
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Sep 23, 2021 14:17
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Update 06: An Intentional Bug? When I last punched through the character limit, we were leaving Highcastle after several lore-breaking encounters. Let's get on with it.   Much like Tyr-Sog, Highcastle has an "are you sure about this, dude?"-dialogue east of it. BaK posted:Locklear fretted. : We've probably come far enough east to have thrown any other assassins off the track. You have a better idea of what Delekhan would throw at us, Gorath. What do you think?: I think that if I were he, I would hunt us in the same way that one hounds a fox. You chase him and snap at his heels, all the while driving him out of fear into his hole.: And in this instance, the hole is Krondor. If he doesn't already suspect our destination, he can't stay unaware of it too long. But he couldn't lay his trap for us in Krondor itself. Even a large contingent of elves there is enough to stir up a ruckus.: I suspect a trap immediately to the north of our objective. That would be most prudent.: I think I'd have to agree. Slipping in at night from the southeast would probably be the best way in... I'll at least keep it in mind as we travel.     There are a few signs of habitation and, yes, the hollow tree stumps that are blatant sprites four times as wide as the trunks of actual trees in the game are interactible containers hiding items. This one has a small piece of vendor trash, another of those blue shells, and little else, but they're worth keeping an eye out for.    Between Highcastle and Wolfram there are no encounters, so this next leg of the journey is relatively calm, and Wolfram has little of interest at this point.   Though the local store, the Arms of Dala, is somewhat interesting.  In that it sells everything up to top-tier weapons and armor, but all of it at 50% durability, like a used armor store. One way of making lots of money is, with sufficient weapon/armorcrafting skill, buying a bunch of weapons here, fixing them up, and then carting them over to a higher-priced store and selling them there.    Past that, we have the Temple of Tith-Onanka, the god of generalized warfare as opposed to Dala's warfare in the defense of others. They offer the same services as the temple of Dala, but maybe the high priest has some interesting dialogue? BaK posted:Battle standards floated over their heads. The presentation of the high priest as being more concerned with war as sort of a... spectator sport, with bets and intellectual interest rather than caring about what the various sides are trying to accomplish, is pretty interesting. It's probably more detail than the priests of Tith ever get in the books, and also not exactly flattering. Now that we have two temples visited, however... we can also finally see what they charge for teleportation services.  Just a smooth 10% of our funds to avoid having to spend a couple of days' worth of rations(maybe 1% of our funds) to walk down a road we already cleared of moredhel dickheads. If you were trying to speedrun BaK, you'd absolutely attempt to mark temples in the early game when the way to them is easy, and then use them to skip around time-consuming encounters in the later game, but for a casual playthrough, they're actually not really worth engaging with.     It's nice that we're finally somewhere peaceful, we haven't been attacked in days now. Maybe we should stop at that idyllic farm to ask for directions and get some fresh food!BaK posted:The front door was scratched heavily, as though by swords. His own sword drawn, Gorath cautiously ventured inside. The weather beaten exterior of the house was in better shape than the ransacked interior. What was left of a small wooden table and two chairs, rested at odd splintered angles throughout the house. So, two oddities in this text, firstly there's the bit of casual sexual menace which is as far as I recall never a feature of Feist's books, neither sexual violence or its implications are things I remember seeing used for cheap shots in any of the books I read. Part of it is probably the dearth of female characters, but I think a good part of it is also just that Feist isn't the sort of rear end in a top hat who makes use of it for emotional weight. Good on you, Feist. The other one is Gorath "praying to Ishap." Now, Ishap is confirmedly one of the world's gods, but generally it's implied that the elves(of any flavour) have no organized worship and have their own cosmological beliefs(which may or may not be right, considering that they believe they don't go to Lims-Kragma's halls of the dead, but that said halls do confirmedly exist, even if their population seems to be purely human).   Still, we manage to get to Dencamp-on-the-Teeth without any further violence despite the implications of there being angry trolls in the area, and Dencamp actually has something very interesting for us to investigate. That's right, something more interesting than high-heeled shoes and free slippers.  We want to interact with this house... BaK posted:Locklear knocked.   Then we head down this side path to this house and... BaK posted:Locklear knocked on the scarred wooden door. And then the situation softlocks. See, in version 1.01 of BaK, you're meant to be able to go back to the first password house and get the right password, then come back here and get the Mind Melt spell, a single-target, no-projectile spell that does double damage against goblins and boosted damage against a few other enemy types, too. But for some inscrutable reason, between versions 1.01 and 1.02(which is the version on GoG and I think the only version that you can get your hands on these days EXCEPT, I think, the German version which for some reason never got patched?), they removed your only way to get the spell, which seems to suggest that it's an intentional "bug." Now, when you go back to the first house, the party just refuses to interact with it. I've had no luck finding the definitive patch notes, but it's odd because everything else the patch does is absolutely about removing actual crashes and lockups and chances for items to go missing, but this one is just very much a "no, gently caress you, you don't get this spell"-situation.  On the way out, we can also harass some more people. BaK posted:A lady with tear stained eyes opened the door in response to Locklear's knock. And it's like, sorry for your loss ma'am, but we'll absolutely be taking a backpack full of pies. It's like three full stacks of rations, which is great. We'll be well set for food for a while.   Your civilization may be inferior, but your human pies almost makes me want to spare you all. Hey, is that a corpse in the ditch up ahead? Grave-robbing, the perfect dessert. The corpse only contains one thing, Coltari Poison, the only use of which is poisoning rations. I'm honestly not sure why it's in the game as an item with discrete uses as it has all of two actual applications in the game(one side quest, one main quest), and could just as well have been an essential item of some sort.     A whole day of travelling later and we still haven't encountered any enemies, but we find a house out on a side path in the wilderness. May as well check if the owner will put us up for the night. BaK posted:Locklear sniffed the air. The smells coming from the house were heavenly and they made his stomach grumble hungrily as he knocked on the door. The reward is a mostly-intact Medium Crossbow which is vendor fodder at this point, but every little bit helps, but if we keep going down the road...  We stumble upon a minidungeon called "The Diviner's Halls," which we aren't supposed to visit until chapter 5. But certainly the boys can have a little bit of sequence breaking, as a treat.  As soon as they disarm the trap outside, that is. This one is deceptively simple, though.   You just shove the single transparent crystal forwards, the cannon blows up the rod, and then whoever wants to can just saunter up the field in the now-safe gap.   Despite the lack of variation in the overworld, at least in the underworld areas they sprung for some slightly different wall textures.   Oh and pit traps. These are instant TPK if the party walks into them, and can only be crossed by expending a "charge" from a rope, and there are absolutely some chasms that need crossing to complete the game, thus meaning they technically provide a way for the player to softlock themselves or lock themselves into a corner if they spend their last rope crossing a chasm they can't get back over. Ropes are, thankfully, relatively plentiful compared to the number of chasms, but if you're playing the game without a FAQ and have a poor sense of direction, you could well get a little bit lost at points and spend more charges than you intend. BaK posted:The cavernous pit stretched across the narrow corridor. Standing close to the edge, Locklear quickly determined that it was far too wide to jump across, and far too deep to try climbing down.   Being intended for a later chapter, the Diviner's Halls are only sparsely populated for now, with only a couple of troll encounters hanging around and little we can access in the way of loot, but it's the principle of the matter.    It does hold a few chests, though.  JACKET  Now, what's extra odd about this is that if you come here in chapter 5, as intended, then that egg is completely useless. It's a wyvern egg, a material component(two whole spells in the game use them), for a spell that makes wyverns gently caress off, but wyverns are only present in chapter 6, and the characters you control in chapter 5(yes, spoiler, the party make-up does change a bit from chapter to chapter!) aren't in the same party as any of the characters in chapter 6 for the rest of the game, and travel restrictions prevent them from dumping the eggs in a chest that the chapter 6 party can access. So clearly, clearly I was meant to come here and loot this in chapter 1, like a genius.   This one baffled me as a kid, how is this even a puzzle?! SAWDUST I will maintain to my dying breath that this is absolutely the dumbest moredhel wordlock in the game.  But since it contains the equivalent of 200 to 300 sovereigns, I will forgive the developers.  There's also a room full of human and moredhel corpses containing spoiled rations and a few more wyvern eggs, assuming I ever bother to use them and don't instead desperately hunt for a shop that'll buy the loving things.    Now we can get back on the road, and we're almost at Northwarden!     Along the way is a single ambush from three goblins which, seeing as how they're relatively close to moredhel in strength, doesn't even approach being a challenge. Boring bored because they haven't looted anything in five minutes, the party wanders off-road right into yet another trap.    Yet another straightforward trap, just use the cannon to blow up the rod and walk to the finish line. But I'm greatly amused by how it uses the game's "terrain" by populating the battle map with chests big enough to fold up Owyn and shove him into.  Our reward is yet another three wordlock chests. Dare we enter this magical realm?  DOOR  A bit disappointing, but still useful.  OUTSIDE  Yet more unexciting but fundamentally useful adventuring supplies.  ONION  We get it already, rations are important!     Suddenly, as we're marching up the road towards Northwarden... BaK posted:Music drifted on the wind.  I've just come from Northwarden and I don't feel like playing for him anymore today. My fingers are numb, my mind empty, and my stomach grumbling. Calm yourself. We haven't come from the castle. We're just travellers wandering through who heard your music and thought we would see who was responsible. So, what is a songbird doing among the falcons? Why do you stay here then? I haven't the choice! While sharing a cask of ale with a friend, he told me of a small village where the wine was exceptionally strong and the ladies exceptionally thin. Once sobered, I resolved to take myself to this wondrous place and avail myself of its pleasures. To my horror, I found that my friend had mixed his metaphors and I was laid upon by a lady who could tear the teeth from a bull bare-handed. Before I could extricate myself from such humiliable circumstances, her father, a Baronet of some note, exiled me here to entertain for the Baron Gabot or else sacrifice my head. I'm surprised he didn't have you beheaded... Well, his daughter was less than maidenly and secondly, he hadn't his fealty to pay for the year. As the Baron Gabot is fond of music, they settled that I should make even the debt... I see that you are a noble of some note. If you could do me a favor, perhaps you could ease the stress of a minstrel's life. Perhaps. What can you want? A length of light bowstring. While it is not immediately useable to me, I have found a resin that can be applied to it that will allow me to restring my lute. I have a feeling that I may need new strings soon.Now, since I forgot to bring that light crossbow string with me, and of course Northwarden isn't selling any, I can't get the reward right now, but if I could... BaK posted:A favor for a favor then! Over the past few weeks there have been several sows stolen from Northwarden, so I wrote this little song to commemorate the event. It's silly and short, but I hope you like it. It's called Northwarden Pigs. Thank you, Tamney. That was most enjoyable, but I am afraid that my companions and I must be off again. Things to do. I bid you farewell then. Come and see me again. If ever I come to Northwarden again, you can be assured of it. Good day.This also rewards the entire party with a +5 Barding skill, which isn't a gain to be sneezed at.     The final approach to Northwarden itself is a bit odd as the roadside is littered with corpses, but there are no ambushes and Northwarden itself is perfectly safe to enter.  As a fortification, however, Northwarden is less hospitable than, say, Highcastle. It only has a shop, a noble to harass(and he won't even be here until chapter 2!) and a small stash in the woods containing two sovereigns(which is, frankly, a pitiful amount of money at any stage of the game).  If Baron Gabot was in, we'd absolutely know, he fills almost half the screen.  And now, we're going to do all that in reverse. What?! It's absolutely the very last thing the Moredhel would expect.
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Sep 23, 2021 17:08
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Update 07: Lore Dump 3 Temples  Midkemia has a number of poorly detailed deities, only a few of which and whose divine orders contribute in any way to the stories. Astalon, Guis-Wa, Killian and Silban are probably the four most irrelevant, who basically never feature in the stories, and all that we know is what we can glean from their titles. Astalon: A god of justice/law and engineering. Guis-Wa: A god of the hunt of some form Killian: A nature goddess Silban: Another nature goddess. Then there's the selection of gods who actually participate in the world or are at least occasionally mentioned. Banath: The god of thieves, Jimmy the Hand invokes them pretty often. Dala: The Shield of the Weak, her order is part of a sideplot in Return to Krondor and thus actually somewhat relevant. Her faithful orphanages and helps the poor and downtrodden. Kahooli: The god of vengeance, features in some way in both Betrayal and Return. They're a mixture of detectives helping local constables and bloody-handed vigilantes. Ishap: The big metaplot god whose order is everywhere, mildly mysterious, refuses to tell anyone what's up, but probably relevant to preventing reality from collapsing. They do important things in Silverthorn and Return to Krondor and probably feature importantly in the later books, considering they get all apocalyptic and poo poo. Lims-Kragma: The goddess of death, and basically the judge of who gets another roll on the wheel of reincarnation, tossed into oblivion or uplifted to some sort of divine but unspecified state after death. Her order is a notable part of Silverthorn, where Arutha gets their assistance in dealing with the Nighthawks because of the Black Slayers(Nighthawks who rise to fight again after death, an abomination in Lims-Kragma's eyes), but discover that even Lims-Kragma's faithful are daunted by the dark powers that animate the Black Slayers. Prandur: A god of fire, one of his priests has a minor but important role in the novel between Betrayal and Return, The Assassins, which has no videogame based on it and isn't based on one either. Ruthia: Goddess of luck, once again regularly invoked by Jimmy, especially when things go gently caress-shaped. Sung: If a priest is healing someone in a Midkemia story, it's almost always a priest of Sung. A generic icon of purity and healing. His faith has a role in Return. Tith-Onanka: The generic, jock-y war god. Soldiers have a minor belief that they get a night or two of feasting in his halls before they're off to Lims-Kragma's judgment. May or may not be true. On top of that, there are several dead gods, some of which are actually more important to the setting than the living ones. Drusala: The healing goddess before Sung Eortis: The dead god of the sea, Killian keeps a hold of her portfolio for now. Onanka-Tith: The other half of Tith-Onanka Sarig: The dead god of magic, theorized as being why Midkemia has no Greater Path mages naturally. How and why there are dead gods is a deeper lore question but, like most things in Midkemia lore that involve lots of damage being done to reality, you can blame the Valheru. PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Sep 29, 2021 |
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Sep 23, 2021 17:29
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Quackles posted:Now you can walk through safely. Hm, personally I wouldn't imagine the cannon would fire if there was a rod in the way, but I admit I haven't tried it.
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Sep 23, 2021 18:26
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So, uh. I figured out that trap. Turns out that despite playing through this game like three or four times, I never knew it was possible to push the crystals diagonally before until I read it in a FAQ just now wondering what the trick was. That solves the trap in two moves. Locklear goes up forwards-right, then left, that disables all the zappy poles and he can then saunter to the end. Goddamn.
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Sep 24, 2021 15:00
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JustJeff88 posted:I rather like that this game is relatively verbose. That wasn't terribly common back in its era, and I enjoy the writing style. I've never minded a lot of reading in gaming or indeed any walk of life, so this is right up my street. Don't worry, you'll see Mind Melt in the next update, because while we can't get it, enemy casters use the same spell catalogue as the player. And yeah, you know, I actually enjoy the volume of writing. There's very little of it that isn't good or at least workable, and it's a step up over NAME, JOB, BYE.
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Sep 25, 2021 19:29
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Update 08: Dim Adventurers in the Woods, Part 1 Finally, we're here! Thank the gods, it's been over a week and... where is here? It's exactly where we need to be going. ...Gorath? Considering that we turned south off the road to Highcastle, we could only be heading for what you call the Dimwood.   So that answers where, but why? Simple logic, my dear Owyn. So far every ambush we've suffered has been within sight of a road, and in the Dimwood, there are no roads. By logical exclusion, we should be safe until we come out the other side. ... He has a point, every ambush by Moredhel so far has been near a road.On the road south from Highcastle to the Dimwood, there are a few code chests off to the side in a thicket.  HORSEMAN  GAUNTLET  BOTTLE The only interesting thing in them is a new spell for Owyn, Steelfire, which is an in-combat spell that replicates the effect of a sword buffing item(Naphtha) for the duration of the fight. The effect of Steelfire is the same as the Clerical Oilcloth we used against the Brak Nurr, doubling damage for the fight, but it's countered by a different armor buffing item.   See? Even Gorath agrees with me. Onwards! ...so why did you emphasize Moredhel, Gorath? There's worse than my people in the Dimwood.BaK posted:Mist floated in the pass.  Welcome to the Dimwood. As hinted at by the name, it has a lot of trees and, unlike the rest of the Kingdom which is somewhat corridor-esque, with most roads bounded by uncrossable mountains or hills on either side(little side-nooks and crannies aside), it's mostly open. The two rivers that intersect within it split it into three sections that are connected by bridges(the northern and eastern section do not connect, but the south-western section has bridges to both), and it has a northern exit(Highcastle), a western exit(Hawk's Hollow) and a southern exit(Sethanon). It's worth occasionally revisiting since it has one setup during Chapter 1 and gets refreshed during Chapter 3. In general, most later-chapter encounters are additive, meaning they get dropped on top of existing stuff, rather than existing stuff getting wiped, with the exception being chapter 4 which nukes a lot of early encounters off the map and gives it almost a complete refresh in terms of enemy population.    And we're off the road again, of course we are. No safer place! Who ever heard of an elf hiding among the trees? In fairness to Locklear, these aren't moredhel.Giant scorpions are unique to the Dimwood and probably one of the crustiest .jpg's used in this game, even at the original resolution.  They hit reasonably hard, but are actually more fragile than any enemy we've fought so far, despite their huge bulk. The most annoying thing about them is that since their sprite is already "flat," sometimes it can be hard to spot whether they're alive or dead. The sprites jiggle a little bit while alive, but it's even more subtle with the scorpions than it is with humanoid enemies.   Look at how miniscule that change is! In any case, three of them are not a major threat to the party.  What part of this is "safer than the roads" to you?! They don't have swords, the moredhel do. Indeed, it'd be a shame if my people were around, leaving their coded chests everywhere. A scorpion could have dragged it here. MOUSER  A couple of new items in this one, Silverthorn(the plant) and Silverthorn Anti-Venom(the blue globules, and yes, I know what the different between venom and poison are, the developers apparently did not. ), both of which are, for a couple of reasons, funny things to find. Firstly, Silverthorn is so rare in the Midkemia world that from the Kingdom it's really only in reach at one lake that's regularly guarded by the Moredhel. It's also always fatal without the antidote, in fact it's so fatal that Feist wrote an entire book about it, called Silverthorn, more or less entirely about the quest to find said antidote(which can only be produced from more Silverthorn berries), which makes it hilarious that we're going to find shitloads of Silverthorn antidote littered around the gameworld, and even in stores. Gameplay-wise, silverthorn doesn't boost basic damage, but instead makes enemies take damage over time(and, for the players, also damage-over-time outside of combat), so it's more useful on quarrels where it can be used to poison some enemies on the first round of combat, rather than on swords.    In fact there are a ton of chests in the Dimwood, most of them coded, and not locked, and thus openable at any stage of the game where you care to either brute force them or do a bit of riddle-solving. In chapter 1, each of the forest's three "sections" also only have about two or three fights each, which is not to say that some of them aren't absolute asskickers at this stage, but it means that if you have a bit of an idea of what you're doing(or frankly even if you don't), you can open most of them very early on.  THISTLE  This one contains two things, a scroll of Black Nimbus, which disables lightning poles in traps, allowing you to trivialize them(though no trap ever requires use of the spell and I always like to solve the traps without it, if I can) and yet another crossbow upgrade. It may look like the Tsurani crossbows we already have, but this one has a more rifle-like stock rather than a pistol grip, being a Tsurani Heavy Crossbow, which absolutely kicks rear end. Now we just need some good quarrels to go with it.  FLEAS This one just contains some decent-quality emeralds, almost 200 gold worth of them.  Like the other areas, some number of the encounters in the Dimwood are ambushes. For instance, this is me just about to walk into one.  Containing a new enemy type! Quegans! Quegans are a bit odd in that they get constantly mentioned in the books, but rarely have a major role, in fact I think the Midkemia story they have the biggest role in is in fact Betrayal at Krondor. They're a pirate nation who considers themselves to be the true inheritors of Kesh's ancient mandate of rulership over both Kesh itself and their old colonial province of Bosania(what's now the Kingdom of the Isles), which is what they consider to give them a right to raid shipping and ports on all sides of the Bitter Sea. In BaK they're largely just Moredhel sprite swaps, used to explain opposition that pops up in the south of the Kingdom in places where moredhel would have a lot of trouble moving around subtly, it's explained that they've instead paid a bunch of Quegans to hang out and try to dunk on the party. There are no quegan mages, as I remember it, but they do have archers and their stats tend to be around the same tier as Moredhel.    Squire, explain to me why your genius plan hasn't saved me from being chased around by Moredhel with swords. It's passing strange that my people would be here in the Dimwood as well, they may have simply predicted we'd attempt this route.  Then why have they spent the time setting up all these supply drops? Obviously we've stumbled upon an unrelated moredhel conspiracy and Arutha will reward us all for it.   WATER This one just contains a few generic supplies and I can't open the other one because it's one of the rare ones that is locked, and in this case with an absurdly strong lock. If you're quite done rooting through my people's spare clothes and rations, we should follow the river to find a way across.   Do you guys hear something? Like a faint moaning sound? Meet the Rusalki. Or, not the, but a, since they're disconcertingly common in some regions of the game world. They're ghosts who have only one attack, a ranged frost blast that does 20 damage and more or less always hits. However, for inexplicable reasons it's considered a magic attack, and thus can't be used in melee. So if there's only one, like here, they're easily dealt with by rushing up to them and making sure they can't do anything.    When killed, they slowly fade downwards into the ground which, combined with the overhead hack animation of many melee attacks makes it look like Locklear and Gorath are playing a high-stakes game of whack-a-mole.  This adventure is getting too strange. First moredhel, then trolls and giant scorpions, now ghosts? Cool, the ghost is gone. Now let's start digging up her grave. This is one grave you abso-loving-lutely WANT to dig into, though.  Firstly, it contains a rapier with a tier 3 bless. Rapiers in BaK are, oddly enough, elf-typed weapons, despite the fact that the two canonical rapier-users in the books(Jimmy the Hand and Arutha) are both human. Doesn't matter, though, this is gonna be Gorath's mainstay for a while since while it loses a little bit of damage, it almost guarantees hits when making Thrust attacks. Secondly, it contains River Song, one of the best spells in the game.  Well, what's so great about it?It allows you to summon allied rusalki in combat, up to four per battle. They don't hit super hard, and they're not super durable, but they can be summoned next to enemy casters to disrupt them or behind the enemy where they either split up the formation(if not ignored) or provide fire support(if ignored). Almost every battle where the option is given, starting off with a cast of River Song is a good move. At only 20 Stamina/Health per cast, it's not even an expensive spell, either. I'd definitely argue that it is, in fact, undercosted for how supremely useful it is.  Right next to the Rusalki encounter is another cluster of chests. Two of them are almost overlapping, so it's easy to miss that there are four of them.  SNAIL. This one actually puzzled me for a bit since I was casting around for stuff like BOOTS or SHOES or an inanimate object of some sort that people brought with them, because of the "bloodless" part. Are snails actually bloodless? I mean, they gotta have some sort of blood analogue, at least.  STOVE This one contains a new spell called Nightfingers which is the second spell in the game that requires a material component. It lets you nick an item from an enemy's inventory in combat, but not something they're equipped with. However, you also get these items if you just stab said enemy and take it off their corpse, so really the only use would be some sort of weird speedrun strat to try and get an important consumable or key from an enemy that you're not expecting to be able to beat(or don't want to waste time fighting). If it let you steal from stores or something it'd be a lot more useful. Secondly, the material component is a gross thing to haul around.  BELL  SHOE  Said material component is in the last chest, this loving severed hand. Which is the third issue with Nightfingers, actually being able to use it requires sacrificing some of your already-at-a-premium inventory space that could instead be used for rations, quarrels, healing items or for picking up gems and other things you can sell to exchange for godos and services.   Well, looks like there's no crossing upstream. Time to head downstream. Please don't let there be any more ghosts.    Enemies ahead. More ghosts? More scorpions?  Just moredhel, but some of them are wearing fancy cloaks... Meet the Witch Hag, they're the second kind of Moredhel spellcaster in the game, and are more annoying than the yellow-cloaked mages because you can never rely on them to carry anything worth selling, while the yellow-cloaked mages reliably at least have a sword and maybe some rations. Their other special trait is that, alongside goblins, they take double damage from Mind Melt if you're either playing version 1.01 or you adjust the game's code to unfuck the 1.02 patch.  Owyn blinds her and then runs up to harass her to keep her from casting anything because witch hags usually have a very "gently caress you for existing" spell loadout. This one isn't too bad, but she still knows Skyfire(40 damage, always hits) and Mind Melt(45 damage max, and the AI loves to cast their spells maxed out, likewise always hits), which is more guaranteed damage in one turn of getting to act than either of her bodyguards is likely to be able to apply across the entirety of the fight.  It's not too challenging a fight, which contributes to me feeling somewhat cocky as the party continues into the Dimwood.   Thankfully the next encounter is just a magical trap out in the middle of nowhere.  The main danger in this one is the terrible perspective which might prevent you from realizing that there are actually three turrets forming a T-shape, but once you've got that spotted, it's easy to solve.  Transparent crystal to bust the lightning spitter, solid crystal to block the leftmost fireball cannon, then bail. Or you could just let someone eat the 30 damage and sprint for the end line right off the bat if you're lazy.  Like most magical traps, it guards chests, three of them! The Dimwood probably accounts for close to half the moredhel wordchests in the game.  MATTRESS  This one contains some money and Mirrorwall, which crates a static obstacle on the battlefield which, if hit, will return projectile spells to the sender. Probably the best use is to plug holes so enemies have trouble approaching your casters, or to just cast a spell that kills enemies instead.  SQUARE  The big haul here is some blessed armor, +10% defense is pretty great.  SNOWFLAKE  And here the big deal is that now both Gorath and Locklear have Tsurani Heavy Crossbows. This means that now their bolts, if they're not just bog standard quarrels, will often do more damage than their sword swings for a while. The downside is that quarrels have an easier time missing and might in some cases be dangerous to allies if they miss. Still, how bad can it go?   Poking through the woods for the way out, the party runs into a few more scorpions. Four of them means that one actually goes for Owyn and he has to drink some steroids(Fadamor's Formula, the yellow potion in his inventory) to fight it off. It's a very useful consumable as it increases strength(and therefore damage) by 10 for the duration of the fight. It means that his anemic 6-damage staff pokes are now 16-damage staff bonks which actually help kill enemies faster for the duration.   Why are there so many Moredhel chests in the Dimwood?!  You think too much about the small details, Owyn, instead you should think about how we're dismantling the Moredhel supply chain. We're going to be famous! Heroes! BROOM More blessed armor and some flaming quarrels for Gorath.  SURF Gold and steroids.  PATH Contains an overworld spell, The Unseen which is... a bit odd. For instance, Eyes of Ishap is a spell which for the same cost as The Unseen spots all containers. Then you've got The Unseen, which only spots containers specifically containing food. I'm not sure why you'd ever cast this.  Also lying around the Dimwood is the occasional dead deer, usually killed by traps. The party, being idiots, will happily saunter over and pick the meat off an animal that's been lying dead in a trap for who knows how long, and something like 2/3rds of the time, predictably, these animals provide Spoiled or Poisoned rations.   A graveyard in the middle of the Dimwood? Well, there WAS that big battle here some years ago... That was down south, near Sethanon, this is clearly another moredhel plot. Perhaps they think we're too scrupulous to defile a few graves to find their hidden supplies, but they're about to learn how wrong they are! Owyn, hand me the shovel.BaK posted:Smoke seeped from the earth.  Shades are like spookier Rusalki, they function in much the same way except that they look like fart clouds and can still do their ranged 20-damage attack in melee rather than being neutered if you violate their personal space. They can actually be reasonably scary in groups, but just this one alone can't cause too much damage.   Squire! Promise me we're done digging up graves! I didn't know ghosts were real! Just a bit of bracing exercise, Owyn, now, where were we? Without moving backwards or forwards, I turn a few degrees to look at a moredhel wordlock chest. The astute reader might, however, notice that the background behind the graves has changed, this is because "event" battles, like shades and traps, are programmed to dump the player at a specific location and facing after the fight. This will shortly become very relevant.  HASTE  This chest is mostly noteworthy for having a blessed Tapir, which is a great find. In any case, I grab what I can and then instantly move again, except...  When I was facing the graves from the other side, there were enemies in the background. Getting teleported by the shade fight put me inside their aggression range, and since I didn't scout them, they automatically win initiative and...  This is not a good fight to lose initiative on.    The three hags initiate hostilities by blasting Gorath for 85 damage(all of his stamina gone instantly) and then hitting him with Grief of 1000 Nights which paralyzes him(same effect as the powder bags Owyn is hauling around, since enemies always seem to cast spells at max cost if able, Gorath is now paralyzed for 32 rounds. This sucks! Oh and Owyn can't summon up rusalki or anything since he's being dogpiled by two fighters.   If I'd been smart, I would've had Owyn use said powder on the two warriors, but I think of getting him clear to tackle a caster first and he eats poo poo for his trouble while Locklear manages to take down one Witch Hag. The one saving grace of the fight is that the hags have low health/stamina and their initial casting means they're a couple of whacks from death or retreating and can't cast much more as it is. The cube spell there is Hocho's Haven, i.e. that one hag has ablative HP to prevent Locklear from killing her quite as easily.  Gorath is somehow still alive, because being completely paralyzed in no way impacts his defensive stats and this idiot moredhel is having one hell of a time shoving a sword through his brain.  In the end it's down to one epic duel which... BaK posted:Locklear gasped. So, uh, let's try that again, shall we?  This time we reload, actually face the enemy and see if we can't get surprise on them.   Locklear still starts out the battle getting to be a lightning rod as one of the hags tags him with Skyfire, but Owyn spends every turn casting River Song and cluttering up the hags' vicinity with rusalki, distracting them from casting spells.  Owyn dusts the moredhel that tries to interrupt him, and Gorath and Locklear can freely go in and start swinging at the witches while they're busy running from the ghosts. It does a lot to make the whole fight easier.  We have to be more careful in the future, that could easily have gone badly for us. Pf, perhaps in some alternate timeline that didn't actually happen we got owned, but not in this one. We are still the undefeated champions of Dimwood.This clears out the immediate area and the party can now go do more moredhel crosswords.     BRIDGE  TROLLS I wonder if the misspellings here are intentional, like this is a goblin wordchest rather than a moredhel wordchest. In any case, it contains Gambit of the Eight which is a terrible spell that's also the most powerful spell in the game. It places a mine that does 10x the cost worth of damage, and loses one point of damage power every round(this making the damage done double as duration). It's terrible because it needs to be combined with a luckily placed enemy that you can move on to the mine with Invitation or Winds of Eortis, but it's powerful because no other damage-dealing spell in the game offers that much potential damage done(to a single target, anyway).  SNARE I don't get this one. Where do bones feature in a snare? As the bait? This one contains a nice, expensive emerald which is a decent haul.  MIRROR  Out of this cluster of chests, this one is ABSOLUTELY the big score. While it looks superficially like a suit of the starter Kingdom armor, that's actually a suit of Grey Tower Plate, which is three tiers above(sadly optimized for dwarves which are unavailable as PC's in the game) and it also has a level three bless. This goes on Owyn and will almost certainly be staying on him for a while, since he's now got a big enough suite of gamebreaking spells that he's almost set for the rest of the game, and thus no longer dead weight(I kid, Owyn's always very useful). Bit of a cruel plant for new players, mind you, since the only real difference, graphically, between basic Kingdom armor and Grey Tower armor is the horns on the helmet, so a new player might miss what a great score it is.  SPURS  Just for the armor reference, LOOK how similar that is!  GALLOWS This one contains a blessed two-handed broadsword, which is frankly a bit odd since so many other chests in the Dimwood contain better weapons.     I thought you'd never find the bridge, human. Feel free to step in with your superior pathfinding skills any time.At this point, Owyn pipes up and points out that it's weird there are so many Moredhel in the Dimwood... BaK posted:Owyn cleared his throat. He caugh't Gorath's attention, then stopped. Probably just videogame logic, though. Likely no deeper point to them being there. In any case, the party's now navigated most of the trip from the northern entrance to the western exit, which requires them to go almost all the way around the Dimwood clockwise, and the remainder is just a few traps, a few trivial fights and Locklear getting owned by a couple of scorpions in one battle.    WEARY    LAKE One of the chests in this cluster is just normally locked, rather than being passworded.  It contains a pack of enchanted quarrels, the best crossbow ammo in the game, and a Winds of Eortis scroll, which is the reverse of Invitation, shoving enemies away rather than pulling them close.  ADVICE The other chests just contain generic, useful but unexciting supplies like whetstones and rations. As I move away from the cluster, though, I pilot the party right into yet another magical trap.  My first move is to have Owyn "powder" the pirate right next to him. Gorath and Locklear can't hop over and help because that would require getting shot in the head by fireballs, so instead I have them bring out their new crossbows!  Gorath massively whiffs and plunks a flaming crossbow bolt right into Owyn's forehead like the champion warrior he is.  Thankfully the next couple of shots hit and Owyn is able to abscond from the fight with no more scars.    ORANGE  ASHES  BLADE I like it when some of these play with the basic formula, like the SQUARE chest, throwing you for a loop in a fun way.  BOOK  ICICLE  GRAVE  EYES   Gorath, how long have we been in these woods? Two weeks. And how long would it have taken us just to walk down the road from LaMut to Krondor? Three days. If Locklear leads us on another detour I'll... I'll... Complain about it and do nothing? ...yes.  FARRIER This one I feel is pretty rough because who the gently caress these days knows what a farrier is? This chest contains Grief of 1000 Nights, which replaces Despair Thy Eyes for most applications. You get more stunned turns for the price, it has the same (short) list of immune enemies and you can actually tell when and for how long an enemy is affected.  LOGS   Is that a road...? It's a road! Gods above, we're saved!  No poo poo.    This doesn't matter. None of this matters.Simple solutions here, solid crystal goes in the lightning trap to shatter it(so it gets out of the way), transparent crystal above trips a fireball to disable the zapper.  Then the second transparent crystal triggers the lower cannon, allowing Owyn to block the rightmost cannon with the remaining solid crystal.  And once that's done, we can get the gently caress out of the Dimwood... for now. [CONTINUED NEXT POST]
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Oct 1, 2021 00:10
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Update 09: Dim Adventurers in the Woods, Part 2  We pick the West option since we still have a last couple of local chapter 1-ish quests to clear up.  This map is just for reference to help show what a hilariously roundabout route the team has taken so far.  It's good to be back on a normal road again, now, we should- What? Go to Armengar? Elvander? Queg? The Kingdom of Roldem? ...I was going to say "take a stroll up to Loriel to investigate that stolen ruby."   So much for your theory that this route would throw my people off our tracks, squire. Obviously the moredhel are too primitive for my advanced stratagem, so, new plan: we murder every moredhel south of the Teeth of the World. Finally something that makes a bit of sense.    I almost feel bad for this guy. He's either the bravest or the dumbest moredhel in existence. I've been feeling that way about a lot of the ones we've been killing. Delekhan hasn't been sending his best. He gets to be embarrassingly smacked into the dirt by Owyn's staff.   BaK posted:A piece of paper dangled from the doorknob. And here I was wondering how this detour could get any worse. Do we still have some healing herbs? Thankfully Orno only gives us a "light" plague of 21%, which I counter by dropping healing herbs on everyone. Without it, the Plague % would slowly rise, with it, it drops instead and I tell the party to take a quick nap.  It should be obvious that we could just sleep this off, but since we're headed to Loriel anyway... let's see what Michele has for us.     Loriel is one of those towns that's only relevant in one chapter, in this case chapter 1. It never gets any refreshed content and the only reason to visit would be to hit up the inn for more bard bucks when they refresh, and the two points of interest are Michele and Kiefer. BaK posted:A thin little man greeted them at the door. That was remarkably suspicious. We should drag him outside and interrogate him. Impossible, an upstanding citizen of the Kingdom would never lie to me, a squire. Let's head off to Hawk's Hollow... once we get our plague sores cured, that is.BaK posted:The house's occupant was talkative. Whoops, wrong house. Not a lot of them around here, though, we probably won't get the wrong one twice in a row.BaK posted:Michele escorted them inside. Despite the town's residents making every effort to make Michele sound suspicious, and her own behavior not helping much, Michele is actually entirely on the up and up. She'll cure the Plague condition, and only that, but she'll do it far cheaper than any temple and for all party members in one go. Thankfully I think the game has only like, two other places you can get yourself plagued, so we won't have much need for revisiting her. If we didn't want to trust her, though, we could head out the back of town and visit the Temple of Ishap isolated in the woody nook behind it...    We've already seen what the other services temples offer are, so let's take a look at the local head priest's dialogue. BaK posted:Acolytes escorted them. I genuinely am sad that the religions of Midkemia don't feature more in the stories, because what little snippets we get genuinely make it sound like there's something interesting there at times. Anyway, time to head south to Hawk's Hollow! Little of interest happens during the trip except for a few moredhel suicide pacts deciding to end their lives on the team's swords.     Hey! Be careful, I almost tripped over that guy! I'll try to be more noisy about it the next time I dispatch an assassin sent for us. Perhaps you'd like a notarized letter? Or a warbling battle cry? I just don't want to put my foot in his everything is all.BaK posted:Locklear smiled.  Scoundrel, I would have thought you strung up for impersonating a Duke by now! How are you, Isaac?! It's been since Arutha' s wedding, hasn't it? The very day. You should have heard the fit Master of Ceremonies deLacy threw when he found out I wasn't the Count of Dorgin's son. I daresay he would have tossed me over the palace walls himself if he hadn't been busy with the details of the blessed event. I've kept busy since then, spent the last few years on the road doing odd jobs along the border. You'd be surprised at all the things I've learned and seen since I've left Krondor. Surprise me then. You alway were a rumormonger. Well...what would you like to know about?[SAFE PASSAGE] I've just returned from a military assignment and it's imperative that I get south as soon and as inconspicuously as possible. Are there any places you think we should avoid? At all costs, you'll want to avoid the road from Eggley to Tanneurs. There is a festival to be held in Eggley and it's likely your elven companion would be spotted right away. What makes you think we're off to Krondor? Elves don't come much out of Elvandar and they are even less likely to travel in the company of a boy and seigneur when they do take to voyaging. Whatever you three are about, I assumed it must involve the good of the Kingdom. Krondor would be the only logical place for you to go.[MIND READERS] These roads seem littered with those anxious to anticipate our movements. Do you know of anyone in this area that seems to have unusual skills? Some one who seems like they know your thoughts? No... For a fact I can't say that I have, but a certain pokiir player that I lost a great deal of money to in Eggley comes to mind. Name of Devon, I believe. It took me quite a while to make up the funds I lost during a single night playing against him. He very nearly took every sovereign I'd made in a month's time.[STOLEN GEMS] Did you by any chance purchase a ruby from Keifer Alescook in Loriel? He told us he sold it to someone named Isaac and the description he gave us sounded like you. Why? You want to buy it from me? It's not like it's the only ruby in the world you know... The ruby he sold you was stolen from a Tsurani magician who was passing through LaMut. The Garrison would like the stone back. We were hoping we could talk you into at least returning it to Keifer to get your money back. I'm sorry to hear about your dilemma, but I had no idea the stone was stolen when I paid Keifer's price and I have my own little problem. I need the stone so I can pay off a sword crafter and get my blade repaired. Can't you pay him with gold? He specifically barters in gems and the ruby will cover my costs plus a little more. I should have enough left over to eat for a month or more. What if we can repair your sword for you? What, here? In the middle of the road? Since I don't have a workshop, I don't see that we can do it anywhere else. Well...I suppose. My blade is fairly expensive and I'd hate to see it further damaged. It's conceivable you could do more harm than good, so unless you're really skilled at weaponcraft...well... Do you really think you're that good? Good enough. Your blade? Please be careful, I paid quite a bit for it.[CLANGING ENSUES] Well, I have to say this, you appear to know what you're doing. It looks much better than it did. And it will hold the edge?: You could cut up the whole of Delekhan's moss-rangers and it'd still be sharp for a month after. Well...it looks as if you've come through on your end of the bargain. Remind me to give you the ruby before you leave.This entire detour is canon(though it has some additional parts in the book that we haven't seen yet...) and, surprisingly, Isaac gives us no static, coughing up a 1% quality ruby. There's a competency cutoff for being able to fix his sword(45% weaponcrafting on any member of the party), and trying while below that will screw up the quest as Isaac insists on keeping the ruby to get his now completely hosed sword repaired. I presume it's intentionally a 1% ruby so the player doesn't gently caress up and accidentally sell it because it's worth money before they get to LaMut. Speaking of screwing things up, wasn't there something else we needed to do down here by Hawk's Hollow? I'm only reminding you of it so Locklear doesn't haul is back here when we're almost at the gates of Krondor, but we were looking for a chest. Oh, yes, that scribe wanted us to take a poke at a chest down here for entirely unsuspicious reasons. We'll go through Hawk's Hollow and poke around for it.  Hawk's Hollow is a small town with few points of interest, but one of them is very interesting though, in all honesty, from a min-maxing standpoint, I shouldn't be making use of it until chapter 2(the reason why being a spoiler, so ask me again when we reach chapter 2). BaK posted:A man invited them inside. Lucan provides a 5%(without training) boost to everyone's lockpicking skills. Once again, extremely invaluable, especially in the early game, since some "will mangle the entire party" trapped chests have a 90% skill requirement to not blow up everyone's faces. There's one other interesting house in Hawk's Hollow... BaK posted:The door opened a fraction of an inch. As far as I'm aware, this is never explained or tied into anything else, but it does help with the feeling that about half the Kingdom of the Isles is suffering from some form of psychosis. There are a lot of weirdos around. I'll say, sometimes it feels like we're the only normal people in the Kingdom. Um, who're you talking to, squire? Never you mind, let's go find that chest.  The chest is actually a bit challenging to find without a guide, as the scribe up near Yabon only says it's "west of Hawk's Hollow" and that describes a pretty decent section of the map. Still, the gang eventually stumble upon it behind a hill, guarded by a trio of rogues.   It turns out that while they may be dab hands with swords, they're not competent ghost busters and, once again, River Song saves the day.  Something seems suspicious about this errand. Pipe down, Gorath, I've almost got this l- ... Do you, uh, want a hand getting the half-molten remains of the lock out of your forehead? Please.All the chest contains is an emerald, which is still nice. Also thankfully the trap is less murderous than the one in the Mac Mordain Cadal, only handing out 25 damage which the party could've weathered right out of the gate. Easy for you to say, I've got splinters. Splinters. Luckily I remember there's a temple west of Hawk's Hollow...   BaK posted:They were shown to a chamber. I will never understand the relationship you humans have with your gods. What do you mean? Every temple we've visited, the squire simply barges in, demands to talk to the person in charge, and then bores them until they tell us to go away. I'm not sure how else you expect to get anything out of the gods. How do you moredhel deal with yours? We break into their abandoned basements and steal their stuff. Perhaps we can learn something from the moredhel after all...  And with that, we're mostly done with the detour. We're back to the north/south road from LaMut to Krondor. Now we just gotta get back to LaMut, hand in the ruby, then head up to Yabon to tell the scribe that we're not very happy about the medical bills he got us. On the way is a minor town, Zun, known only for regular duels between the hard-drinking witches of the area. In the game, it's even less of a place than Loriel, but it does have a reason to stop by...   Namely, two of the houses have some unique dialogues if you harass the residents. House 1: BaK posted:Locklear knocked on the door of the small wooden house, then waited patiently for someone to answer. After several seconds, a woman appeared and ushered them inside."I don't have time to talk unless it's really important, sirs. I have to finish preparing some mushrooms that I picked for the shopkeeper over at Keges. He nearly ran out of healing restoratives yesterday and you know what they say, 'You can kill me but you can't eat me'." House 2: BaK posted:The door swung open. And if you're wondering? Yes. That does actually do damage to Locklear. It's not just descriptive text. Next time, someone else gets to open the door.Anyway, let's skip northwards, no reason to chronicle the trip. First LaMut...  BaK posted:The Garrison was impressive. Selling looted stuff from Dimwood has kind of put the party ahead of the curve, I don't think I've ever had this rich a party before at this stage of the game(and I left behind so many suits of armor, weapons and consumables that I couldn't carry...), but if it's your first time playing and you're playing the game "straight," then beelining for Hawk's Hollow to get the gem isn't a bad idea! Now, for the scribe up by Yabon...  BaK posted:Locklear angrily shoved open the door to Jeremy's house. Interestingly, if you never met the scribe, but already found the chest, the dialogue is quite a bit different: BaK posted:"I really should have that cleaned, I suppose." Locklear jerked upright at the sound of the gruff voice. Padding from around the corner of the house, a balding man stopped next to Owyn and held up a palm stained with black ink. "A scribe tends to make quite a mess. Occupational hazard." Either way you get your reward. In general the game is good about allowing for these little twists, or preventing them from happening in the first place by only unlocking later "steps" in a quest after you've done the first one(s). A lot of dialogue also changes per chapter, for instance, the Kenting Rush/Cavall Keep area actually has quite a bit of dialogue exclusive to Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, which most players would probably never see(I'll show it off any "missed" dialogue from earlier chapters where we didn't visit an area, when we do get there. There's no "gameplay content" to miss in the area, after all.). The book he hands the party has a description that implies it's worthless, and a use text description that sounds much the same... BaK posted:Many times [Gorath] flipped back the cover of the book to reaffirm that the title had in some way been connected to the migration of birds. While the author had begun a discussion on winged wildlife, he had quickly meandered into a discussion of the famed battles of Midkemia, continued on to a reiteration of various battle songs, diverted to a rant about the prices of ale in the Kingdom's taverns, tangentially lamented about the plight of magicians and then ended on a humorous anecdote about his mother-in-law having consumed a vial of Fadamor's Formula to outslug a Tsurani warrior in a bar brawl. But in reality, what it does is provide a guaranteed +5% bonus to all skills on first use, with an 8% chance of actually functioning on subsequent uses. Since it has 100 uses, you would probably squeeze another few successes out of it if you spent them all, but each reading also consumes 15 in-game hours(and with it, rations). Reading through the entire set of "charges" would consume 62.5 in-game days and thus quite a lot of rations as well. Not that it would necessarily be a bad idea to do, even so, after all, sufficient resting actually increases the characters' health and stamina(or, possibly, simply passed time, based on some FAQs). Enough theory, however, it's time to cap off this update by getting back on the road!  Ahhh, south of Zun at last! I can practically smell the sea from here! It'll be refreshing to visit some warmer climes. I've had just about enough of mountains and winter weather. I thought you moredhel would be used to it, living up in the Northlands. Being used to it doesn't mean we're happy about it. Hmmm... but is this the right way?VOTE Run straight south to Krondor? OR Detour through Questor's View, Eggley and Tanneurs? Taking this trip will add an extra wrinkle to the Isaac/Stolen Gems subplot.
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Oct 1, 2021 00:10
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Guildenstern Mother posted:I don't think there's anything in the Egg/Tan section that is chap1 exclusive, is there? If there is we should for sure do that. It's not exclusive, but the Isaac-related content there will be less interesting after chapter 1, in my opinion. Plus, as part of this Extremely Canon Playthrough, what the party discovers there is canon for them to discover(though they actually learn it in when meeting Isaac in the book).
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Oct 1, 2021 09:40
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Update 10: Words, Words, Words Part 1 Southwards it is!  As soon as we move south of Zun, though, we get a pop-up as a result of the party having sufficient Scouting skill. Gorath alerts us to a small bird suddenly flying out of the brush, as though startled...  Which is actually kind of a problem for us, it means we've reached a dangerous threshold, because as soon as we take another step forwards...  We start gaining skills. gently caress. To explain, this means our skills have gotten over the threshold where we can spot some "ambush" attacks and also move past them without actually getting attacked, which gains us XP towards becoming even better at said ability, and there's no way to opt out of being sneaky, to pick all the fights we can. We're now utterly locked out of certain fights(all of them generic, though, nothing containing any plot), which is on the one hand useful: less getting stabbed. But on the other hand trouble: less getting to train for stabbing enemies and less chance to pry valuable stuff and packed lunches off their corpses.  Strange... I was sure someone was lurking in ambush. So much for your vaunted "elven senses."   The Bitter Sea... I haven't been here since I was a child, before humans settled the area. Wait, just how old are you? About two hundred years. Well, it looks like you're not the only one camping around here. And if they're moredhel, that means they'll also have left out chests!  DAY NIGHT With us having jumped a bit off the intended track in terms of progression, most chests down the coast road have nothing that interests us except for spare change, occasional food and some gems. This one, though, contains a Flamecast scroll which would be our first new spell for Owyn if we'd headed straight south. As it is, we still keep it in our packs since spell scrolls tend to sell for really nice prices, more than a full suit of armor or high-quality sword, despite only taking up one space in a character's backpack.    Most of the encounters are pretty mild, too, just moredhel warriors and the occasional quegan in packs of two or three.   This area also has a lot of the little blue-ish sidepaths which lead nowhere, not to chests, not to enemies, not to homes. I think this is about the only one between Zun and Questor's View that actually leads to something, in this case.. BaK posted:The man who greeted them at the door smelled of fish. "Folks call me Chanty," he said after Owyn introduced himself.    Of course, we can't just have a nice walk without getting ambushed by someone. Please stand still and wait for my friends to come cave your skulls in. These particular moredhel are a marker for the party to turn off the road and run into the woods where they've hidden some chests...  And a trap.  This one I don't quite get. There seems to be no solution other than having someone tank a fireball and then running to the end line. Thankfully, however, Owyn has Black Nimbus by this point.  And with the zappy poles disabled, Locklear can go under the fireball cannon and up behind it.   RING  SMOKE  EYES Hey, didn't we already have a chest with EYES as the answer? You try coming up with hundreds of riddles without some repeating answers, boy. Why even have the riddle? Why not just lock the chest? When you're 200 years old, you'll understand. What Gorath means is he doesn't have a good answer but doesn't want to admit a human one-upped his race.All three chests just contain minor valuables, the sort of thing that's irrelevant to us at this point but would be necessary for affording supplies to a party going straight down the road.    It's no surprise that the party makes it to Questor's View unscathed, and Questor's View actually has some useful things going on! Chatty NPC's, a working inn and a trainer!  BaK posted:"Come in! Come in!" chimed a courteous young woman in a brightly colored apron. She held the cottage door open. Kneeling in front of a stone fireplace a young man was placing several small logs into a crackling fire. The man looked up with a smile. "Yes, please! We just finished eating, but I had some luck fishing today so there's plenty to go around." True to their word, these nice people will literally just hand us free rations.  Here Owyn bards up some more spare change and we get one of the rare "sleep" dialogues upon taking a day's rest to cap up the hit points that we can't recover from resting in the wild. BaK posted:The guestbook was open. It's an odd note since none of the party ever make an effort at disguising their names(either in the game or in the novelization), except to occasionally rename Gorath to "Thorgath." Perhaps it was originally meant to be a bigger deal that they were travelling in secret. In any case, there are two more houses to check out... BaK posted:There were stirrings inside the house. And here I thought I'd never be impressed with human warrior spirit. Pretty bloodthirsty, I'll give them that. I guess that's what you get here in the wild West of the Kingdom.Then, of course, we're going next door to Tad's house. BaK posted:Locklear knocked loudly. Presently a finely dressed man greeted them, as he spoke he wiped sweat from his brow with a silk handkerchief, "Fine day, don't you think? I'm Tad Questor. Have you come for a lesson?" His eyebrows raised in a hopeful arch. "Lesson?" inquired Locklear. The man disappeared into his house and returned with a blunt tipped fencing foil. "Have you come to learn the finer arts of swordsmanship?" he asked, punctuating his question with several impressive maneuvers. "I could give you all a quick lesson for only 75 sovereigns. How does that sound?" Tad is another +5% melee skill, but if you pick up some training from both him and Sumani, you'll get pushed well ahead of the skill curve. It's enough, in fact, that Locklear might well hit 100% Accuracy: Melee before the game is over, which would be great.   Hmmm... Squire? I'm just wondering... between Isaac's comments about mind readers and that nightmaster taking an interest in our names. Maybe we haven't thrown the Moredhel off our tracks yet. Humans? Have you noticed the warriors up ahead? Don't tell me you're planning to take us off on another wild goose chase. Just because you can't see the brilliance of my plans doesn't mean it isn't there. Die, dogs of Delekhan! I suppose they have made sure we're not short of travelling funds. See? That settles it, we're taking the route to Eggley and Tanneurs for now. Say, where's Gorath? He'd usually have some salty interjection by now. Did you two not hear a thing? I was busy convincing Owyn that we need to turn north at this intersection. You're outvoted two to one, so don't even argue.    The roads in the triangle formed by Questor's View, Hawk's Hollow and Eggley are an absolute mess of minor paths and, in at least two cases, pointless roundabouts that exist purely to disorientate the inattentive traveller.    I take a brief detour because A) I want to collect some more temple dialogue + another teleport option and B) I know there's something of interest up here.  These "Quegans" are pretty far in-land. I must agree with Owyn, don't "pirates" usually ply their trade at sea? Pirates or cosplaying bandits, they're trouble either way, let's tell them to shove off. These guys get a special bit of ambush dialogue, but, considering that they're just three Quegans without mage support or exceptional gear, they die as easily as anyone else.   BaK posted:A priestess escorted them.  Once again, we've accidentally helped someone out.     BaK posted:The door swung open. Just for killing three Quegans, we get 60 Sovereigns, which is almost more gold than we'd be likely to earn during the entire trip from to LaMut to Krondor if we just shot the most direct possible. Clearly, good works are their own reward. Now, to head down to Eggley...  We get five steps away from Franklin's house before the party stumbles straight into an ambush.  If you lose initiative against enemy mages, you can expect to have one or more party members knocked out on round one, either via health loss or high-cost Grief casts(or a few other nasty spells we don't see as much of). Despair Thy Eyes is a rare showing, but actually a relief when it does, since it only lasts two rounds.  It's a fight that, honestly, could easily go badly if you don't have River Song to even the numbers and harass the mage or Grief to lock him down with. And even if you just Griefed him, Owyn and Locklear would still be facing 3:2 odds from the warriors who'll prevent Owyn from getting off more than one or two spells unless their AI decides to do something wonky.  As it is, one of them "luckily" gets stuck on trying to carve Gorath down, but I manage to conclude the battle before he gets it done, and the mage doesn't get a chance to hit Owyn or Locklear with any more spells. This fight is, in my opinion, not one you're gonna win without surprise if you get here as early as possible(i.e. straight down the coast then shoot through Questor's View right away).  The boys pull through, though, and make it a whole five more steps down the road before they stumble into an ambush of flavour text. BaK posted:Locklear disappeared. Huh, just looping around the same area again and again? Sure those aren't our tracks?   ...this town feels a bit empty. Strange, it's supposed to be a minor, but active, farming town... And didn't Isaac say they were organizing a festival? That usually draws more people, not less.All the buildings in Eggley are empty, and the store is locked(much too well for us to open for a while yet), in fact the only one we can interact with meaningfully is the tavern.  Bartender, a mug of your strongest exposition!BaK posted:Locklear motioned to the figure across the room.  I do believe this is the loneliest tavern I've ever visited. Where is everyone? Everyone is elsewhere. With the exception of Rake, myself and a handful of boarders that have wandered in from off the road, there's not been another soul in town since the Festival. Everyone? Why? What happened here? Come the eighth hour of last evening, a cloaked gentlemen entered through that same door there and took a seat. He ordered a joint of beef, a loaf of bread and a mug of ale. I remembered these things because I had ordered the same. Soon as he had finished his meal he went to the tavernkeeper and tossed down fifty golden sovereigns, turned round and was gone by the door. Before the first of those coins stopped their spinning on the counter, the rest of the people in the tavern rushed out after him. The keeper didn't even latch the door... Some sort of deal? Nope. Some sort of drat local ritual. It seems I arrived in the middle of a ceremony that was called the Festival of the Stranger. Traditionally the elders of the town would gather in the tavern and draw lots and the one with the longest lot was dubbed The Stranger. On the first night of the festival, The Stranger comes around and offers the members of the town fake sovereigns - they called them nimptos - and then the citizens of the town leave to sleep in the fields. Of course, I wasn't aware of what was going on. And they're supposed to stay in the fields? Ah, no, no, no. The next morning, the elected Stranger is to circle the village three times while swinging a strand of hemp over his head. When he is done, he cuts the length of rope and sets it on the road to let the people know that they can come back. They then know that Killian is looking with good fortune on their township and that she won't strike their fields dead. If the strand is not placed, however, it means that she is displeased and any citizen that attempts to return to town will be struck dead. Was the Stranger killed by Killian? No, not Killian, but by a man named the Collector to whom he owed money who didn't know about the town's tradition. It didn't matter to the citizens of Eggley, though. They still chose to see it as a sign from Killian and they haven't returned since, think the place is cursed and won't return until the curse is lifted. They've relocated in Tanneurs, Hawk's Hollow, and a few in Malac's Cross. They all believe they've done the right thing and have given me permission to do whatever I wanted here. Out of respect for them, I've decided to keep the old town name of Eggley. I don't know. It seems people would have to be pretty thick to believe all of that. Would they? Would you have the nerve to spit on a shrine of Ishap? No...but...I guess I can see your point. Everyone has their beliefs. Many people in these villages at one time were farmers, and it is difficult for them to simply turn their backs on the goddess of nature. They require her blessing before they can go on to new lives. You should remember that before you judge something to be ignorant. So - as my new job as bartender of this tavern, I suppose it's my duty to see if you need anything? Can I set you up?With the initial greetings sorted, Devon has a number of keywords, though some of them are only available because we talked to Isaac earlier, it should be relatively obvious which ones those are. [FESTIVAL] Which god did you say this Festival of the Stranger was in celebration of? The fertility goddess - Bringer of Harvests, The Earth Mother, Silban. Pick a name. All mean the same thing. She's the wench to whom ma and pa ugly pray to have little runt ugly and enough wheat to eat through the winter. Can't say I have much use for her. Is there a temple of hers nearby, or... Straight west of Eggley, then north at the crossroads. Big white building with the columns, smells like a whore's bedchamber. Hard to miss.[MOREDHEL] Someone we ran into up the road told us they had seen a moredhel near here. I don't suppose you've seen him have you? Him? I've seen enough moredhel to start a barrel ball city league. Whole clump of them came by here a few weeks ago heading south in packs of twos and threes down the road towards Tanneurs. Were they armed? Like the war god Tith's own legions. Looked like they might be out to sign up as caravan guards, but who would hire them? Did you get a look at any of them? None of them came close enough to the Stranger that I could get a good look at them. Now that I think of it, it's kind of peculiar. On the off occasions when moredhel will crash through a town, they'll usually kick up some kind of ruckus with the locals to prove who's the toughest kid on the block. These just marched through town like they were in a parade review, like they were expecting someone to watch them come through.This whole conversation is weird and lore-violating. Canonically Moredhel are never seen south of the Teeth of the World except as raiders overrunning a human border town for loot and perhaps slaves/prisoners. They have no trading relationship with humans except weapon runners and smugglers, they barely even recognize humans as fellow sapients, filing them alongside goblins and trolls as some sort of noisy wild animal instead. I mean, this is honestly way more interesting than Feist's usual handling of non-humans, who tend to have very un-nuanced, mono-culture existences where everyone is either good or evil. Only the Kingdom, Tsurani and Keshians really get to have any depth, internal cultures or internal politics in the main-line books. [BUILDINGS] With a whole town to yourself, I'm surprised you haven't opened up any of the other shops or houses. I'm leaving them be until I know what's eventually going to happen here. Never know when some folk is going to show up and want his property back. I don't want to be the idiot holding the bag. If most of the folks were smart, they probably locked their houses and I'm not much of a lockpick. Know anyone who is? Strange character named Abuk. I ran across him when I was working for the Dauphiness Cassandra of Queg. We discovered him once when we boarded a Keshian vessel. After he helped open a few choice chests of mercantile, we chained him up in the belly of the ship so we could make a present of him to Cassandra. But when we docked in Palanque, all we found in the hold of the ship was a note saying he could be found in Silden if ever we needed his services. I've never hired anyone else for a lockpicking job since.[POKIIR] Now I think of it, a man we know told us he lost at pokiir to a Devon here in Eggley. Would you be he? Depends on why you're asking, now doesn't it? If you're interested in playing a hand or two, then I might say I'm the same man. If, however, your friend decided to send round a few bravos to collect what I rightfully won from him... What's yours is yours as far as I'm concerned. I was just wondering how good a player you were. Isaac said that you had an unusual talent for it. Isaac? Isaac said I had an unusual talent for it? Now if that's not the pot calling the kettle black, I've never heard it at all. While we we're playing, it was as if that scuff knew every thought I had in my head. Every time he would fold he'd just look over at his elven friends with a big smile. Elven friends? Like Thorgath here? They could have been brothers by the look of them. Yeah, he looked kinda like your friend, but he drat sure wasn't an elf. He was wearing the clothes of one of Delekhan's moss-troopers. Moredhel. No doubt about it.Once again, why in the gently caress would a moredhel that everyone recognizes as dressed like one, just be hanging around in a Kingdom town? This is handled somewhat better in the novel where, even though the party never reaches Eggley, the guards around Hawk's Hollow clearly have no idea what Moredhel look like, being so southernly, stating clearly that Gorath can't be one because he lacks the glowing red eyes and giant vampiric fangs they usually have. At this point, we can now gamble with Devon, however there's a hidden bit of dialogue here which is only triggered if we start the gambling dialogue, then back out without actually gambling. [A GAME] I'm more familiar with pashawa, but I've played pokiir a few times with men from the Shamata garrison. You play by special rules? Straight game. Mercy's rules, full deck, nothing wild. Only special rule I have is you cheat, I ventilate your liver. Simple as that. Interested in playing?[NO] Not today. It's nothing personal you understand, I just don't feel Banath's with me at the moment. I've had runs of luck like that. Once I was riding high while I was working for the Dauphiness of Palanque, won fifteen straight games of lin-lan in a tavern against this miserable old seadog, but he refused to give up. Middle of the sixteenth game, he pulls out a diamond half the size of my fist and says he wants to bet it. I tell him I don't have enough money to match a bet like that, but he suggests I put up the purse I'm carrying for the Dauphiness. How did he find out about it? Let's say the liquor told him... So, I put up the purse. He pulls out a Blue Lady, a Red Knight, two Yellow Squires and a King's Jester. Lost the whole lot to him. The Dauphiness was less than pleased. I had to work for that witch as a bodyguard for two years to pay off what I lost in that purse.This opens up the SELF-DEFENSE keyword... SELF DEFENSE (if Isaac) If you were a Dauphiness' bodyguard, you must be a superb swordsman. Perhaps you could teach us a thing or two? I have my tricks. You don't stay alive as long as I do without picking something up here and there. I might be able to give you a few pointers if you're willing to pay. Eighty sovereigns a session. Interested?[YES] BaK posted:Devon waved towards the door. Seizing a pitted Salamanca from under the bar's counter, he followed them into the open yard before The Stranger Tavern, then passed them up to lead the way across a grassy field. Slowly the ground inclined, giving way to a rocky hillface and a tumble of ancient, mold-eaten gravestones. This provides an incredibly huge boost to Defense for everyone, +10! 15 if it's the only skill tagged for everyone. Completely crazy and increases the party's survivability by a lot. Now we can finally say goodbye to Devon and get back on the road. Thank you for your hospitality, Devon. It was a pleasant respite from travelling the roads. Remember that next time you talk to someone about Eggley. Time to start some new rumors. That we will. Goodbye, Devon. That was a hell of a lot of dialogue but... there's more to come. Obviously at this point we're gonna hoof it back to the Temple of Silban to ask what the hell's up with the Festival before heading back down here, if we do... BaK posted:A messenger went to find the high priestess.    Why are we wasting our time with these fool farmers and their superstitions when we should be heading to Krondor? Well, firstly, because there's probably a reward. Secondly, because any chaos in the area will be to Delekhan's benefit if it comes to war. Lastly, because now you've made it a point of pride that we'll be doing it to spite you.[Continued in another post since, despite being only 1 hour of gameplay, this was already up to 80000 characters by the end]
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Oct 6, 2021 13:46
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Update 11: Words, Words, Words Part 2 Just outside of Tanneurs, there's yet another trap. It almost feels like the area has more of them than standard combat encounters.  The perspective here hides the pillar behind the solid crystal, but the solution is simple once you figure it out. Circle around the triangle of death, nudge the transparent crystal upwards to blast the top pillar, then shuffle the solid crystal in the path of one of the two cannons so you can walk between the crystal and the pillar to escape unscathed.   Tanneurs doesn't have a lot of interesting text, but it does have an abandoned house containing a nice prize.   The Horn of Algon-Kokoon summons a big angry war dog on to the battlefield and, being a melee attacker, it's excellent for pissing off enemy mages as, unlike Rusalki, it'll keep chasing them around. It's a decent backup item for those times when some dickhead moredhel runs up to Owyn on round one and prevents him from focusing on his nerdy wizardry.   Now, the Collector is supposed to be here, but being the sneaky prick that he is, he isn't any of the characters on the main screen. Instead, to meet him, we have to talk to the local gambler(who's in no mood for gambling while the Collector is around) and then rent a room for the night. BaK posted:They joined a shifty-eyed man. This is enough to satisfy the priests of Silban, but this tavern has a very, VERY important bug, present in all chapters. Now that we can gamble, do so. Lowest bet, do it until you lose. Then bard. Now gamble again, until we lose. Then bard again. For some reason, every time you lose to the gambler, your flag for having barded or not in this inn, in a given chapter, is reset. It's probably the lowest-effort way to earn infinite money, as long as you have the barding skill to satisfy the minimum barding requirements for the inn(helpfully, the otherwise-lousy Tanneurs store actually sells a practice lute). I do it a few times just to confirm that it works, but I don't use it any more than that. The game generally provides you with enough money to progress without too much pain.   We've got two reasons for heading back north now. Firstly, the reward from the Temple, and secondly because we now know that Isaac knows more about the local Moredhel than he's been letting on.  BaK posted:A messenger went to find the high priestess. That's... more metal than probably most of us expected. I definitely did not expect that to happen. The reward is nice, though, several full stacks of green potions and some herbal pouches. Are all your human sects so... vengeful? Kahooli's faithful, probably. I never even knew it was possible to piss off the temple of Silban. Remind me never to do it myself.With our rightful reward collected and dickheads punished, we head back up to Hawk's Hollow to deal with another dickhead...    Alright, when you spot Isaac, fan out. Despite that limp of his, he can move at a fair clip if he senses danger. I could probably hit him with a crossbow bolt the moment we see him, then he won't be running anywhere. Tempting, but for old times' sake I should probably give him a chance to explain himself. Now that we've visited Devon and talked to him, we have a number of new topics to grill Isaac about... [HIS SPYING] We met your pokiir playing friend in Eggley and he told us a bit about the match he played with you. He told us about the elven friends that came along with you, but as you pointed out before, elves rarely come out of Elvandar and would be very unlikely to be travelling from town to town playing pokiir. Talk, Isaac. Why are you working with the moredhel, Isaac? What are they doing in the Kingdom? I don't seem to be the only one keeping company with them, seigneur... I'm not in a mood to be trifled with, Isaac. Talk! Seeing as how they've seen fit to dismiss me, I can't see it will hurt matters. They're operating out of a barn near Yellow Mule. I found an old farmer there who wasn't particular about who rented his land and harbored loyalty to neither his lord nor to the Prince. A moredhel named Nago moved in there and has been using it as a base of operations to hire Quegian mercenaries. Makes sense. Mercenaries would be able to move in the Kingdom without being noticed. What are they planning? I made it a policy not to know. Knowledge has a tendency to shorten your life, especially when you're working with lunatics. Think what you like, but this was purely a business transaction. They paid me and I made the pick-ups and drop-offs to the moredhel lockchests. That was all I did for them.[NAGO] You said this Nago fellow was using a barn as a base of operations. What could we expect if we run across him? Trouble. He's a magician, well armed, and was carrying enough gold in sovereigns to hire several dozen Quegian Mercenaries for months. Rowe nearly fainted when Nago handed over a pouch with four hundred golden sovereigns. Rowe? The old man who owns the barn. If Nago is half as ruthless as I suspect, he may have hired the old fellow to work for him, but I couldn't be certain.[LAST ORDERS] What were your last orders before Nago released you? I released myself. I had the feeling I was coming to the end of my usefulness to the moredhel and I made my plans accordingly. When they asked me to pick up a ruby from Keifer Alescook and deliver it to a specific moredhel lockchest, I realized they were planning to take care of two problems at the same time. The moredhel courier would an assassin. They had planned to kill me and, at the same time, erase any evidence to whom the ruby had been delivered.[GOODBYE] It's time we were going. I would tell you to take care of yourself Isaac, but you were always quite good at doing that... You never allow your grudges to die, do you? Grudges have nothing to do with this. I simply know to trust my bump of trouble when someone is trying to fool me. Goodbye, Isaac. I have a suspicion we may meet again.There's also a dialogue I couldn't get to trigger, and which the Krondor archive site says may be bugged wherein Locklear interrogates Isaac about the local moredhel lockchests, wringing five passwords out of him so that if you get stuck on some of the local chests, you can try those and see if any of them work. We can now also compare the game to the book a bit. In the book, the party skips from LaMut to Loriel to Hawk's Hollow(getting badly injured on the way, they're basically all dead on their feet and only saved by a passing priest in Hawk's Hollow), where they confront Isaac about working with the Moredhel. Book Locklear is a lot less forgiving, though, and orders Isaac to leave behind a note to the Moredhel to give them false information, which Isaac complains will mark him for death. Locklear proceeds to not give a gently caress and tells Isaac that if they don't get his full cooperation, he'll make sure the authorities are after him to see him hung as a traitor. Afterwards, they head south and use a non-game path across the mountains to reach Nago's hideout, arriving just before frostbite sets in(in the book, the start of the story is practically in the dead of winter). There's a good bit more characterization for Gorath in the book, too, as he allows the others to be healed by the priest before him(despite being at least as badly, if not worse, hurt) and is the one who knows of the hidden path across the mountains from his time near the Bitter Sea as a boy. He clearly considers himself responsible for the two younger humans despite not wanting to care about them. It also sees the beginning of Gorath learning things about humans that he considers to not be entirely awful, like Locklear's sense of honour about letting Isaac go because he's an old friend. Since we can't use that path, though, we have to head back to Questor's View and continue down the coastal road...   I don't understand why you let him go, it would have been easy to kill him ourselves or hand him over to the guards. That's not how we do things, Gorath. I've seen enough humans to know that's not true. Fine, then it's not how I do things. Probably only because Isaac wasn't carrying any valuables. Heh. Someone's on the road up ahead. Not more Quegans, is it?  Tempest? Surely you have heard. The learned monks of Sarth have predicted a terrible storm is coming this way and I would hate to think of anyone caught out in it. Why a man could catch his death of the fevers. If you would like, you may ride it out in my barn. And what profit would you turn in this enterprise? Five golden sovereigns, a reasonable sum, and the guard over my cows. You can sleep in the hay loft of my barn but my wife and I don't take in elves. Seven gold pieces, the elf stays with us and we each get a hard roll for breakfast. Ten gold and the lot of you milk cows the next morning. That's the offer. Take it or leave it. A moment while I talk this over with my friends. This is the guy! The one Isaac told us about, it's clearly an ambush! I can take him out in one swing, it'll be painless... for us. Tempting, but no. If he doesn't report back, Nago will know something's up, we have to play along for now.[YES] Deal. Where is this barn of yours? Keep heading south - you should pass the Abbaye of Ishap at Sarth. You'll know you're right close to it when you've passed up the Temple of Sung. From there it's just around Yellow Mule mountain. When you find the barn, just go knock on the door and my wife will fix you up. Thank you, farmer. Your hospitality will be remembered.In the book, the party never meets Rowe, but here it's notable for how meeting Rowe doesn't trigger any response in-game, despite the game otherwise being pretty well-written with regards to staying aware of the party having taken actions or gained knowledge that would make the conversation they're having be jarring and weird.    At least now I suppose we have an advantage in that they think to catch us entirely by surprise, but we'll be prepared for them. Ha ha, I'm sure I heard that wrong, I'm sure you meant to say: "We'll pretend Yellow Mule doesn't exist and head down to Krondor." Not a chance in hell. That son of a bitch Nago is going to pay dearly for all those ambushes.  I bump into a few small Moredhel patrols that are trivial to clear out, before arriving at the path to Sarth. One thing that always puzzled me is that Rowe is running around like two days' travel north of his own farm, as the side path to Yellow Mule is well south of Sarth. Oh well, gives us a chance to poke our heads in and see what the monks are up to.   Sarth has a good deal of backstory to it! It's an old robber baron fortress converted into an Ishapian chapel dedicated to knowledge, where they're transcribing, cataloguing and storing texts of all kinds. It mostly features in Silverthorn, where, while travelling north, Arutha and his gang are harried by Nighthawks and a weird, demonic abomination that attempts to hunt them from the skies. Taking refuge at Sarth, the monks give them magical cover and the lead priest uses a magical amulet to enchant Arutha's rapier, turning it into a potent artifact that can do damage to even demonic creatures. It's also noteworthy, to me, for being the worst-written part of that entire book, it feels so clunky. To us, however, Sarth is "merely" an Ishapian chapel(oddly enough with no teleporter mandala), a very, very nice shop and an entrance to a dungeon area where we can't do anything at the moment.  BaK posted:The abbot came quickly. Now, about that store...   In addition to containing a lot of misc. magical stuff like enchanted quarrels, this place also sells spell scrolls(mostly ones Owyn already has, though, and others that I'd rather find for free) and also buys them. For instance, here we can sell that Flamecast scroll for a nice, fat 130 gold. I don't care about those things, though, what I care about is that staff. In addition to being a nice boost, damage-and-accuracy wise, for Owyn, it also has charges. Those charges are all free casts of Skyfire, the lightning spell those goddamn Witch Hags hit us with in the Dimwood. It works on any enemy outdoors that's carrying metal(i.e. armor or a sword), and will hit them without fail, doing 40 damage. This means it only does 2/3rds of the damage of a Flamecast, but there's no potential friendly fire or missing with it, so it's a very reliable way to hit enemies and I always used it as my primary damage spell as a kid. Owyn gets this one, I have the money, so I may as well use some of it, as these staves are quite rare. Unlike swords, which are all over the place, there are only two non-shop locations in the entire game to get a hold of one of these. Leaving Sarth, there's a corn field next to the entrance road which is easy to miss because you can't interact meaningfully with corn in the game, it's always unripe, and unlike other fields in the game, there are no houses or barns(which may be looted) to draw you closer. This one matters, though, because we can scam a priest.  BaK posted:A garden was nearby.  I hope we aren't disturbing you. No, no. I was about to leave the garden anyway. Busy hands set the mind to work you know. On your way to Sarth? Perhaps, brother...? Brother Marc of Sarth. Glad to meet you. We don't get many illirati here. Books don't seem to interest the commoners as much as gold or wenching. But we have scholars enough, all going blind from reading worm eaten books and a dozen boys scribbling away their youth in our vaults. It is an unusual place. I've a friend who visited here once. He told me that you worship the god of Knowledge. They do say that, yes, and I suppose after a fashion it is true. If there is a question that can be answered in no other place, your best hope is to look in our vaults.Looks like we found the perfect mark in... Marc. Someone who walks around complaining about how the common rubes only care about fun, rather than books, is someone we won't feel too bad about defrauding a little. [CASTING] Do you know anything about spell casting? I know a little of it, though Brother Dominic knows more about it than I. As soon as he finishes his studies on Quegian civil codes, I'm certain he would be more than happy to sit down and talk to you about it. He should be only another two or three months at it I would think. I'm afraid we don't have two or three months to wait. Why don't we leave the brother alone, nephew? Tsk, tsk, tsk! Now don't discourage the boy from asking questions or he'll become afraid to question anything. I think I might have some time to teach him a bit about focusing if you can spare a few sovereigns, say fifty. Is that acceptable to everyone?[YES] More than acceptable. Where do we start? Ah, an enthusiastic student! Delightful. This will be a pleasure to teach.BaK posted:Owyn blanched. This training A) show us that Owyn is a Jedi who can throw people around with the Force and B) improves Owyn's Casting Accuracy by 10 points, which will help make some of the projectile spells a lot more useful. [SPELLS] Now that I know a little more about spell casting, perhaps there's a simple spell you could teach me? Owyn... Just something simple, so we can defend ourselves in case we run in to anyone hostile on the road. I don't know what you imagine is waiting out there for you, but I believe I have just the thing. I will have to run up to the Vaults to search for it, but it is a little spell called Flamecast. Of course, there will be the matter of a fee, say 30 sovereigns. I know precisely where it is if you want me to run and get it. Shall I?[YES] You can be quick about it? I won't be a moment. I will return as quickly as my little feet can move me.BaK posted:They waited. We've just paid 30 gold for a spell scroll that we can now turn around and sell for 130 gold. It should be obvious to everyone that this is definitely the virtuous choice. [ROAD SOUTH] Are there any hazards on the road south from here to Krondor? We are in something of a hurry and I would hate to run into any unexpected delays. I haven't heard any complaints from the travellers that have been through here in the past few weeks. I don't think the mercenaries that stopped by to speak to Brother Dominic said anything of it. Mercenaries? They're not in Quegian press gangs, are they? Not to my knowledge, no. These lot landed just south of Questor's View on a ship called the Foamspinner. As much as they've been up and down the road, I assumed they were in on a shore leave. Were there many of them? Many of them? If you laid them head to foot, I imagine you could walk across the Straits of Darkness without getting your feet wet. It seems one of those Quegian galleys can carry a small village from one place to an other![INNS] Do you know of any good inns in the area? I think I might sleep a little better if I could bed down on something other than cold ground tonight. There are a few. You might try Babon's Hostel in Questor's View or the old Bywater Inn. If it weren't for my duties here, I would be half inclined to join you. Some acolyte somewhere has been trying his hand at dream sendings and I've not had a good night's sleep in weeks. Dream sendings? It's a way to send messages over long distances. Only certain magicians have the talent for it. Whoever it is, they can't be too far away because his images are fairly strong. What do they seem to be trying to say? I'm not certain. The images are too disjointed, though now I think of it, I thought I had seen your elf friend's face before. Now I know why. His face was in the sendings.Most of these questions don't have any prerequisites from other places, so if you didn't pick up the hint from Isaac on the first visit, or interrogated him on the second visit, you might suddenly have an idea how the Moredhel somehow keep finding the party and attacking them. Obviously someone is sending and receiving psychic spy reports. [BAD WEATHER] So when is the storm going to hit? We're a little concerned about finding a place to stay so we don't get soaked. Storm? It is the first I have heard of such a meteorological disturbance. Brother Gierom didn't mention it to me before I left the abbey this morning. That's strange. We met a gentleman named Rowe who said a storm had been predicted by the brothers at the Abbey. I wonder why he would tell you such a thing. Of course, he has been acting peculiarly since his wife died. Terrible tragedy, and striking at such a time when he had to give up his farm. I really must feel for the poor old soulAnd this gives you a hint that Rowe might not be on the up and up and that you should be careful when approaching his farm. This is one point, in my mind, where the game suffers a bit from its lack of fidelity. A few weather effects, a crusty thunder.mid and some rain effects would work well to make the player feel like they should be seeking shelter(even if it had no mechanical effects) and thus perhaps make them miss some of the clues from Rowe. Maybe if resting in barns was as good as resting in inns and allowed 100% health recovery, rather than the 80% of wilderness resting, then his offer might seem a lot more tempting to a party that had gotten badly dinged up. But as it is, taking him up on his barn offer and accepting the bait(either knowingly or not) is kind of a roleplaying choice more than anything else. [GOODBYE] Seems we at least have a few things to think about. Thank you, Brother Marc. Always a pleasure to help. Come back and visit me again. Perhaps we will. Goodbye!It's worth revisiting Marc next chapter even though he'll be somewhat out of the way, as he will have some interesting things to share.    We're drawing close to Yellow Mule... I look forward to getting my hands around Nago's neck. As much as I look forward to the revenge, I wonder if we're biting off more than we can chew. Nago is a powerful spellweaver, but if he thought he could handle us himself, he would have. He hides and throws assassins at us from afar because he fears us. Still... there's a Temple of Sung in the area, a bit of divine favour would make me feel better about this.  BaK posted:Locklear asked to see the high priestess. This isn't just fluff talk, by the way, at the moment this Temple can't cure anyone because the priests are asleep on their feet. Thankfully, though, the encounters north of the Temple of Sung are light, the trip from it and all the way back up to Questor's View are, in fact, almost as lightly populated as the reach between Highcastle and Northwarden in Chapter 1.     A couple of Quegans serve as warm-up exercises as the party approach the ominous barn... I'm shaking like a leaf, let's get this over with!BaK posted:The air rippled.  You always lose initiative coming into this battle, and it resultingly has the potential to go quite poorly as Nago has a big assortment of spells. Flamecast, Skyfire, Hocho's Haven and Mind Melt we all know, but in addition to that he also knows Fetters of Rime(like a non-explosive Flamecast that ALSO applies paralysis like Grief of 1000 Nights) and Strength Drain(reduces the target's Strength stat by up to 20 for the remainder of the battle and increases the caster's strength by half that, also for the remainder).   He starts off with what I feared most, nailing Owyn with Fetters of Rime and taking him out of the fight. This means that my #1 priority now is to prevent this rear end in a top hat from casting another spell before the fight ends.   Thankfully the rest of the moredhel are mostly busy chasing Gorath and Locklear, rather than beating down the defenseless Owyn who, thanks to his Grey Tower Plate and the defense training from Devon, they almost can't hit, and once Nago goes down, the rest of the fight is no longer a great challenge.   Gorath even nails this perfect crossbow shot right between Owyn and Locklear to drop the last Moredhel fighter before he can get any ideas about running away. Now... time to paw through their corpses for anything interesting.  Predictably, only Nago yields anything worth talking about.  Normally he'd also be the first real meaningful sword upgrade on the most direct route, there's also an ice wand(Alfathain's Icer) which applies a frost modifier to a weapon for one battle, a +50% damage boost, and a note full of exposition: BaK posted:Master, Shame for Nago that we found none of these chests(yet) and thus aren't fooled. Also, as a funny thing, a bug in version 1.01 was that this note was also placed on another character, much later in the game, thus probably leading to a lot of confusion, especially since it also replaced an actual clue for that chapter that said character was meant to be carrying instead.This fight also canonical and, in fact, spookily so, since in the book Owyn gets grazed by a Fetters of Rime spell that almost loses them the fight, but since it only partially paralyzes him, he manages to prevent Nago from casting any spells for long enough that Locklear and Gorath can put down his guards, then chop him in half. Instead of a note ABOUT the fake evidence, however, in the book, they find the notes themselves on Nago's desk in the barn, ready for planting all sorts of places, each of them implying some sort of slightly plausible location for an attack from Delekhan to mislead Kingdom troops.  Revenge is sweet. Cutting that spellweaver in half was worth those ten sovereigns to Rowe. A settled debt long in the coming, but I'd never thought I'd actually get to do so. Do all you Moredhel have a feud or a blood debt out for each other? Not all, I probably wouldn't start sparring with my ex-wives if I met them.Before we continue back south, we pop back to the Temple of Sung to see how they're doing now the annoying Dream Sender in the neighbourhood is gone... BaK posted:Kellan greeted them. This teaches Owyn Hocho's Haven for free, I'm not sure if there's some alternate text if you already know, but the BaK site doesn't indicate any, so I would assume not. Now, however, we're practically right on top of Krondor, so let's finish this road trip.    A last few Quegans attempt to get in our way, but we sweep them aside effortlessly.  That'll teach them to get in our way.   BaK posted:The path turned. The answer is obviously yes, as we can do nothing else, though in the book the party waits for a patrol to pass by(while Gorath makes uncharitable comments about humanity's cities), then slip into the city alongside them. However, once they do, they have the same problems that the party's about to have.  Krondor! It's got the amenities you'd normally want from a big city, though one of them(the temple), we can't currently access. Two shops, even, and of course an inn as well. I quickly sell what spare gear the party has and then head for the palace, but... BaK posted:Locklear made a face as he shook the bars. Let's not even think about the fact that we are, at the moment, dealing with a fortress that has literally only one entrance, and that being a big dramatic portcullis at the front. Let's just accept it as it's how the game is going to chase us into the only required dungeon of chapter 1...   Can't we just go back to letting moredhel shoot arrows at us? I liked that part more. Welcome to the sewers of Krondor which is... honestly? Probably the most re-occurring location within the city across the books, and also an area that I got lost in so many times as a kid. Next time, we'll actually get into the palace, for sure, probably!
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Oct 6, 2021 13:46
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As a little bonus, I also took some screenshots of the manual which has some slightly higher-quality versions of some of the costumes that were turned into .jpegs for the game... For instance, look how loving ridiculous Locklear is this higher-resolution image, look at that loving moustache, what the hell.  This Brak Nurr looks like it's made out of chunks of styrofoam.  The Rusalki absolutely looks like someone who was press-ganged into her appearance and does not want to be here, and don't even get me started on how silly the Quegan looks. There are another couple I'll share as we reach their relevant characters/enemies and which look similarly somewhat silly.
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Oct 6, 2021 13:49
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JustJeff88 posted:No way to do this without seeming pedantic, but this is not entirely true. At Sarth, Arutha finds a thin lead on Silverthorn and the monks give him an amulet that he wears around his neck. This amulet makes him immune to magical divination so that The Enemy can't find him easily. At the end of Darkness at Sethanon, Pug melds the amulet to Arutha's rapier so that he can fight the big bad guy. Oh, no, that's perfectly fine pedantry, because I literally cannot keep track of what happened in Silverthorn and what happened in Darkness At Sethanon, since they start out extremely similarly with a Nighthawk attack and then a secret departure from Krondor on the part of Jimmy, Arutha, etc. Mostly my issue with that part is the bit where the priests fight off the Enemy's abomination, which just really reads like someone narrating a D&D fight poorly.
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Oct 6, 2021 17:46
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Schwartzcough posted:Do corpses (or their loot) despawn in this game? Seems like carrying capacity is limited, and I guess it'd be sad to wipe out a bunch of encounters early on and have to leave a bunch of vendor junk behind to disappear if you're not constantly running back to stores. I think they eventually despawn, though the timer for it is rather long, and there are a few ways to get around it. For instance, containers containing a letter/note never despawn, so if you really want to preserve something, you can drop a bag containing one of those and whatever other stuff you want kept safe. Secondly, moredhel word chests are also usually safe containers. Mind, it's mostly a matter of patience since most of the stuff on corpses at this stage of the game is vendor trash with emphasis on the trash. Like, the party's got 4000 sovereigns due to their various detours, and a generic suit of armor and sword from a Moredhel or Quegan warrior will yield maybe a total of 15 from most stores, if of high quality. You're usually never more than one or two days' travel from a store, so if you're patient enough, none of it will go to waste, but it's generally not worth it. Roxors posted:Man, that Nago fight destroyed young me so many times. I was too young to understand exploration, so I usually went straight south, maybe finishing the dwarf side quest, before just getting wrecked by Nago. I think I thought it was a required fight for some reason, just skipping it never occurred to me. I would say that if you're taking the direct path, I'd consider it a required path to get Locklear or Gorath a much-needed sword upgrade but, somewhat disappointingly, taking out the wizard coordinating the assassin squads doesn't actually seem to despawn any ambushes or otherwise make things easier for you(in the book, they logically conclude that without taking out Nago, they're gonna eventually get sliced to ribbons or worn down by successive injuries on the way to Krondor).
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Oct 7, 2021 09:16
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Just a quick post to let everyone know the next update is probably going to be slightly delayed because there are a lot of things to go over and also a sneak peek of a weird-rear end bug that popped up in a fight: Yes, that's a dog's sprite suddenly turning into tombstones and a brick texture.
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Oct 13, 2021 19:59
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Guildenstern Mother posted:The game tends to be very cryptic about these things, could be just a stray bit of code, things were pretty ruff back in that era. My only complaint about this post is that now I have to think up different terrible puns for the actual LP update.
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Oct 14, 2021 02:50
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Update 12: Grave Mistakes, Part 1 Welcome to the sewers of Krondor! Every time there's a part of a Midkemia story set in Krondor, the sewers get to be involved, and they seem roughly as actively travelled as the streets above, therefore it's no real surprise that the instant we arrive, someone's walking up to hassle us. BaK posted:A figure moved in the tunnel.  Meet Limm! He's a Mocker, and oh boy am I going to have a lot of complaining to do about the Mockers in the lore post after this one.  Who be you and what would you in the Thieves' Highway? I be Seigneur Locklear and I do whatever I will in the Prince's sewers! If you're half as intelligent as you seem then I would advise you step out of our way. Fast with a blade I am. Step any further and I'll do you, I will! The only thing you will do my young friend is die an unfortunate death on the point of my sword. I used to spar with Jimmy the Hand and I'm a faster blade than he. Do you still wish to cross me? Jimmy the Hand? He's a legend, sire. Next you'll be telling me you've lain with the Empress Lakeisha of Kesh. I'd advise you to be nice like, however cause I got five blokes waiting a little on down to make sure nothing happens to me, see. I don't suppose you've come on behalf of Seigneur James have you? Seigneur James? Then you don't...well, perhaps we have. Alright then, down to tacks. If he didn't send you, you'll be answering to the Upright Man and not me, so I wash my hands of it. Just watch your steps down here, as there's a bit of trouble going on down here. G'day. Wait...we don't know our way around down here. I look like a bloody page to you? I've got affairs of me own whats I gots to do. Just answer a few questions? Right then, so long as you don't ask me anything what might get me in the hots with the Nightmaster. What you want to know?We don't actually have anything we can talk to Limm about for now and, in general, he doesn't have a lot of dialogue options in future chapters either. The only thing he's good for at the moment is selling us lockpicks in case we're short on them but... we're going to effortlessly be drowning in the loving things anyway. There aren't actually that many actually, well, locked locks in the game, at least not compared to word locks, and most of the ones really worth getting into can be sorted with keys and... ooooh the keys are a whole other kettle of fish. Anyway, we'll bid Limm goodbye since he seems willing not to set the entire guild of thieves on us for splashing around in his territory. I'll be off now as I've got business with the Upright Man. You'll have to come and tell me some more of your fables about Jimmy the Hand. Perhaps we will. Thanks for your help. Squire, is it normal for the sewers to be this crowded in Krondor? Honestly? Yes. To listen to James, he runs into more people down here than he does up above. If you two are done chatting, we've got company up ahead.  Rogues are a relatively common encounter down here, but most of them, note that I say most of them, are no big deal since it's just two or three of them and we're ready for that kind of shenanigans by now.   Hold up, something's strange about the darkness up ahead. How can darkness be "strange"? Well, it seems more murderous than darkness usually is. Also carrying swords. Ah, my favourite part about the sewers, Nighthawks. You sometimes wonder, when you're killing a rogue, or a moredhel, whether maybe they're just good people in bad situations, but Nighthawks... Dressed as they are in all black, Nighthawk encounters are very likely to happen without you spotting them down here in the sewers. Their all-black outfits suit them less above ground, but they wear them there anyway because... here's the thing... the Nighthawks, despite being a guild of assassins, are dogshit awful assassins. The only time they're ever a threat to any protagonists in the series are when they have magical assistance(for a notable period, dead Nighthawks had the annoying habit of rising again as murderous zombies, Black Slayers, who can only be put down by magic or being burned, due to a dark pact they'd signed with the False Murmandamus featured in Silverthorn and A Darkness At Sethanon.), but outside of those situations they're regularly killed by a 15-year-old Jimmy the Hand and do bungling cartoony poo poo like accidentally shooting each other with crossbows in the middle of fights or charging like cartoon bulls so protagonists can just step aside and let them drop over tall ledges. In BaK they are, appropriately enough, not that particularly much stronger than the other enemies in the game, though they're more likely to carry better-quality weapons than the enemies fought so far, and regularly bring crossbowmen and poisoned bolts. There are no Nighthawk mages.   And now we cut out their hearts and burn them! At least the smell of burning human flesh is better than the smell of the sewers.  Looks like they were guarding this ladder, maybe it's the way u-BaK posted:Someone whistled.  It's just like you Jimmy. I haven't seen you in seven months, then I rescue you from a band of Nighthawks and the first thing you want to talk about is my bloody change of hair color! What is going on around here? The front gate is smashed and there are Nighthawks loose in the sewers. Not Nighthawks. Impostors. Someone has been trying to convince Prince Arutha that the Guild of Death has reestablished operations here in Krondor and is using the sewers as their hideout, hoping that the Lancers will come down and clean out the place. In doing so, I think whoever is running this game hopes that the Lancers will root out the Mockers while they are at it. What, take out the Guild of Thieves? Doesn't seem likely from all the things you've told me from your days as a Mocker. More to the point, we know now a few of the Nighthawks escaped to Romney when we smashed them up after that affair with Princess Anita. They certainly won't dare tread Krondor's streets for a while yet. I'd been tracking around down here trying to find out more when I ran into those fellows... So...why have you come back so soon to Krondor, Locky? I thought you were going to be gone another four months or so. I've got bad news from the Northlands. Looks like the Dark Brothers are stirring again. They raised Murmandamus' battle standards over Sar-Sargoth and there's a moredhel army gathering to attack the Kingdom. This moredhel used to be one of their clan chieftains, something of a hero during the Riftwar against the Tsurani too. I thought Prince Arutha would be interested in talking to him. I don't like this, Locky. The moredhel stirring again in the north and someone mimicking the Guild of Death... My bump of trouble says that things are going to get far worse before they get better... I assume since you're down here that you're trying to get into the palace the way I showed you a few years ago? Yes...I was thinking I would have to pry off the grate somehow, but if you have the key, it would save me a great deal of trouble. Still on me. It's all yours. I can find my own way into the palace. I'm going to creep around a while longer down here and see if I can unravel this particular mystery. Suit yourself. I, for one, am anxious to get out of this hole. Come and get me for breakfast tomorrow after I've spoken to Prince Arutha!Welcome to Jimmy the Hand. While he doesn't have the supernatural powers of Pug or Tomas, he's the third major protagonist and usually more competent than any adults he's travelling with in the books where he's not even 18 years old yet. By the time of Betrayal, I think he's around 25 years old, though the specific progress of the timeline is often kind of vague and can generally only be inferred by keeping an eye out for minor comments about how old a given character has turned compared to comments about their age in previous books. He's generally kind of smarmy and unlikeable in Silverthorn and Sethanon, but in the Betrayal-Assassins-Return trilogy, he's a lot more tolerable. In-game he is, like Locklear, inexplicably an rear end in a top hat to people(sometimes in funny ways) for no good reason. Oh and also let's not forget that there's a sewer entrance(a sewer that connects to the sea and is reachable by boat) right into the Palace of Krondor. That's good design work, folks. In any case, the sewer features a number of "false" ladders that lead nowhere, only the right one can be opened by the unique key James hands us.  And it can't be picked, so we need to bungle into James to progress.    So that's Jimmy the Hand? I've heard stories of him, supposedly quite skilled, for a human. He is pretty skilled. So what do the moredhel stories say about me? ... Oh come on, there aren't any stories about me? I tagged along for all those adventures and I don't even get the smallest bit of fame? This is the worst.Past a rope-requiring pit(you CAN come around from the other side, to be fair), and a couple of false ladders, we find the right one.   Now, time for text... BaK posted:The gate swung open. In the book, this entire sequence is much different. For one thing, the three goons go and have a bath first before marching up to the Prince of Krondor covered in blood and poo poo.    Incurable sewer rats, the both of you. I shall have to order that each of you be accompanied by a score of washing maidens to keep you presentable enough for court. Welcome home, Locky. Thank you. As happy as I am to be here, I'm afraid I come with bad news from the Northlands. I expected as much. With the false Nighthawks prowling my streets above and below it can only mean the moredhel are up to their old mischief. What do you know?BaK posted:Motioning to Gorath, Locklear introduced the former moredhel chieftain with a wave. Slowly, Gorath lowered his hood. The gasps and startled reactions of those crowding the hall helped mask the stealthy entrance of a second moredhel in the chamber; this one armed with a longbow!  Assassin! Get Down! I love how Arutha just stands there, not giving a gently caress, after a Moredhel assassin manages to infiltrate his castle and starts shooting arrows at him.  Welcome, somewhat abruptly, to chapter 2, which starts, like chapter 1, with a ton of text. BaK posted:A whisper led him through madness. In the book this flashback is somewhat more detailed, giving us a good bit of background on Gorath's life and sorrows, and how he's never exactly been eager to join in warfare, though he got swept up in the madness of both the first (real) Murmandamus and the second (false) Murmandamus. As for the new characters introduced here, the only one that needs explaining is Gamina, Pug's adopted daughter who can read minds and communicate telepathically, but is otherwise mute. Pug also has a biological son, William, who we won't be seeing in Betrayal at Krondor.  Pug and his wife, Katala, have clearly had too much to drink themselves and have no idea how to deal with Arutha being a belligerent drunk. Katala is a member of a minority from the Tsurani homeworld, the Thuril, she was a slave alongside Pug for a while, but he had her freed when he became a megawizard. The descriptive text always goes on about how she's headstrong and from a proud warrior culture, but she generally just plays the generically nagging and worried housewife, because women aren't allowed agency in a Midkemia story until Return to Krondor. I have been tolerant while I listened to your vague speculations based on incidental half-heard conversations, but how am I to believe what you say? What evidence have you laid before this council to prove what Delekhan intends to do?  He is leader in name only. However bitter a draught Delekhan may be for your kith and kin to drink, magician, his rule is black poison in the gullets of me and mine. Already he enslaves my cousins and rapes the land. Bloody his nose Prince of Krondor. Blunt his swords and the unified tribes will cast him down in wrath. Let him cross your Northern border, however, and ten other clans will join their strength to his and the legacy of Murmandamus will be but a spark next to his glory. Where would you have me send my troops? If indeed he intends a strike against one of our northernmost possessions, which castle shall I garrison for the attack? Highcastle? Ironpass? Northwarden? If I am to fight a war, by my teeth tell me where would you have me fight it! Would that I could tell you! Delekhan holds in good confidence only a handful of cowering dogs and, among them, only a few are privy to his war plans. His private counsels are restricted to choice individuals, his advisors Narab and Nago, his mistress Liallan, his son Moraeulf and - Nighthawks! He keeps foul company that leader of yours... Your highness, if you give me leave, I believe I can find the evidence of Delekhan's intent. I will need someone to accompany me to Romney and supplies for my journey and a small parcel of gold. Romney? What do you think you can find in a provincial river town in the heart of the Kingdom? I aim to catch a bird in flight. Of late Delekhan has emptied a good deal of his treasury to revive the service of the Nighthawks. In exchange he has demanded tactical information about kingdom holdings... He's turned the Guild of Assassins into a guild of spies? Only for a time. Although the payments have been left in various hidden locales, the messengers were always to rendezvous in Romney. If I go there, I may be able to intercept information concerning a forthcoming attack. Would such evidence suffice? Perhaps. drat me but I don't trust you Gorath. How do I know that this isn't a plot of yours? We can weigh the evidence to our heart's content and your cousins could be slitting the throats of my serfs as we sit dawdling... Go to Romney, but you'll provide for yourself. If this is part of some secret moredhel scheme, I'll not look the fool before the world. Pug, unroll the map for me...This conversation also goes a bit differently in the book, going in a bit more on why Gorath dislikes Delekhan. Not just because he's a dictator who has his political enemies killed, but because the Moredhel, being slower reproducing and much lower in number than the humans, suffered incredibly from their huge losses at Armengar and Sethanon. Gorath worries that if Delekhan leads another war against the Kingdom, it'll completely destroy the Moredhel as a people.  This bit has Arutha jabbing at various points on the map with his... what is that? Just a general metal pointy stick? Anyway, refer to the map in the first post if you're wondering where the various locations actually are. ...and Northwarden. His fortress at Sar-Sargoth is three hundred miles to the North and I doubt he has the resources to defend a line that long. So an attack at Northwarden seems unlikely. Leaving Highcastle... Which is a viable alternative, but neither target seems to have an obvious goal. I know you are no field strategist and you hate to become involved in state matters but I should like you to delay your return to your home at Stardock for a while. I feel...ill at ease. You are not alone in that. I too have sensed something unusual in the air, but I won't ascribe it to anything as dire as magic. More likely we suffer from bad soup. Feelings aside I will call up the militia reserves from Malac's Cross, Darkmoor, and Lyton and join them to a detachment of the Krondorian Lancers just outside of the Dimwood. James will send word to me there. What of the garrison? It will remain in place. I have considered the option of a full push south and it seems unlikely, but I will give Delekhan nothing. Our agreement remains. Now we wait. Gods help Gorath if he betrays us to the moredhel.And then we're dropped back into control.  This is absolutely not the lady who played Katala in the cutscene. There's like a 15-year age difference at the minimum. Anyway, let's talk to her before we do anything else.  A pleasure to see you again, James. Mine is the greater pleasure, my lady. Is Pug about? You've just missed him. He and Makala went off to discuss magic someplace and if I know my husband, that means I won't see him for a few days. Even on holiday, he can't seem to take his mind away from the art for long. In many ways, he and the Prince are much alike. Where is Arutha anyway? Out with his twins and the Princess Anita. It seems your famed luck is running thin today. Quite the contrary, for I still have your company. If I may have a moment? As much time as you need. What may I do for you?She doesn't have an awful lot of keywords, and one of them, Rations, only triggers if we manage to completely starve ourselves, in which case she'll graciously allow us to make use of the kitchens. [GAMINA] So, when do I get to meet this stunning daughter of yours? I've heard quite a bit about Gamina, but I've been too busy to make the time to meet her. I imagine you will see her as soon as I do. She's more than likely trailing Pug and Makala about the palace. Any opportunity to hear her father discuss magic and she's immediately at his side. Then too, it may be she's hiding away from Arutha's twins. She's not quite interested in boys yet.[MAGIC SUPPLIES] I know that quite few of the artificers in Stardock have begun exporting their goods from the Academy. Are there any good places to buy magical items near here? The most notable one that's close is a little place called Stardock Annex at the Abbey of Ishap at Sarth. Officially they have no ties with the Academy, but there's not much we can do to keep them from using the name. There's also a fellow by the name of Dabeh who buys from us, but he lives a long distance from here, out north of Romney if I recall.We can't go out the main gates, because James will complain that it isn't stealthy enough, on the left side of the screen is an exit back to the sewers, but it's vitally important that we use the exit on the right first because...  That's where all Locklear's stuff went, and James starts with gear at about the same level as what Locklear did at the start of Chapter 1, so these upgrades are absolutely vital to make James not dead weight. Not that it really does a lot to fix him up since... yeah, let's just go over his starting stats. On the bright side, he has the highest starting Defense, Stealth and Lockpicking skills in the game, and he's slightly sturdier than Locklear is starting out. On the downside, the only character we've had with worse melee than him so far is Owyn, and these are starting stats. He's missed out on all the trainers and practical experience that the rest of the party have enjoyed on the way south from LaMut. Despite being one of the main protagonists of multiple books, he's definitely playing second fiddle to, well, everyone, for a while yet.  Alright, Gorath, I don't know how things were with Locklear, but from this point on we're doing things my way. And what is "your," way, human? Quiet, calm, professional, minimum of detours and no un-needed violence.   I can see why you'd prefer that, even Owyn would have been more threatening in a fight than you. Can it. Why didn't we bring him, by the way? He's been useful so far. He's completely unrelated to this entire thing, it would just put him in danger and, secondly, if we deal with any national security matters, we don't need an extra witness.I proceed to then bumble around in the sewers for a bit as I make my way towards the exit, in part because I know there's a chest down here with a Skyfire scroll that I want to pick up, though it requires mulching a few rogues to get to.     These fights haven't been trouble so far, but they consist mainly of James whiffing two out of three swings while Gorath drops all the enemies with a single swing a piece.   Behind these guys is another gang(guarding a dead end), but you can stay just outside of their aggro radius and sneak into the side corridor containing the Skyfire scroll, you know, for any future wizards we might pick up. Now, to take the shortest and simplest route back to the exit...   I can't help but notice you've walked us right into a conflict where we're outnumbered more than two to one.Also, two of those rogues are rogue mages(you can tell because they have yellow pants, which is because of magical power, not because they wet themselves). One of them, funnily enough, has Skyfire as a known spell, despite being underground, but he also has Grief of 1000 Nights, and losing Gorath for 32 rounds in this fight would be a game-over.   Instead, while I use James and his high Defense to disrupt the enemy casters, they tag Gorath with a cast of Unfortunate Flux, which basically sees him attacked by a small swarm of angry magic wasps. It always hits and is interesting in being one of the few spells that do randomized damage, in this case between 30 and 130 damage. Thankfully Gorath is built like a brick shithouse and survives it, though it also sees him then spending an entire turn chugging magic meth to get back to near-full health.   Thankfully, positioning allows James to disturb both mages at once, and then Gorath sets to work, dropping rogues left and right like the badass he is.  Gorath is absolutely the MVP of this party. Anyway, now we have a clear run to the exit. This fight and two others are spawned at the start of Chapter 2 exclusively to ensure you have at least one fight on the way to the exit, mind you.   I sense another ambush, someone is waiting for us...BaK posted:A shadow approached. It took you two long enough. I was beginning to think the Mockers had you bagged up again, Seigneur James. Is everything all right? Squire, suppose I ignore the fact that this trip is a state secret to which you are not supposed to be privy AND that we are hurrying out of the sewers instead of leaving by the main gate at the proper time. How did you find out we were coming? Well, after Seigneur Locklear dumped me off after we got here and told me I could go home, I got bored and decided to check out Krondor. Unfortunately there's nothing much interesting going on here, so I decided I would come back to the palace. I tried to pay Gorath an unexpected visit last night, but discovered that the guards had been doubled with orders that no one could see him. I might have fallen for it if I hadn't heard someone snoring in his cell... Gorath doesn't snore, I take it. Not a sound. When I realized that something was in the air I went to find Locklear and discovered that he was mysteriously absent, despite a tray of food delivered to his door just moments after I slipped away. Finally, I came down here and talked to Limm who told me you had been down here earlier this morning. At that point, I realized Arutha meant to slip Gorath out of Krondor for some reason... Are you sure you're not a thief by profession? You think unnervingly like a Mocker I used to know. So, are we ready? We should probably get moving. Where are we going anyway? You cannot accompany us, Owyn. Our mission is much too important. Quiet, moredhel! I'll handle this. But I could jeopardize your mission! Who knows who might take me captive between here and Tiburn? If I go back to Krondor now, I might accidentally talk to someone. Besides, I'm from the eastern part of the Kingdom. I know the area and I might be able to help... For better or worse, you seem determined to hitch your fate to catastrophe. But if you want to get yourself killed at a tender young age, who am I to naysay it? I used to pull the same stunts when Arutha wished to pull out of Krondor... All right then squire, you can come along, but these are the ground rules. One, I am in charge and you do whatever I say without question. Two, under no circumstances do you reveal anything about Gorath or our mission to anyone. If someone asks, we will continue what Seigneur Locklear suggested - Gorath is an elf. Thirdly, and lastly, you don't wander off on your own. I don't care if you're watering the trees, you ask me first. Is all that clear? Absolutely. Whatever you say. Stop smiling. You're going to earn your keep. I know I'm going to regret this, but let's get moving. We have a long way to go and no time to get there.Neither the game or the book are very clear on exactly why Owyn decides to come along on a mission that sees his attempted murder every five minutes and gets him on the poo poo-list of a gang of assassins that have attempted to kill Kingdom heads of state multiple times over the last decade, but in the book it's much the same, Owyn figures that the quest isn't over yet and just sort of wriggles his way into the party with "drat, sure would be a shame if someone forced me to rat you out through horrible torture or something, getting my fingernails yanked out always loosens my tongue," which is a relatively strong argument for why he should come along, but one that should be used on him rather than by him. What, you think I'm gonna bail on this party? Have you seen the cash this mission rakes in? Little about the books ever establishes the value of a Kingdom "Sovereign," except for a passing comment about how 100 of them would see someone set for about 4 months of good living. Considering that this party has, at one point, been carrying around 4000 sovereigns(which must have weighed a hell of a lot, they're supposedly relatively pure gold coins), that would've been about 12 years of comfortable living in the Kingdom. And I'm not settling for "comfortable," so let's get a move on, we've got chests to crack and pockets to empty. ...I feel like the stealthy, low-violence approach has just gone out the window. And so, we're clear to leave Krondor! Before I do so, though, I want to drop by the inn...  The Rainbow Parrot pops up in both Silverthorn, Sethanon and Return to Krondor, since the owner is good friends with a number of canon characters and also has a secret door into the sewers in one of his back rooms. The guy we want to talk to is the only NPC who isn't generic-looking, Nivek. He's also here in chapter 1, but has nothing to say then, now, however... BaK posted:James grinned.  The pleasure is mutual. How are the ledgers of the Kingdom, Nivek? Think we shall have enough money to keep the Kingdom running for the year? The ledgers are at a balance, but I daresay my thirst suffers a deficit of catastrophic proportions. Though I handle thousands of sovereigns a day, I fear I haven't the command of more than a handful for my own use at the moment. I don't suppose you might be in a position... What do you say, Owyn? Do we buy a drink for the honorable tax collector or do we allow him to expire of thirst?[YES... we want to buy him a drink, not YES we should let him die of thirst] Bartender, a drink for the tax collector! Drink up friend and tell me what you know. You've always had a good ear for the happenings in and out of the Kingdom.[FIRST DRINK] Rumors? My goodness me, I'm not the kind to consort with the rumormongers. No sire, you should know that. Of course, I do occasionally hear a few facts that are of interest to people. Accounting is a...UHRUP...fascinating business you know, all the figures and such. Something a little more lively if you please. Stolen cows, cheating wives, dishonest traders - that sort of thing. The prurient and the scatological, eh? Hmmm. Well, let me think on it. I believe I heard something last week - at least I believe it was last week. Maybe it was the week before that. Couldn't have been before that annexation in Malac's Cross --- If you please, Nivek. We would like to get out of here before tomorrow. ...I...AHHHP...would be most pleased to accommodate you, but it seems that my mouth has grown a bit dry. What do you say to buying me another drink?[SECOND DRINK] Ahh now. That's much better. What was I saying? Oh yes, about this story. Th-ere was...UHRUP...this fellow that lives near Sethanon that has filed three new claims on land in the past year. Thr-ee, ya understand that? Is there something suspect about his purchases? Oh, his selections of land are nice enough. Prime pieces of land matter of fact, but he's without a...AAHHHP...ti-tle! How'z a person of ignoble birth manage to buy three prime estates? Tell me that! What was this fellow's name? Perhaps we should look into it. What kind of ques---RUCHH---question is that now? Ya think I carry my ledger about in my head? I mean you might as well rear end me the name of Prince Arufa's---Arutha's wife... You mean to tell me that you can't remember Princess Anita's name? No---what is her name? You were telling me about the man near Sethanon. What else do you know about him? Tell me about the man. ...Ahhhh...I fink his name was Fibber... NAH, that's not right, not right at all... Fleeber...Monk's Finger...Map's Flipper...Fever... FEEBER! Maxie Feeber! Thatsss it! Ya know, I'm really, really getting tired now and maybe I should go home. There's still a few things I need to know. Think you can hold out for a just a few more minutes? Sure...RUCCHH...I kin do it. Need something else ta drink though. You buy---UHRUP--ing?[THIRD DRINK] That hit the---the ahhh---What? I suppose you mean that your drink hit the mark. Why don't you tell us a little more about this Max Feeber character? NAHnahnahnahh...that's bori---UHRUP--ng... let's talk about the last year. Did ya know that for every cow in Midkemia, we get a golden sovereigns a year alone just for their manure... Did ya know that? BETCHA didn't! An for every duck... Max Feeber. I want to know about Max Feeber. Dokay. Moxie Flipper. Ahm, I know that gee was tryging to buy up some of the propurtee left in Sethanon a few years back from Jared Lycrow but Jared wouldn't sell to no one, so Moxie co--AHRUP---cooked up this idea... Sure you don't want to hear about the ducks? No. Just tell us about Max. What did he do? Ee gots him selk a shovel and dug---ARRGHA---to try to skeer Jared. Corse Jared wasn't skeered of nuthin but it shore fri-teened---UHRUP---Nia... What was he digging up? ...Goin ta slep now... Gnite... Maybe I could buy you another drink? What, you haven run outta mon---mon---money yet? Oh, in that case I'll have nother...if you're buying?[FOURTH DRINK] Grabeyurd neer Sethnon. Dats whur he wusss diggin. Up---ERRRRUP--- Frait o gosts n Jer-rud whatnt. Not at ull. Jes Nia. Littl o Nia... Where do you think he got the funds to buy the land? E...Ee sait that he gots it in na hole! Alz the monkeys...ARRAH...moneys in na hole! Jus got go...to get it... Ain't frait no gooset... What hole are you talking about? Where is he going? I tink I go home now... One more tankard of ale to keep him going?[FIFTH DRINK] Ya nu... Zaa unturducktur key urdn skeywers...trite to sulit tome but...UHRUP...I no crumiminal...oh gles mr...AAAGH. O Ghats! Imna be sich! Ha- ho! The what? I don't understand. I sait, mna be SICK! Okay, okay. I think I've abused you enough for now. Sleep well, Nivek. I think we know all we need to know.Now, this might seem like a completely pointless way to waste our money, but! Ol' Nivek here is, in fact, our first clue on the way to one of the more lucrative sidequests in the game and which, if completed, rewards us with a weapon of which there are only four in the entire game, and which is thus eminently easy to miss out on entirely. It's also the quest that suffers the most from some Sierra-rear end triggers that make it very easy to miss out on being able to complete it because you have to visit not just the right people, but also in the right order, Nivek here and one other thing are the only two ones you can get anything out of in the "wrong" order. Anyway, that's for later, for now, we're gonna hit the road! As we do so, I also have James read Thiful's Bird Migrations for the boost. Then, because he's so far behind, I have him chew up the remaining 96 charges, because hey, with an 8% chance per charge, he SHOULD get more boosts, right? Ha ha, loving NOPE. James gets absolutely ZERO boosts beyond the first guaranteed one. This game has a cruel RNG.
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Oct 19, 2021 22:01
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Update 13: Grave Mistakes, Part 2   Strange, we're already within sight of Darkmoor and no one's tried to ambush us yet. ...just how bad was that journey down from the north? This is practically the heart of the Kingdom. At worst you might see a few bandits here.In general, there are less fights(but not quite NO fights...) in the southeastern part of the game map, which is the more densely populated part of the Kingdom, being closer to the older East than the frontier-ish West, section of the map that includes Darkmoor only has a single battle, and it never gets replaced or supplemented by others later on. The party soon arrives at Darkmoor, which is mentioned in the books only as a stopover on the way to Malac's Cross and the rest of the east.   At the moment, this is just yet another place for Owyn to get some barding XP and a couple of doors to knock on, so let's get knockin'. BaK posted:After knocking on the small wooden door, James stood back to survey the house and its surroundings. "Darkmoor seems friendly enough," he said. The next house, of course, has different dialogue whether to knock on the door during the day or the night. BaK posted:DAY It's just a bit of fluff text, nothing that really matters to us. I think perhaps there was originally going to be a general undead-slaying spell which might've later been removed and this was supposed to hint at it... but I'm honestly not sure. Once past Darkmoor, there's an unusually dense thicket of tree sprites alongside the road, which tends to be a hint that the devs hid some chests or other interactibles inside.   Seriously, this is denser than the Dimwood. It also contains what's probably the easiest magic trap in the game.   This is just sad.   MILK This one contains a suit of Elven Armor which is no upgrade for this party, but if you took the straight path down, you might've missed out on other opportunities for this upgrade.  RUST This one contains a general mix of supplies, small stacks of food, restoratives and Fadamor's Formula. Nothing too exciting, but all of it useful. It's very easy to feel like you couldn't possibly carry or need more Restoratives and then run into one of the situations where you do.    Further east along the road lies the Temple of Ruthia, the goddess of Luck. It's one of the few temples in the game, which span the entire canon Kingdom pantheon, which has no dialogue for visiting the priests, just the party not being allowed to talk to anyone. Which is a bit of a shame, they could at least have said that getting an audience was a matter of flipping a coin or winning a game or chance or something, and luck just is not with the party.    Eventually we reach a corner where two sections of "mountain" reach each other, where the road curves there's a small graveyard, and this is our clue that we've got the turn-off for Malac's Cross just behind it.     Malac's Cross has some of what you expect from a large town in Betrayal at Krondor: a store, a temple(Ishap) and an inn, but it also has an extra location on the left side of the road, let's try getting in... BaK posted:A man halted them. Unlike some of the other random NPC's we've engaged with in the past, this actually isn't just some random maniac who's going to brain the party with a bottle, we can actually attain a ticket, but you might think it's impossible if you took the longest possible way around to Krondor, because getting a ticket isn't possible till Chapter 2. Since I know where we get a ticket, let's stumble into the local Temple to Ishap(the building at the far end of the main street). It's somewhat more story-relevant in the book, since events at the abbey ties into Krondor: the Assassins, but for a few chapters yet, currently it's mostly interesting for ticket-related purposes.  My young charge here wished to visit your famed school of nobles. I don't think he would have let us leave Malac's Cross without paying a visit. Well, well, well. I am pleased to see that our reputation precedes us. Am I to assume you are interested in becoming a new pupil, or are you visiting from our estimable rival, the Academy of Magicians at Stardock? My father would never allow me to study magic formally. Even though he more than has the financial resources to send me to Stardock, he thinks it's a waste of a young noble's time to spend ten and twenty years with his nose stuck in a book and yet be hardly capable of doing anything else. If it weren't for a magician named Patrus that I met once, I wouldn't know anything of magic at all. It is true that magicians study for longer periods of time with fewer visible results, but no course of study is a waste of time. And while magic is not a primary staple in our directed studies here, magician Pug is kind enough to occasionally send instructors from Stardock to lecture on issues that involve magicians. If you would be interested in enrolling... I regret that we don't have time for that kind of detour. He is on crucial business that takes him elsewhere. What about you, Seigneur? Is there anything in our curricula that interests you? Books and scrolls? I'm a bit too old for that sort of thing now. Really? How unfortunate for you. And I was preparing to offer you a chance to attend a lecture on tactics that is being taught by one of our guest instructors... Now that I think on it, you probably wouldn't be interested. It's being taught by this, well, odd fellow, a one eyed gentleman who goes by the name Bas-Tyra. Bas-Tyra? You mean Guy du Bas-Tyra? King Lyam's First Adviser? Yes, I believe that's his title... It's part of the Abbaye Ishap's arrangement with King Lyam. In exchange for setting aside part of our facilities here for the purposes of education, the King occasionally will loan us some of the finest minds in the Kingdom. It works to our mutual benefit. I can still arrange to allow you in if you're still interested for a small donation of twenty sovereigns. What do you say, Seigneur?[YES] I think we can make time. Where do we need to go? In town, near the Queen's Row, there's a small hall that we have reserved for Guy's speech. Simply present this ticket at the door and they will admit you all. I believe you will be in for a stimulating evening. Thank you. We are looking forward to it.In the book, this encounter has a somewhat different note since James recognizes Graves as a former enforcer for the Mockers in Krondor who felt the calling of Ishap, and the two of them have a quick rapport. James implies that the establishment of the Ishapian college at Malac's Cross is for the purposes of A) countering the political influence of Pug's magical university at Stardock and B) for keeping an eye on Sethanon. Why Sethanon needs keeping an eye on... we'll get to that. For now, let's just grab the ticket and head back to the building on the left side of the main street... BaK posted:A man took their ticket at the door. Having played Betrayal almost a decade before I first read the first Midkemia books, I was completely baffled when the books got to Guy. See, for the duration of both Magician books, as well as Silverthorn, Guy is loathed by every single main character as the greatest villain imaginable, the sort of dude who locks sick old men in dungeons for political reasons while attempting to marry(at 50+ years of age) their not-even-teenage daughters, also for political reasons, and generally seems to be constantly angling for political power at the expense of honour and human lives. He eventually redeems himself enough in Darkness At Sethanon to be accepted as an ally of the protagonists, explaining his past actions AND doing his level best to prevent the Moredhel from accidentally ending the world. Anyway, what the lecture actually does is increase the party's Assessment skill. Apparently it can only be raised by trainers, repeated use doesn't increase it. It's, as mentioned, a pretty useless skill for the most part since it takes up your entire turn looking at an enemy's stats rather than lowering those stats by blowing said enemy up, but if it didn't take a turn to use, it would be pretty handy! Now, let's hit up the inn.  Unlike a lot of inns, this one has two characters to talk to and oh man do they both have plenty to say. Let's talk to the innkeeper, Ivan, first. We also missed an interesting greeting if we'd come here in chapter 1...  BaK posted:Locklear motioned to the figure across the room. BaK posted:James motioned to the figure across the room.  I hope you haven't come for the match. It's already over! Match? What kind of match? You're in the Queen's Row and you can ask that question? A chess match of course. It was wondrous. Jamie Tiller was defending his title against that snot nosed prat from the Abbaye, Kyle Fischer. Jamie opened, moved his queen's pawn to fourth rank. Fischer opened with Abbar's Gambit - arrogant cud - but Jamie actually maneuvered into it with his knight. I was thinking that he was going for the queen... ...But he sacrificed his King's rook and took the priest... It's a brilliant move, but it left his own queen vulnerable didn't it? You've got a good head for the game, Seigneur. The Prince likes to play, but we don't always have a board handy. Once you learn to play in your head, a board almost becomes redundant. I have to admit it's tougher earlier into the game. More pieces to keep track of. It's still fun to watch, though. That's why the Queen's Row is here. Perhaps I can relates the rest of the game over ale, assuming you gents are buying. What can I get you today?Ivan has a lot of keywords, though at least one seems to expect us having gotten the Chapter 1 greeting. [ABBAYE ISHAP] The Abbaye is developing quite a reputation, isn't it? I've heard a number of stories. I doubt you've heard the stories I've heard about the place. They produce a few fine minds there, aye, but they're also a refuse heap for nobles who wish to get their sons out from underfoot. The majority of them are runts... And the few that aren't? The special ones, they're fine men. Ishap willing, they'll grow into fine dukes and barons and such. The lot of them have become wonderful tacticians. That's what the Abbaye specializes in.[EN PASSAH] Sorry, but you've piqued my curiosity, what is an en passah? I've seen quite a few variations of chess but I don't think I've ever heard of that move. It's Keshian. One night I was playing this fellow from Durbin. I had my game swinging on one particular pawn and the game was in my favor. So what does he do but move his pawn to the square directly behind mine, then claim to have captured my piece! That's an illegal move. So, I said. He goes on to tell me it's one of the most fundamental moves of the game. We argued about it for three hours until a student ran from the Queen's Row to the Abbaye to dig up an old book. And there it was. Back of the text, written in Keshian, the original rules to the game. En passah cost me two diamonds and very nearly the Queen's Row itself. Needless to say, I don't allow that rule to be played in here anymore. Last fellow that tried to use it on me was a fellow named Navon Du Sandau and I set him straight, though he showed me an incredible move he invented called Sandau's Retreat. Can't quite remember how it worked now, though.[CHESS] Any chance I can interest you in a game of chess? I don't play unless I'm making a wager. Makes playing interesting... What kind of stakes? Thirty, forty sovereigns? I don't play unless the stakes are quite high. Emeralds, nothing less. Do you think you're good enough for stakes like that?It goes without saying that we can't dunk on Ivan quite yet. But if we should stumble across an emerald, we have a couple of ways to get a leg up on him. [LOST & FOUND] Do you keep things that people have lost here? Sometimes if it interests me, or if it seems like they would be coming back for it. Why have you lost something here before? No, I was just wondering if there was anything interesting you've found that you think it's unlikely the original owner is going to come back for. If so, I might be interested in taking them off your hands. Probably wouldn't do me any harm to clear out the area beneath the bar. I believe there are probably a few things. Tell you what, I'll sell you the lot of them sight unseen for...say...fifty sovereigns. Deal?There are a few interesting things in the Lost & Found, nothing we desperately need, but we may as well pick them up since they're worth more than the asking price if we were to buy them afresh from shops. [ADVICE] With all the trade moving back and forth through here, I imagine you talk to quite a few traders. I talk to my share. Mostly the Queen's Row is a haven for the students from the Abbaye... Anything unusual going on that someone making a long trip should know? Bridge out somewhere? Bandits attacking? Only thing odd I've heard recent is that Lord Lyton's got a batch of tax collectors stopping folk what are trying to get in and out of Lyton. Some ridiculous high amount of gold. If folks don't have it, the collectors just direct them the other way or end up splitting their spleens for 'em. Course the merchants around here wouldn't make a pence if they stood for it. They've apparently found some way to sneak around the guards.[ABBAR'S GAMBIT] Isn't there another move like Abbar's Gambit but a little different? Aye, there's Abbar's Turn. That's a brave man's gambit. In the right place it's about the most powerful structure a man can put out, but in the wrong place it can cost you dearly... How does it work? I'll not be teaching you that play. If you knew truly how to use it, I'd have to give up playing chess against you. The very fact that you even know about that move tells me you know the game altogether too well.James is canonically actually a rather poor chess player or, at the very least, considerably worse than Arutha and the Keshian ambassador. In any case, this is all we're getting out of Ivan for now... until we're ready to come back and take him for everything he's worth. Oh and like in five minutes when we're done interrogating the other NPC in the room, which opens up a new keyword with Ivan.  Like Ivan, she has some Chapter 1 unique dialogue... BaK posted:Locklear motioned to the figure across the room. The dialogue is mildly less strange in chapter 2, though. I am afraid you have me mistaken for someone else. My name is James. James is it? Ha-ho, of course it is! And I'm not your gran Petrumh either, I take it. You're masquerading again! This isn't like that time you ran about Malac's Cross for a month begging and chewed up soap is it? Oh, but you made some fine sovereigns with that act! With all that foam coming out of your mouth, a body would think you had the creeping mongus and they'd pay a pretty coin just to have you away from them! You've always been a wily one, Lysle. Did you pinch any bread for me? Why can't you buy your own bread? Who pissed in your pot, eh? You know perfectly well that I haven't had nothing since Jack died...unless... What are you doing with an elf, boy! Don't you know they bring bad luck?! They're the ones what killed Jack and are stirring up all that trouble in Sethanon! What's got into your head? Have you run mad? What trouble in Sethanon are you referring to, madam? You're...you really aren't Lysle, are you then? But you're his mirror image, you are. How could this be unless...some kind of faerie evil isn't it? That's what it is! Some kind of faerie magic and you finally come for me! Took Lysle's form! We aren't brothers of the dark path, miss. Please, trust us. Perhaps I may bear some resemblance to this Lysle character you're talking about, but we're just ordinary folk. I would like to talk to Lysle, however. He sounds like...like he might be a relative... Hmm. I guess you don't look like evil faeries... Leastways, none I've ever heard of. So, Lysle might be your brother? I don't know. I never knew my father and my mother never mentioned a twin, but when I was taken captive in Krondor a few of the men who were guarding me kept asking about places I'd never been to and about people I'd never met. At first I wanted to dismiss what they were saying, but then I got to thinking about some of the events that happened before the battle of Sethanon. Someone tried to slip in a double for Prince Arutha. Maybe the moredhel are repeating their old strategies... This is all very interesting, but I haven't had a bite to eat in days. Do you think you could spare something for me?[YES] I've got a pack of rations that are yours, providing you tell us a little more about this Lysle. Last I saw of him, he was heading towards Lyton. Said something about wanting to meet some gentlemen there. More than likely he'll be staying away from the main roads. Try as he might, he does have a tendency to get into trouble now and again. Thank you, miss. Watch out for yourself.This conversation is pretty true to the book, with the main exception that in the book, Gorath takes a lot of offense at Petrumh calling him an elf, since that's usually associated with the Eledhel. It's mildly funny. Another issue is that Petrumh is wrong, Lysle hasn't headed for Lyton, he's headed for Darkmoor. You'll know this if you have a quick chat with Ivan before setting out, since this opens a new dialogue option with him. Ivan, do I look familiar to you? Can't say you do. Should I know you? Not me, my face. I want you to take a close look at me. Are you sure you don't know of anyone with a face like mine? Didn't say I've never seen anyone with a face like yours, I just said I've never seen you before... The man you're after is named Lysle Rigger. Is he related to you? Not sure. I don't know anything about my father and my mother died when I was young. It's possible either of them could have had another child. All I wish to do is talk to him, find out if we have any common history. Good enough... He's been running some sort of errand, though he hasn't told me what it was about or who hired him. He said if he should drop out of sight for any length of time, he would be hiding in Darkmoor, probably in the common storage bins there. If you get near there, call out that Ivan has sent you. He'll make an appearance. I'll warn you though, trouble of ten follows after him. I'd be prepared for a rumble. Sounds familiar. If he's no brother of mine, he's at least a close cousin. So, when are we setting off to find your twin, squire? I'm sure Delekhan will wait patiently for us to resolve your familial issues. Aren't you guys at least mildly curious to see if they even bothered to use the same actor? Fair argument, we could use a laugh.   Appropriately enough, on the way back to Darkmoor, I manage to bungle into a Nighthawk ambush I had somehow managed to avoid by walking off the road to look for chests. No encounters spawn as part of the "look out for trouble near Lysle"-comment, but this almost makes it feel like they did!   The fight instantly becomes a chaotic scrum as the Nighthawks pile in and go straight for Owyn's throat. Because I felt like some variety, I busted out the Horn of Algon-Kokoon instead of Sleepytime Dust, and spawned two dogs. Since each honk spawns TWO dogs, it's an excellent disruption item, especially as the dogs are melee combatants that will often chase mages. The downside is they're much worse at hitting enemies than Rusalki, and there's a grand total of two of them to be found in the game(one we already found, the other is on an enemy's corpse somewhere), though a single shop(in Dencamp on the Teeth) also sells it for a completely absurd price. Still, buying an extra horn would be a great use of the party's funds at some point since they only come with six charges a piece.   Since James is still less dangerous than the rest of the party, he mostly distracts the Nighthawks while Owyn clubs them to death, Gorath hacks them to pieces and two dogs angrily maul them.  It does not go well for the boys in black. No, seriously, these guys almost killed Arutha twice?Owyn could probably one-on-one a Nighthawk with just his staff at this point.    Interacting with this barn in Darkmoor in the past would've just gotten us a generic "it don't do anything"-message, but now that we've talked to Ivan and Petrumh... BaK posted:The barn door was closed tight.  ...Twins, yes, so it seems. Seeing you, a great number of things suddenly seem crystal clear to me. What is your association with the Mockers in Krondor? What do you mean? I don't... Stop the idiot act, Lysle. I know you have something to do with the Mockers in Krondor. A few months ago, I was abducted by a band of cutthroats dressed as Nighthawks while I was investigating a rumor in the sewers. At the time I thought they had abducted me because I was close to Arutha, but that wasn't the case at all, was it? That must mean things have gotten even worse than the Upright Man imagined. When he sent word for me in Kesh... Excuse me...did you say Kesh, as in the Great Empire Of? You of all people should know that the Upright Man has contacts everywhere, including under the Empress' nose. He couldn't very well operate the single most powerful guild in Midkemia without them. But as I was saying - he sent for me in Kesh and asked for me to take a boat into Silden and check on a group of thieves who operated there. I can't really say more, but I confirmed the Upright Man's suspicions. If you should get to Krondor before I do, tell one of the thieves - a boy named Limm - that I think the Upright Man's right, though I am quite positive now that the Crawler is not Jocko Radburn. He should give you a reward for the information. If there is something in the offing that threatens the Prince... Don't worry your head. The Nighthawks in Krondor were likely sent into Krondor to kill the Upright Man after I fumbled up matters investigating in Silden, not go after Arutha. This Crawler fellow that's running the new thieves' guild is determined to expand his empire, but he's been busy infiltrating other guilds. He's the shadow prince behind half a dozen, most notably the new Guild of the Romney. He's also training his men in magic... A whole band of thieves trained as magicians? I don't like the sound of it at all. Neither do I, though for much different reasons. I'm still working on finding out who's training them. Last trail I followed, I heard word that someone in Lyton wished to buy glory hands - magic artifacts I had heard something about. I found this skeletal hand near Sethanon and I sold it to a fellow in Lyton named Glover. I figured if they were magicians, they'd spot the substitution and perhaps I would have a lead. But they bought it from you and killed your lead. How did you find the skeletal hand? You'll probably find this a bit distasteful, but...I was going to dig up somebody from the Sethanon graveyard and just borrow a hand. Since that part of the world has been deserted for quite some time, I thought it would be my best bet to find what I needed without getting caught. Fortunately, some old ghoul saved me the trouble. I have no idea what this fellow was up to with the corpse, but he was dragging it through this field like he was headed to the graveyard. At one point he apparently got tired or thirsty and left the body for a bit and I went over to liberate this dead man of his hand, but before I could finish, the old man came back. Since I nearly had the hand off, I came back the next day to see if it had wiggled loose in the transport... And so you found it and sold it to Glover in Lyton. Just so, but my troubles didn't end there. There were a few men in Lyton who recognized me, apparently men working for the Crawler. Seems that he's issued a death token on my head after I was spotted in Silden. So, since then, I've been lying low. Understandable... Someday, if we should meet again, I would like to talk to you some more. Find out more about where you came from. You mean, find out if we're brothers? It's not likely. I was born in Tulan and only came to Krondor about three years ago when the Upright Man sent for me. I was never sure why he sent for me, but apparently he had heard of me. But, he is odd that way. I doubt I'll ever understand the way his mind works. That makes two of us. Thank you for this talk at least, Lysle. You've been quite a help to us and it's been interesting seeing how others see me. I hope we can meet again.So, James and Lysle meeting is canon, but the whole Sethanon corpse-robbing sideplot isn't. The books are much more interested in dealing with the Crawler, something that would supposedly have gotten expanded on in a third Krondor game, but since that got binned after Return sold poorly, the whole Crawler sideplot never really got resolved for years until Feist(or more likely a ghost writer) finally tied it up. In any case, this conversation with Lysle isn't required to solve this sideplot and is, in fact, actively making it more difficult for first-time players. See, it directs you towards Glover in Lyton, but you can't actually interact with Glover until after you've interacted with several people south of old Sethanon first, like Glover does not exist for you to interact with until then, which is kind of what I consider a Sierra-rear end series of triggers. In the book, the party also saves Lysle from several Nighthawks at the last moment and treat him to a meal at a nearby inn where he tells them his story. Then when they wake up in the morning he's pretended to be James and sold off their horses for gold while they were still asleep before skipping town at high speed. I still don't really think he looks like James, though. Anyway! Time to high-tail it back to Malac's Cross and then continue northwards to rejoin the main road.
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Oct 19, 2021 22:02
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Update 14: Grave Mistakes, Part 3   While we're travelling, a fun fact: The Temple of Ishap in Malac's Cross is the only place you should go if you ever want to get gear blessed, it has the absolutely cheapest Tier 3 blesses in the entire game. Oh, and, if you head off-road here you can find another moredhel chest.    CHEST Once again this one messes a bit with the formula, like the BLADE chest we encountered previously. The only really worthwhile thing in this one is snagging the shovel inside if you don't already have one. Most graves are not high-value targets, but a few are, and predictably we need a shovel to finish up this chapter's highlight sidequest anyway.   East of Malac's Cross are two locations of note, the Temple of Lims-Kragma and... something special we'll check out after we're done annoying a bunch of death cultists.  Here, we can actually bother the high priestess for some exposition. BaK posted:There were no walls in the high priestess' chamber. Lims-Kragma is a goddess of death in the same sense as Morr is in Warhammer Fantasy, that is to say, death as a part of the natural cycle of things. There aren't exactly a lot of undead marching around Midkemia, skeletons, vampires and zombies aren't generic enemies(at least not for a couple of books yet), which leaves the Temple a bit redundant compared to similar faiths in other settings, until the Black Slayers show up. The one thing that makes the Nighthawks in Silverthorn and Sethanon(as well as a contingent of Moredhel who have sworn the same oaths), somewhat scary, is that the Black Slayers among them refuse to die unless their hearts are cut out and burned, or magic cuts their puppet strings permanently. Until then, they literally recover in a few minutes from any sort of damage done to them, and can be remotely puppeteered(and made even more scary by), the dark masters who empower them. The Temple of Lims-Kragma helps out mostly by offering final rest to a repentant Slayer in exchange for intelligence on Murmandamus' doings. It's a good thing we've yet to meet anything that scary.   I know this part of the Kingdom well enough to know that this is neither the road to Sethanon or the road to Romney. I just wanted to check up on something down this way...   The party visiting this statue is entirely canon. Let's have Owyn touch it. This seems like a terrible idea.Good thing Owyn doesn't get a vote in this party.     While your body is lying, safe, still and silent in a cove near Malac's Cross, your mind has journeyed elsewhere...here... Your arrival has been expected. I am pleased to have you as my honored guest, Owyn Beleforte of Tiburn. Me? At journey's end you shall not be as you are nor may you turn back the way you have come. The times ahead of you will be filled with hardship and many times you will believe yourself far less significant than you truly are. In the days to come, you may stand at a critical juncture between Rythar and Mythar and if that comes to pass you should know this: A time comes for all things to die... What does that mean? Who are Rythar and Mythar? I can explain in no measure more as you yet understand your world. In years and in wisdom you will come to me again and a great destiny will be upon you by then. You will be ready for the fullness of truth on that distant day. Until such time, you may consult me on other matters. Tales say that dragons know their own destinies, but I had not heard that they knew the destinies of others. I am no dragon though I wear a dragon's skin. I am the Oracle of the Aal and I am the last of my race. I am ancient, older than dwarf or elf, older than dragons and older than the Valheru who were their masters. Stars that at my birth flamed with violent power have long grown cold, expired. All these things I have seen and farther yet I see into the things that might be. You can see the future? I can glimpse things that may be. Such was the gift given to all those of my race.[GORATH] A moredhel travels with us named Gorath. Is he what he says he is? Can we trust him? He is not what he names himself to be, though even he may not know the lie of his heart. He will be a strong ally unto you and I believe he may even be a champion to the kin who now curse his name. A great destiny awaits him should he have the courage to renounce his pain.[DELEKHAN] Gorath has told us of a moredhel leader, Delekhan. Will he cross the Teeth of the World and attack the Kingdom? Delekhan will never cross the boundary between the Kingdom and the Northlands, but through treachery he will strike a blow against both the Kingdom and his own Nations of the North. Can't you be more specific? Where is he going to strike? What is the nature of this treachery? I do not see futures as you imagine, but futures as they perhaps can be. I know only that Delekhan engineers a deceit with six magicians and that it concerns the fate of the Kingdom.It feels like the Oracle may originally have been intended as a sort of hint station for players who got lost, and she does actually have useful hints for a couple of the less obvious sidequests(like, for instance, the goddamn one we're headed to Sethanon to get involved in shortly), but otherwise she doesn't have an awful lot to say. In the book she mostly just shares her thoughts on Gorath after Owyn asks if Gorath is about to stab them all while they sleep, and then Owyn wakes up. She is, in fact, a hint that something very important is going on, something you'd only know about at this point if you have read Darkness At Sethanon, as the Oracle is very closely related to an Important Metaplot Thing. Since this is also one of the bigger reveals towards the end of the story, I'll be leaving this one out for now. Owyn! Are you alright? Yes... yes, I'm fine. A dragon just told me you were our friend. ... No, he isn't high, the oracle is real, the oracle is also a dragon, and I'm somewhat happy to hear she thinks well of you.  The Oracle's roughly halfway between Malac's Cross and Lyton, and as we're on our way northwards I manage to bungle my way into a trap because I figure I can take a shortcut back to the main road.   I wish they'd made more of these traps more challenging, perhaps mixing in some more enemies and such, since it's usually blatantly obvious where the various crystals have got to go to disable the lightning rods or block the fireball throwers.   As usual, it's protecting a chest. NOTHING   Coming back to the road we also encounter a novelty: a chest that isn't hidden away in the rear end end of a thicket of brambles and bushes.  KNOCKER This one actually has something interesting and gives me an excuse to talk about one of the worst mechanics of the game.  Keys. So, every non-code lock in the game can have one of four states: Unlockable only with lockpicks, unlockable only with a special key, unlockable with lockpicks OR a generic key, not unlockable(there are a few of these, like the "fake" ways up from the Krondor sewers). Now, the problem is that being openable by a key does not immediately make a lock harder to pick, in fact, of the locks openable both with non-generic keys and lockpicks, James can open 7 of them at the start of chapter 2, 15 if we hand him the Amulet of the Upright Man(of course we did). How many are there across the entire game? 23. There's also nothing in the game that really hints, to you, the player, whether a given lock can be opened by a key or not., and all these statistics are also hidden from the average game player, so you never know if you want to grab some keys from a store or not. On top of this, keys are also not expendable. If used right, they never break, if used wrong they sometimes randomly break(assuming they aren't special unique keys). This is a case where less obfuscated mechanics would've worked better. If the player always knew if a non-generic key opened a given lock, and the lockpicking requirement, and keys were always expended when used, it would turn it into a tactical decision of whether to spend limited resources(keys, and thus by extension money) or bypass a chest that they were unable to pick. Oh and if keys were actually usable for more than a fraction of the game's chests. By far the majority of them are Moredhel wordlocks.    Rant aside, as we travel the road between Malac's Cross and Lyton(devoid of combat encounters, nicely enough), we come across a lone house with a well. This house and the associated well are related to a very important bug. Let's have a talk with the owner, oh and poke at the well, of course. BaK posted:The well seemed normal, and yet there was something about it. So at first glance, this well is a ripoff unless the party is severely beat. Resting on the road will bring you up to 80% max health for a pittance in rations, and the remaining 20% can be covered by about 10 gold worth of resting at an inn. This well jumps the entire party straight to full health for 25 gold. Or it would. Except that someone fat-fingered the code and Flarr never takes any actual payment for it. So any time you can be bothered to trek here, the party can get a 100% heal for free. It's pretty handy and I make use of it a few times while dealing with this area since... the party takes a few nicks and scratches.   Looks like we're coming up to the main road between Sethanon and Lyton. To Sethanon, then? ...alright, yes, but only because anyone mucking around up there might be a matter of national security.  The area south of Sethanon proper actually has a number of small farms and homes scattered around, some of which are relevant to us. Let's go see if the farmers here know about any corpse-snatching weirdos in the region.   This first house just spawns an ambush of four quegans, which isn't really a threat to this party but could be a nasty surprise to someone who doesn't see it coming.  They do drop a two-handed broadsword that would be a useful upgrade for someone coming here early.  This is also one of the few fields that has a scarecrow which, if interacted with, the party will inscrutably attempt to yank out of the ground. Don't ask me why.    The area contains a number of worthwhile little caches to either side of the road, including an untrapped chest with a 47% Ruby, which is a pretty great score in terms of money if you find the right store to sell it at(some stores have higher buying and selling prices than others, so if you really want to min/max, you're going to be doing a lot of travelling. It's not really necessary, though, without doing any exploits, simply by going north and through the Dimwood early, this party is probably set for gold for the rest of the game), but soon we arrive at the second farm of the area.  These guys being RPG protagonists, they obviously break into the guy's barn before doing anything else. Also because I couldn't remember if there was anything useful there.  Odd things to have in a barn, what are these?BaK posted:The stamp was simple - the kind generally used by nobles or priests - and it had a handle made of ivory from which depended several silk streamers. The seal itself was of three pots stacked one atop another, the symbol associated with the powerful Glazer's Guild of Romney. Oh, I recognize these. They're seals for the Glazer's Guild in Romney... don't ask me how they ended up in a barn this far away from Romney, however. Clear some space in your packs for them, since we're headed to Romney anyway... you never know what might come in handy.With that bit of theft done, the owner isn't in his house, but if we march into the field past the house...  Quite a nice little stead you have here... Probably wouldn't, but this seems like such a nice lot to give up. Why would you want to? Everybody knows that something evil happened at the Battle of Sethanon, definitely unnatural. Me myself, I used to live in the center of town before King Lyam offered up the money that I should leave. I didn't think much of leaving, but I thought that the evil would stay there. And it hasn't? It's creeping down the road from Sethanon? Listen boy, I don't care for your attitude. You may be all educated, but it don't mean you know nothing about the world. If you're wise, you'll stay away from Sethanon and take anybody else that'll go with you. There's something evil here abouts and I don't want to be about when at last it gets here... So, how much do you want for your land? I...uh...what? If this evil is so imminent and you're anxious to be away from it, I'd be interested in buying this little lot of yours. I'm not afraid of ghosts. What will you sell it to me for? Well I haven't actually decided to make the move as yet... Don't want to get the cart before the horse you know... It'll likely be a while before I sell, see... Don't want to rush it... Do you know anything about the land that adjoins yours by any chance? Is it for sale? Uh, no. Not anymore. I bought it when old widow Petrumh moved out. Bought it? I thought you said you wished to move? I do and... Look, I haven't time to stand about talking all day. If you're interested in the land go ahead and look a round - just stay clear of my stead. Now, I got things to do. Good day. Good day to you, sir.James' first instinct on interacting with people in this game often seems to be to give them a hard time for no obvious reason except that something about them basically offends him. Still, I'm sure Max here is completely unrelated to what's going on. Like hell he is. But we're going to need some sort of evidence or blackmail if we want to wring him dry.   And thus we reach the unnamed town south of Sethanon. New Sethanon, possibly? It's not very large, but it holds probably the most convoluted sidequest in the game except for the grain one. First, let's knock on a few doors and harass the locals, then we'll go to the tavern. BaK posted:James knocked on the door. Now, for the inn.  It has the usual options of barding, drinking, fooding, sleeping and listening to rumours, and I actually get a relevant one this time. BaK posted:He seemed glad to have the company. Like the Temple of Lims-Kragma, it's an extremely heavy-handed hint that there's a spell for making Black Slayers go to eternal naptime. Now, let's harass the tavern owner. Hello there, may I buy... I was offering, miss, to buy you a drink... Oh...oh, sorry. I was thinking you were stopping in to buy something from my goods store across the road. Since my father's death I've had the run of these two places, the tavern here and the goods store across the way. You know, I've had folks in here, four a week by last count, all offering money for a sword made by a hermit up North. Fool that I am, I sent the word out, but that was before things started happening in my store. I've since closed up things for a bit. Closed your store? Why? What sorts of things were going on in there? You'll think I'm foolish...I think I'm foolish... Tell me and I'll listen. If I laugh once, even once, you may upend a cask of ale over my head. You'll pay for the cask if I do... All right then. I'll tell you. In the past few weeks, I've seen a man prowling about in my shop. That's easy enough. Between companions and myself, we can get rid of your prowler by dinnertime tomorrow. Can you now? You run through ghosts as easy as that, poleax poltergeists in your spare time? Ghosts? This prowler of yours is a ghost? Told you that you wouldn't believe me. I'll put it to you though. If you can find a way to put the ghost in my shop to rest, then I'll reopen my shop and give you the Galon Griefmaker that I bought from the hermit. Simple as that. That offer is nearly as attractive as the woman delivering it. Thank you, fair lady.The offer of a sword upgrade is nice in itself, but especially when you know what sword she's offering. It's a really good elf-specialized sword, compared to the Keshian Tapir it loses a tiny bit of strength in exchange for being much more accurate, and hard-hitting swings are worth nothing if they all miss. This is absolutely worth going for, especially as, as long as you can get here in the first place, you can actually complete this entire quest without getting into any fights. It doesn't trigger until chapter 2, though, so no speedrunning down here from LaMut to snag it.  Time to investigate, any proper haunting starts with a dead person, so let's go check out the local graves. Most of the graves contain nothing, but one is one we need to poke at. BaK posted:Jared Lycrow. Owned a shop and a tavern. Never wanted for more. So now we suspect, confirmed by rumours from Nivek and Lysle, that this haunting is because someone defiled Jared's grave and stole his hand. However, at this point it's a bit unclear where you should go next, especially since the next triggers need to actually be done in the right order(not that you can softlock, they'll just not trigger at all until you've done the preceding ones, the only excepting is meeting Lysle). Mind, I don't even think I got the order right since at one point I had one of the triggers refuse to fire and re-talked to multiple NPC's to make it do so. And that was AFTER I pulled up a FAQ to figure out which step I screwed up. Now imagine someone trying to figure this out without a FAQ on their first playthrough. In any case, we now need to go back to Hershel... BaK posted:Hershel scowled at them. Something which really reveals nothing new, but is apparently still important! Also after leaving Hershel's house I get turned around and blunder into the trees where I find some more chests.   WIND Spare change and a low-quality crossbow.  BLOOD This one contains some more money and a new spell, "Thoughts Like Clouds." It's a spell that prevents enemy mages from casting spells(though not from moving and attacking physically), this is theoretically a very good spell except that for the same cost you can prevent them from casting by popping a Rusalki next to them, which will also shoot at enemies or simply hit them with Grief of 1000 Nights which will ALSO prevent them from moving or fighting. Still, it goes towards completionism.   Now, while messing with those chests I REALLY got turned around and ended up heading west when I thought I was heading east, until I looked at the compass. By this point I realized I had almost reached the turn-off north towards old Sethanon at the southern edge of the Dimwood and I thought, hey, why not? I remembered the path as not being very scary...   After all, look at this! A single shade? I will banish this effortlessly. EFFORTLESSLY. Of course, there are five battles on the road to Sethanon, featuring, respectively: 1, 2, 4, 5 and 5 shades. Which ones I bungle into is somewhat randomized by stealth rolls, but after banishing this one and taking another few steps...  Alright, so, with these fights being ambush fights, the Shades always win initiative. They have ranged attacks that MAY be able to miss, but I've never seen them miss, and each shot does ~25 damage. This means that if they focus their attacks, they can huck ~125 damage at each party member per round, and our least beefy character is Owyn, who can take barely 130 damage before going down, while the most beefy, Gorath, clocks in at around 170(combined Stamina and Health, so once the first half is down, they're in trouble anyway). Secondly, the Shades seem to take halved damage from most sources, with Gorath's usually-formidable swings doing barely 20 damage to them, and each shade has between 60 and 90 total damage needed to put them back in the grave.  The first round scraps half of Gorath's health and puts Owyn under threat so he can't summon rusalki, forcing him to resort to dogs instead. This, on the bright side, gives me two per use, but expends limited Horn uses, plus there's a hard cap of four dogs summonable per battle, not on the field at once, but summonable at all. I can ALSO summon four rusalki alongside that, but it would require a ghost to not be currently subjecting Owyn to its terrible grave breath.  Sadly, in the grand battle of dogs vs ghosts... ghosts win. Also note that at this point I have still yet to kill a single Shade.  By the time James and Owyn end up on the ground, Gorath has managed to flatten two Shades and is now in a three-on-one fight with enemies that can hack off half his health per round, and pausing to consume Restoratives eats up his entire turn.  It ends predictably. So let's, uh, reload, shall we?  After reloading things are already off to a better start as I'm now hitting the four-shade battle rather than one of the five-shade battles. That's a significant reduction in the volume of murder headed the party's way every round. Additionally, I've used an Alfathain's Icer that I picked up from a dead Nighthawk earlier on James and Gorath's swords. Normally it would be a +50% damage boost against enemies, in this case it's barely a 25% boost, but I still desperately need it since it may in edge cases cause a Shade to go down in one hit less.  Secondly, while I have no great insight into exactly how the AI makes decisions, Shades seem to shoot from afar about 2 out of 3 times, and the remaining 1 out of 3 times they rush in for a melee attack that does basically the same thing as their ranged attack. This time, they all stood off at range, allowing Owyn to get started on pumping out rusalki. The rusalki last about two or three attacks each, and seem to be priority targets for the shades, thus providing a significant amount of ablative armor for the party.  James still eats poo poo because he's a fragile little babyman, though.   Owyn cuts it close with the rusalki and starts switching to dogs, as the shades start losing some of their number, they kill one of the dogs and something... odd happens.   ???????????? What the hell was in those rations we ate last night?It starts flickering through multiple overworld sprites, mostly gravestones and, once, even a campfire.    I'm not even sure where the brick/stone sprite/texture is from. I vote that we throw the horn in a river when this fight is over. This is absolutely too strange. I no longer want to be a wizard.  Weirdness aside, the battle actually ends up going in our favour. Afterwards, Owyn and Gorath forcefeed James a liter or so of restoratives and they start the trip back towards Sethanon, this time thankfully uninterrupted.  The dog turned into what? A campfire, a gravestone and some bricks. I'm starting to regret taking this route, and this adventure, but now we're here... let's have a closer look. It's around this point that Gorath pops in with a somewhat belated message. You could have maybe pointed that out half an hour ago, I would've still ignored you, but it would've been more fitting.  Despite claiming that Sethanon is somehow important to Midkemian history, it's literally never mentioned in the books until A Darkness At Sethanon where it exists for roughly five minutes before getting annihilated by a magical apocalypse at the climax of the book, ending the Moredhel invasion under the False Murmandamus and giving everyone for miles extremely weird and trippy visions. The government then pays everyone to gently caress off from Sethanon and its environs and never come back, which seems like a totally non-suspicious thing to do. Predictably this also means that, despite the town screen, Sethanon has no amenities to offer. But it DOES have an old storeroom to loot...  As expected, the rations are all spoiled, but everything else is good, including the spells, which are... Dragon's Breath: Creates a fog bank which lessens the aggro radius of enemies both visible and ambush, potentially allowing you to simply walk past them. Useful if there's a fight in a given area that keeps kicking your rear end, but otherwise not super noteworthy. Dannon's Delusion: Creates a fake double of a party member that lasts for a given number of rounds before expiring and which should have equal targeting priority to the real party member. Slightly cheaper than a rusalki, but can't attack like a rusalki. May not have an upper limit, though. And Grief we already have, as one of the game's MVP spells. Now... let's get the gently caress out of here and back to our other side trip. No having side trips inside side trips. We currently need to head back to harass Max Feeber again.  This time, we're breaking into his house before talking to him(for some reason, the previous stages of the quest trigger this as being a good idea to Owyn). BaK posted:The door was unlocked.  In true videogame fashion, anything with a skull on it is important. Let's go interrogate Max about why he's got grave goods lying around his house.  What do you mean? I mean, the three of us found a burial cloth and we think you have something to do with all this evil that is going on around here. You've been desecrating graves haven't you? You broke into my house! I'll tell the constable for this! If he were still living in town I might feel threatened, but I rather imagine you've already managed to scare him off. Now talk, or I'm going to have a cozy little chat with a friend of mine named Nivek - Prince Arutha's tax collector - nice fellow. I think the two of you will get along marvelously... One grave! One grave only, I dug up. I don't remember the fellow's name now, but he used to own the Six Toe Tavern before Nia took over the shop. I thought that maybe I could scare her into moving out and selling to me but she's too darn stubborn. What did you do with the corpse? No corpse about him! He was down to his skeleton. I tried to rebury him but I never found one of his hands. It's bound to be near the graveyard. I think I may have dropped it when I was near old Hershel's house. What else? That's it. That's all I know! Honest. Dug him up and then I reburied him. We'll need to find that hand then and bury it. No thanks to you. Good bye sir and I would advise that you stay away from the Six Toe Tavern from now on. I doubt you will be warmly greeted.This absolute prick dug up Nia's father's corpse to try and scare her out of her property, like a loving Scooby Doo villain. What an absolute twat. I'm sad there's no option to stab him in the brain and be done with it. Once we've talked to Max, we need to head further east to Lyton.   Lyton...  Is patrolled by tax collectors who'll hassle you unless you pay, now, we could pay them, but... That's my money! I earned it fair and square by throwing fireballs at elves and looting their corpses!We could also tell them to gently caress off, at which point trying to continue down the road triggers a battle. Alternately we could just hug the mountains south or north of Lyton as that bypasses the tax collectors. But let's say we fight them like a bunch of savage libertarians who hear the word "taxes."  This triggers a battle with five Quegans(or east of Lyton, four quegans), who are ostensibly tax collectors despite being dressed like pirates. See, killing the tax collectors was the right thing to do. They're obviously just a bunch of corrupt scoundrels masquerading as tax officials.They're of unexceptional strength, but unique in two ways: Firstly, they leave no corpses behind, and thus are only good for training. Secondly, 36 in-game hours later, their encounter respawns at full strength. You could theoretically use it to grind up combat skills, but there's no great need for it. You can also turn off the tax collectors by bringing a number of suits of high-quality kingdom armor to the local "Lord" Lyton, but that's an awful lot of effort since our inventories are full of meth, steroids, food, quarrels and looted valuables.  Good luck taxing my army of ghosts!  Lyton is unremarkable UNLESS we've talked to Lysle, talked to Nia, inspected the grave, and then talked to Hershel to get his second dialogue, then, upon going to the inn...  BaK posted:Men were laughing. This allows us to actually talk to Glover, the guy who bought the hand, otherwise he just ignores us when we interact with his house. There's also another bit of Chapter 2-only dialogue from one of the random people in the inn. BaK posted:James asked for company. Now, we go outside and interact with Glover's house...  BaK posted:The man at the door flew into a rage! This might seem like an awful lot to pay for...  This. But it leads us to a Griefmaker, which literally no shops in the game carry, and is thus quite a good purchase(if it WAS in a shop, the base price would be 350 gold anyway, so still a good price). Now to go put Jared's soul to rest.      Now we just need to tell Nia that we saved the day and get our reward...   I don't know how you've done it, but bless you. I've not heard a knock or a bump coming from my shop for hours! First time in weeks! After I do a little dusting, I should be able to reopen it for business. And seeing that you've held up your end of the bargain, I'll hold up mine. As requested, you can have the Galon Griefmaker I told you about. Thank you again and please come by the shop across the street any time. I promise I'll give you the best bargains you'll find! Thank you, fine lady. It was our pleasure to serve you.As a side effect, this also opens Nia's shop(previously there'd just be a "CLOSED FOR BUSINESS" sign in the window), and while it's somewhat out of the way and doesn't really sell anything unique, another shop is always useful. Guides say it's supposed to be an extra-cheap shop that buys almost anything, but from what I can tell from the actual FAQ site and in-game experience, it's neither.
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Oct 19, 2021 22:03
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Update 15: Grave Mistakes, Part 4 Anyway, it's getting a bit late in the day, so maybe we should- What about that grain? What grain? Locklear promised the Temple of Dala up near Highcastle that he'd look for a sack of grain for them. Oh hell, Ruthia's got it out for me enough as it is, I don't need another angry goddess looking to ruin my day. Guess we're taking a side trip to Highcastle.Since we're now in Chapter 2, we can actually complete the quest! Also the reward for it is super good, so we actually want to finish it, especially since we, at no point, pay anything to do so.  Before we go, here's the Griefmaker. It looks kind of neat, I suppose.     Because I'm flush and also absolutely not actually slogging it all the way to the Teeth of the World on foot(again), I'm heading to Malac's Cross and getting the priests to teleport us to the Temple of Ishap near Loriel for a cool hundred gold coins.   There are a few new encounters up here, mostly low-strength moredhel and a few fresh packs of trolls, but nothing worth reporting on. Moredhel get the sword, Trolls get the fork.  As we're walking along, though...   We interrupt Squire Phillip in the process of taking a dump in some bushes. He's relocated himself notably farther north than last time, but he has nothing new in the way of keywords. He'll be a bit more useful in chapter 3, but for now we'll just leave him to get on with his business and head on to deal with our business, which consists of harassing three local landowners.  Here's the first one... and technically one we can skip, but for the sake of showing off the intended way to resolve it, we're starting here. BaK posted:A friendly woman answered their knock. The fork is, of course, a tuning fork. It only has 4 uses, but that's fine, we just need any tuning fork for the next step. Conveniently she's right near the Temple of Dala(which is actually where I intended to teleport to in the first place, but I hosed up and forgot which one was the right one). Now we need to continue further east, past Highcastle, almost to Wolfram.   (Please forgive me if I screenshot the wrong houses, they all look kind of similar, if you haven't noticed!) BaK posted:James's knock was greeted with a giggle. Usually when pulling things from inventories from these sorts of things, the game will start from the leftmost character moving right, so make sure James has the lowest-uses tuning fork you have, if you have multiple. Also, unlike the goddamn Griefmaker quest, we can visit these sisters in any order and get told what they need so we're able to return. Anyway, we now have pants(though their inventory picture is a pair of boots). Now we're ready to visit the last Halfgate sister, who's south of Highcastle, on the road to the Dimwood.  BaK posted:A pretty woman answered the door. We now have grain! And you might think, gee, how could a single little bag of grain help the Temple of Dala feed the hungry?   Look at the size of this thing. Though it does look like a sprite lifted from some Sierra game(Dynamix, who made BaK, was a subsidary Sierra studio for most of their lifetime). Either way, let's FINALLY see if this was worth it.    BaK posted:James motioned for help. Now, we can choose between one character, or no characters, and obviously we have everyone's defense skill tagged... now, if we just pick ONE character, they get an insane 37.5 boost to Defense, while if we pick no-one, we're praised for our humility and get a "mere" 15 boost to Defense for all characters, still absurd. Here are the text for doing either(I picked "no one" to get everyone boosted). BaK posted:[JAMES] Now, what this actually amounts to, uh, I actually don't quite have a clue(and no FAQ or guide on the internet seems to go into any detail about it that I can find). The simple understanding would be that there's a fixed chance to hit(maybe 50%?), boosted by Accy Melee(or Casting, or Ranged, as appropriate) and subtracted from by Defense. Considering that this, with all the training from being in fights and a copy of Psalm's of Dala I picked up from a store earlier, puts James at almost 100%, this would theoretically make him really, really loving hard to hit(not that Gorath and Owyn are slouches in the department either, but James is the high-Defense champion of the game). I guess we'll see! In any case, we're not quite done with the north. Implausibly, Northwarden and its environs actually have some Chapter 2-unique content.   Why were you two insisting we head up here again? There's a guy here who plays a mean lute. I should have followed Locklear's example and denied you two any votes.Now, at first it might seem like Tamney's gone AWOL since he's not where you met him last time, but he's still here! He's just hiding in an unmarked off-road location in among the trees, north of the road.   Please tell me he hasn't sent you. I'm too exhausted right now to play and I've run all the things I know into the ground. Hmm. I've heard it's a dire day in the keep when the minstrel is without charm. What's bothering you? When one of the Baron's new recruits asked for musical instruction, I heartily agreed, sacrificing my morning walks to make time for his lessons. We started immediately. I demonstrated for him a simple royal scale - ascending eighth notes, progression from Cabdicant to Acoronant in half steps, Kingdom time. Even after two weeks he couldn't find all the notes. He refuses to practice, he can't tell the difference between a tuned and untuned lute, and he patently refuses to learn how to read minstrel writs. I don't understand why he desired lessons at all. Perhaps he thought it would be easier. Everyone does. They believe you simply pick up an instrument and it magically makes sounds of its own accord without so much as a whit of your concentration. Learning music takes discipline, the same as learning how to use a sword. Perhaps you could give us a lesson sometime. You're in luck, I'm free just now and I've recently restringed my lute. There is, of course, the matter of a small fee which Baron Gabot imposes for services rendered outside of the garrison compliment. It would be seventy five sovereigns for the lesson. I realize it's a bit steep, but part of the cost covers the price of the practice lute itself. Do you still want the instruction?[YES] We are your obedient pupils, musician. I already know where to find the notes on the lute, but beyond that I'm completely in the dark. I'm sure of it. You'll find a lute there behind you.Play all scale the notes from middle C to the G in quarter notes, playing only the coronant notes and then come back down to middle C again. Good. That is the royal scale. Now I want you to play the same scale but instead of playing E coronant, play the E abdicant. All the rest of the notes are the same. Exactly. That's the noble's scale. Together, the royal scale and the noble's scale are the basis of most of our music, though we occasionally use the empress or Keshian scale. The empress' scale is played by playing C coronant, D abdicant, E abdicant, progress to F coronant, G coronant, A abdicant, B coronant, and finally C coronant. I know it sounds complicated, but try it. You may master the lute yet. I want you to repeat the things that I've taught you for an hour every day. Once you can play those comfortably, we can have another lesson... Forgive me, but I have to go and prepare some songs for the Baron Gabot's dinner tomorrow night. Take care and keep practicing with your lute. We shall. Thanks for the lesson.Then after this we can walk away for five minutes, then right back and trigger a SECOND dialogue. BaK posted:Music drifted on the wind. I haven't seen you in a while. Have you three been practicing what I taught you before? A little. We've been occupied with a search for the Nighthawks. Do you know anything about them? I try not to know things about the Guild of Assassins. The greatly knowledgeable on the subject tend to rapidly progress to the greatly dead. Call me a coward, but I tend to stick to topics which don't endanger my life. Understandable. Are you still giving your musical lessons? Yes. Since you've already purchased your practice lute, its only twenty sovereigns this time around. Do you want more instruction?[YES] We are at your command, musician. Go ahead and use my spare lute. It's there behind you. Do me a favor and strum the strings.Ach, it's what I thought. I haven't gotten around to tuning it today. Okay, strum the top string. Since someone stole my tuning fork last week, we'll just have to call that string E. Now, put your finger on the fifth fret of the first string and strum the first and second strings together. Okay, that's good. The second string's in tune. Try doing the same thing with the second and third strings. The third string is a bit abdicant. Turn the tuning peg for the third string until the two strings are in harmony. Try the fourth string now. Good. The fifth string is a bit odd. Rather than putting your finger on the fifth fret, put your finger on the fourth fret of the forth string and strum the fourth and fifth. And the last string is tuned like the second string. Finger on the fifth fret, fifth string and strum the fifth and sixth. Excellent...unfortunately, I don't have time to teach you anything else but at least now you'll know how to tune your instrument - after all, if your lute is out of tune, how will anyone know you're playing the song correctly? Please forgive me, but I've got to get an arrangement put together before dinner time tomorrow night, so I have to go. Keep practicing. You're showing real promise. We shall. Thanks for the lesson.There's some randomness involved, but this increases Barding for the entire party by between 24 and 36 points. The end result, in this case, is that Owyn is at 92 Barding. He can now collect the maximum barding fee from every tavern for the rest of the game. This HAS cost, in the end, 95 gold sovereigns, a crossbow string and a single practice lute, but if we hit every possible tavern from here on out, that would probably be well in excess of 3000 gold collected. The party's potential money problems are sorted by this... as well as all the other stuff they've done so far. And we've still yet to exploit any of the actual glitches. We're still not quite done with Northwarden, though, the last time we visited, the Baron was out, let's see if he's in now(he is).     You should know that there are not many things that anger me. But as I feel, I never have been angry until this very moment! If I have given you offense... Offense?! Every day my men ride to the border of the Northlands to hold back Delekhan's obscene dogs, every day they thrust their lives into the breech to buy another day of the Kingdom's freedom! These mountain tops are littered with the bodies of men who have given their lives in that cause and you spit on their graves by bringing a moredhel into my castle! I should hang you from the bailey! He has cause to be here. Prince Arutha believes this moredhel may have information that can lead us to the Nighthawks... drat Prince Arutha! He has no conception of what the moredhel are like and the fact that he has taken this moredhel's word proves it. Seigneur Locklear told me the story about this moredhel and I no more believe in his virtue than I believe in Delekhan's strength! Baron, I have a duty to perform and if in the name of that duty I must offend a Baron then so be it! As I have had cause to come to this place, I need a few answers and I sincerely believe it would benefit the both of us to help one another. If you choose to block me, then I am sure that Prince Arutha would be more than happy to inform King Lyam that one of his subjects has deemed himself above imperial courtesy! Seigneur, as a border baron I owe fealty to King Lyam and he alone! What Prince Arutha may or may not do is his own affair. But if by answering your questions I may be shod of you all the more quickly, I am at your disposal! What do you want?[HELPING OUT] Who is in charge of your guards here? I would be interested in speaking to him... My guards are hard at work. If you wish to speak to the guards, I can arrange for you to walk guard duty, Seigneur. Otherwise, I will not have their schedules disrupted. Shall I have Lieutenant Aaron put you on the night watch?[YES] Sounds marvelous. When do I start? Lieutenant Aaron! I have a new recruit I would like for you to assign...BaK posted:It was late. I would be most interested to know why you felt it necessary to have me awakened in the middle of the night. It would have been preferable if you had come when I called. Your guard shifts are utterly inadequate, Baron. Last night, while I was on guard duty, I decided to vary the schedule a bit and see what happened. When I watched the bailey gate when I was to be on the other side of the castle, I noticed a soldier slipping a note to another man who was waiting outside the castle gate. A few minutes later, when I shifted to the opposite side, again I saw another instance of someone attempting to steal a griefmaker from the castle armory. I stopped him, naturally. There were several other instances. And the note passed through the bailey gate? Harmless. A love letter from a soldier quartered here named Corbi to a girl named Thea... You've become too regimented here. Your schedules are known outside the castle, very likely made known by a spy working within these very walls. I urge you to take greater precautions and to reevaluate your staff. It could be the downfall of this castle. I shall...consider it... In the meantime, I ask you accept something as a token of gratitude. There is a suit of Euliliko Armor that I no longer have a need for. You may have it if you wish. It makes no difference to me.Euliliko armor is the third tier of armor, one step above the Elven stuff that Gorath and James have been wearing for a while now, but quite rare despite it. Most suits of armor in the game are Kingdom, Elven or Dragon Plate(Fifth tier out of six), oddly enough the 3rd and 4th tiers(Euliliko and Grey Tower Plate) are almost completely unrepresented in the game by comparison.  The Euliliko armor also has one hell of a garish paintjob, that should give a loving stealth penalty. Also, as should be obvious, this entire detour is completely non-canon. In the book, the party is much more duty-bound and actually take their jobs seriously. The chumps. Anyway, ONE last detour. ONE LAST DETOUR, as we head south from Northwarden to take a shortcut back to Malac's Cross.    This actually brings us quite close to Kenting Rush, though it isn't our goal. Along the way, we get an area transition dialogue... BaK posted:Owyn was whistling.    There's little to do here at the Temple of Kahooli until Chapter 3(no interesting dialogue from the temple leader), but it saves me having to walk all the way back to the Temple of Tith or Dala, as I can just teleport back to Malac's Cross instead.   And thus, we've spent about a month enriching and training the party rather than saving the kingdom. Good thing Delekhan operates via the calender of game triggers rather than real time. Update 15.5: Lore Dump 4 Arutha and the Mockers OR Why Arutha Sucks So, the Mockers and Arutha are common fixtures of the books all the way from Magician: Apprentice, where we're taught of Arutha as a competent and pragmatic commander and administrator even while he's "just" a prince of the realm without estates or holdings to his own name. But the problem is that he's kind of an rear end in a top hat and a creep. When the books start, Arutha is in his early 20's and Anita is about 6 years old, she gets an "Arutha sure is cool and dreamy"-crush as kids will sometimes get on an older figure, basically a platonic swooning thing. They later meet when he's in his mid-20's and she's 10 or 12 years old, when he rescues her from an older man(Guy du Bas-Tyra) planning to marry her for political reasons(though Guy is in a rush to assure everyone that he does NOT want to gently caress the child). Anita gives Arutha a very chaste peck on the cheek as thanks for saving her, and Arutha promptly starts acting all dreamy-eyed and swoony about her and ends up marrying her at the first moment where it would only be VERY creepy rather than IMMENSELY creepy(i.e. when she's like... 16? The timeline is a bit vague, but he's at least twice her age at the time it happens). Now, to explain another reason why Arutha sucks requires going into the Mockers. They're a thieves' guild, which isn't a rare thing in fantasy fiction, where they run the gamut from being wholesalers for adventuring thieves(i.e. tomb robbers who need high-quality crowbars and trap-disarming tools) through pacifist burglars(Oblivion's Thieves' Guild comes to mind), rich-to-the-poor revolutionaries or sometimes just a parody that takes on a life of their own(looking at you, Discworld). And usually there's some sort of reason why they're tolerated. Either they mostly steal from monsters and the dead, or they're so stealthy and pacifist that they don't bring much attention to themselves as an organization, or, as they redistribute wealth, they have the support of the common people. The Mockers, though... are pricks, absolute pricks, they're a "thieves' guild" in the sense of the mafia, in that they have legbreakers and loan sharks, collect protection money and even organize prostitution and begging throughout the city. They absolutely kill people and their only goal is to enrich themselves. They're also very centralized and Arutha knows that their headquarters is in the sewers, where he could send in the army to flush them out and drag them before the courts or just kill them all. He doesn't give a drat, though, that they're exploiting the vulnerable or killing people. Additionally, the Nighthawks, the guild of assassins, also operate more or less openly in the Kingdom, killing for money without anyone reacting to it(they operate so openly that they have signet rings and amulets declaring them killers for hire on their person at all times), but at no point does Arutha or anyone else in power make it a point of policy to wipe out an outright assassins' guild until the Nighthawks gently caress up and plug Anita with a poisoned bolt while aiming for Arutha. Which to me means that Arutha is A) an immense creep and B) unconcerned with the lives or safety of his citizens except if something that threatens them might also threaten himself.
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Oct 19, 2021 22:04
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So someone might be thinking right now: "Purple, you absolute fuckface, why the hell did you just post FOUR updates?" The answer is that thanks to all the fuckin' words words words in this game, I ended up at 160000 characters of text, which is well above the 50k-per-post limit of SA.
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Oct 19, 2021 22:07
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JustJeff88 posted:I belive that the Lysle/James thing is intimating that (minor lore spoiler) both are sons of the Upright Man. This is confirmed during a face-to-face meeting in Silverthorn. The Upright Man says this to Arutha who agrees to keep quiet; James has no idea how his father is, though he did occasionally remark that he seemed to get away with poo poo that most people couldn't. Not completely, though... in this same meeting, Arutha has to bargain for Jimmy's life because Jimmy broke one of the unpardonable rules of the guild. It's one of my favourite scenes. I gotta admit, I used to like the Midkemia books more. When you're in the 14 to 18 years old span and like books with elves in them, they're like crack. Oh man there's elves! Two kinds of elves?! Three?! FOUR????? And there's a wise-cracking kid who shoves a warhammer up a monster's butt so someone can stab it? This is perfect! And there are descriptions of murdering and wizards exploding things??? Hell yeah! But like, every time I've reread one of the books, for some reason, something new jumps out at me as being an issue or poorly considered. You don't really notice how hosed up the Arutha/Anita romance is, for example, unless you read the books together in close succession and actually pay attention to the ages because they're so vaguely stated(hell, I wouldn't be surprised if it slipped Feist's mind how far apart they were, too, and thus he's not aware of how creepy it is). The lack of any female characters with anything approaching agency is also something that has aged really poorly. In my opinion, out of the nine Midkemia books I've read(Magician: Apprentice, Magician: Master, Silverthorn, A Darkness At Sethanon, Krondor: The Betrayal, Krondor: The Assassins, Krondor: The Tear of the Gods, Honoured Enemy, Jimmy the Hand), the best four are absolutely the ones where someone else wrote them, the three Krondor books and Honoured Enemy. Jimmy the Hand also had a different writer or was co-written but suffers from just a bit too much Sex Weird on top of everything else. Now, you might go: "Wait a moment, Purple, doesn't it say Feist wrote the Krondor books?" It does, but according to folks on the official Midkemia forums, they were actually ghostwritten by someone else with extremely minimal involvement from Feist(considering a particularly egregrious editing slip-up in Tear of the Gods, I can absolutely believe this), the same goes for Honoured Enemy despite it being credited as a cooperative work(as it has a couple of points where it countermands some central Elf Lore). And even if Feist did write the Krondor books, he clearly works much better when someone else handles the basic characters and script outline and he just has to fill in the spaces. Guildenstern Mother posted:Key mechanics are weird but I think you might be a bit off on parts of it. You can click on the lock and it will tell you what kind of key it takes (if it does take one). Not sure if you have to have opened a lock with that type of key yet for it to work, I'm reasonably sure you do, but there's definitely a few different dialogues for lock clicking based on what category the lock falls into. But yeah, by and large you're better off just boosting the hell out of James and Gorath's lockpicking. Well, consider me corrected. I didn't even know you COULD examine locks. Thank you, game, for making this so super obvious that I noticed it before replaying this game for the (10th???) time.
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Oct 20, 2021 08:59
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paragon1 posted:Or whoever provides that 100 sovereigns for 4 months figure has a truly absurd standard for "comfortable" I guess. In this case it's a rough-and-tumble mercenary, so I doubt they're overly used to living in the lap of luxury. SIGSEGV posted:Also a rest at an inn costs around 25 of them, I wouldn't call 4 of those a month and nothing else "the good life" in any case, so they are absolutely full of poo poo. In the game, hard rations for one person for two weeks costs 7 gold coins, a single cup of ale is 1 gold coin. The economy isn't super realistic, yeah.
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Oct 21, 2021 10:12
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Schwartzcough posted:Wow, that was an update, alright! You... know you can break up and spread out updates a bit, right? That sounds like an awful lot of effort compared to any given recording session turning into one update. You guys are just lucky I don't play this game in four-hour stretches.
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Oct 22, 2021 23:19
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