|
PurpleXVI posted:What's that? Baby wants camera angles that actually show what's going on? Perhaps ones where all the enemies on the battlefield can be seen at once? lmao check out this nerd who actually wants enemies to be easily targetable Yup. When I first played this I didn't know you could switch camera angles, which was fun. Once you know about the eyeball icon in the corner which lets you know there are multiple camera angles, it is a little better, but still awful. This game also really punishes you for being a packrat, so of course my entire party is maxed out on carrying crap that I will never use. Despite all the bullshit and dated mechanics, I still love this game, but man can it be annoying. Another fun quirk is that I don't think you can load a saved game or quit to the menu from combat, you can only quit the game entirely. So if you want to try different conversation options that lead into combat, or change the party gear, you just have to restart the game.
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2022 04:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 14:08 |
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:What's that? Baby wants camera angles that actually show what's going on? Perhaps ones where all the enemies on the battlefield can be seen at once? lmao check out this nerd who actually wants enemies to be easily targetable Honestly, while I think the story is pretty bad, this is the kind of stuff I was talking about mostly when I said this game loving sucked. The actual gameplay just felt like a miserable slog when I played it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2022 04:50
|
|
|
What is the button to change camera angles
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2022 06:04
|
|
|
Guildenstern Mother posted:What is the button to change camera angles They're [ and ], oddly enough.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2022 06:27
|
|
|
Thank you!
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2022 08:45
|
|
|
Update 04: The Sewer Chapter    James, please take those ridiculous things off. I can't, Jazhara, that would disappoint my fans. I'm sure they'll be even more disappointed when you walk off a ledge in the dark and break your neck. Someone hasn't read the books, I see. I can canonically navigate in the dark with no light at all.  I'm just glad I didn't have to be recoloured. What was that? Looked like some kind of monster. Impossible, didn't you see how it moved? It sort of... glid along the ground? It skated, William, and who's ever heard of a skating monster? Then what, James? A very large rat?  I'm sure we'll find that there's a perfectly logical explanation for it.Dialogue aside: welcome to the sewers and gently caress the sewers. Imagine a maze with no map, where it's entirely possible to get stuck looping around on yourself(happened to me several times) and where changing camera angles make even the old stand-bys of "stick to a left-hand wall" unreliable unless you're on your toes.    No monsters, eh, James? This looks like the work of a monster to me. Wrong, Mockers did this. And just left the corpses lying around? Eh, corpses are biodegradeable.  What doesn't help the navigation down here are these intersections which aren't at right angles, thus making them a bit more confusing just for the hell of it.   A couple of places down here, either pre-placed or randomly, I'm not sure, you can run into some squads of mockers. If you pick the wrong dialogue choice, they try to pulp your stupid loving face. One of the differences in the book involves the general atmosphere of the sewers. The guy he let out of jail turns out to have been scoring free drinks at every tavern in town in exchange for his story of the attack... which also happens to include Knute bragging about having made a "big score" that would make him untouchable. Everyone assumes this means a big stash of treasure, and now the sewers are flooded with idiot "treasure hunters" who get into fights with both mockers and sewer monsters. Spoiler: that actually WAS a sewer monster we saw earlier.   The mockers, btw, are dickheads, and KO Jazhara in the first round. Also what really pisses me off is when an area has multiple camera angles in a fight, but then only a single fixed camera angle out of combat. The camera angles are there! Why are you hiding them from me! gently caress you, game devs!!!  This fight almost goes really poorly as the mockers also get in a solid dunkening on James, getting real close to killing him, too.    The first thing you should try to do is to hit the central cistern, you're sort-of hinted at your closeness by the sound of rushing water intensifying as you get closer to it. This is both if you want to do things "properly" or the speedrun way.    Look out, gang, sewer ninjas! Keshian Izmalis, actually. Like I said, sewer ninjas.The Izmali murder cult are the people who kicked the poo poo out of James in The Assassins, tried to summon a demon, etc. were general desert dickheads.  The most interesting thing about this fight is that every single one of these dickheads has a poisoned dagger and... I swear, I have no idea how poison works in this game. For instance, have a look at what it does to James and William.    There's clearly some sort of RNG involved, plus at least two different base intensities of poison, and when I busted out the keshian poisoned daggers(they're lootable, delightfully) in a later battle, they only did 5 to 10 points of poison damage per round. Maybe some/most NPC's have an inherent poison resistance?  At least among all the potions you'll have looted up to this point, you're just about guaranteed to be drowning in poison antidotes.  Jazhara's levelup gets her Phoenix Blades, which is an all-party version of Demonblade, Ride the Lightning which lets the caster teleport around the battlefield and is pretty useless, Lightning Strike which is a really good offensive spell that sometimes stun enemies and Arrows of Disruption which seems to consistently roll way lower than the listed damage. Corpses also get looted.  I keep one of these around for James since they do have some niche uses.  They're also carrying one of these notes about how Jazhara is marked for death by her uncle, Hazara Khan, which the party has no comment on. This is also a lot different in context in the book. The note instead pops up among Yusuf's papers and Jazhara is initially shaken by discovering it, until James recognizes the signature and seal as fake, that it was Yusuf preparing to have her assassinated if she didn't want to play ball. Instead in the book the Izmalis are also hunting for the treasure since they need a bunch of loot to re-establish their murder cult.   In any case, let's go around the cistern clockwise because it's the only reason to poke at this pointless tunnel.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhZ0SFD1880 Short Version:  What's on the other side? A fifteen-foot drop down to filthy water. Well, not a way we'll be going, then. Of course, but what if we assumed that Bear came down here, busted this grate open, and then went this way? I'll agree if it ends this thread of conversation faster.I seriously have no idea why the party makes this assumption, especially since they got their hands on the key that would allow Bear easy access to the sewers in the first place. If I remember right, in the book, Bear busted out of town via one of the gates well before this.   The cistern has four exits, the "gold" tunnel with no purpose, this tunnel with a torch in it and then two more tunnels that lead to the maze of filthy pathways. Let's hit up the torch.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB8mbGLBFQ4 Short version:   Dare you enter my filthy realm?! I think we'd rather not. Good! Because if you did, we'd gut you like fish! Um, alright. And then laugh at you! What about you let us past for old times' sake even though we have no reason to want to go here? Maybe if you fight a horrible sewer monster for us. It's a deal.You can choose to just attack these nerds to speed things up, it leads you a fight against first three mockers(not noteworthy) and then, as you proceed down the tunnel, six mockers who come at the party from both sides in two groups of three, which can be pretty rough since mockers, being thieves, have a default bonus to initiative that means they might well get the drop on you and get in all their attacks before you even get a move. Technically you can stumble into the monster lair before accepting this quest, but the party will arbitrarily decide they don't want to go in there unless they have a reason to, which is a wild take from a group of idiots who've happily broken into a dozen houses and stabbed everyone in sight prior to this.    I attempt to follow the strategy guide's directions for where to find the monster lair and promptly manage to run in circles for roughly half an hour of real time.    On the way, I come across some more mangled corpses.  More victims of the Mockers? Not unless they've started using their teeth.   Oh no! A dramatic ambush!    These things are super chunky, without Woundlord, they would take a lot of whittling down, since James hands out 3x the damage that William does at this point.  And of course they also have an inherent poison effect on their claws. Thankfully they don't do too much damage per whack, though part of that may also be a function of my having found some magic leather(Ironskin) for James. The downside to Ironskin leather armor is that as long as you wear a single unit of it(armor is split into legs, arms, torso), you suffer a big Agility penalty.   These bits also puzzle me. They voice everything else, so why is this text? Is it something they jammed in after the voice actors peaced out? Something they didn't have time to record?    This is about where I realize I'm pretty well off track, because the directions in the strategy guide say I should've hit that wandering monster before even reaching the central cistern, goddammit.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2KGf9QfstU Short version:  Hold up, I sense morons ahead.  So the important thing about this stupid pack of sewer idiots is that they are completely and utterly useless. If you want to, you can annoy them by refusing to believe what they tell you and end up fighting them, but it's one of the most purposeless encounters in the game. They have nothing useful OR interesting to say about anything.  As they leave, these dumb dildos are all "har har, we've totally just sent them to their deaths at the hands of monsters by implying there's treasure in [direction]!" but the thing is that they never gesture in a direction or mention a direction(not that we have a compass or anything to navigate by, but still), so it's completely loving useless. I really should've just pissed them off and stabbed them all.   About 20 minutes later I finally find this one corridor(which you'll totally miss if you stick purely to, say, the left hand, since that just loops you around in a circle) which looks like any other corridor but the dark end is an interactible rather than having a movement icon.  As mentioned, the party will refuse to enter if they don't have the quest from the Mockers. Anyway, let's get chopping.   James makes me proud as he carves up a monster in a single round.   Also something goes wacky here when Jazhara hits one of them with a Fire Lance cast, the normally minor crispy fire .gif that plays bloats up hugely and as a result actually looks somewhat impressive.   This is another place where the game and the book majorly diverge. In the game, the monsters are just random sewer critters. They need killing and their eggs need breaking so the Mockers don't get eaten all the time. In the book... it's a lot loving darker. Someone's been buying up, uh, human infants, and putting them in magic transformation eggs that turn them into horrific monsters. What the party comes across isn't just a neat stack of bland eggs, but instead a pile of throbbing, partially translucent bags through which they can see the victims slowly undergoing the transformation into crazed creatures.   Gross. Let's pop back and tell the Mockers that we did their dirty work.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bodCaoBQ0s0 Short version:  Congratulations! You have completed my mystic quest! Will you let us into your tunnel now? Maybe! Or maybe I'll stiff you on a reward! Not like you'll find anything down here, anyway, if Lukas is down here, we've been completely unable to find him. Just shove over, grandpa.  I love how the Mockers say they haven't been able to track Lukas to his hideout considering that it's a straight line loving tunnel with no side corridors.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON8OvUxDLBw Short version:   Lukas, you jackass, why are you hiding down here? Got me some pirate treasure. Can't leave it alone. Needs to be flipped once an hour or it'll burn. ...how drunk are you? I've been hiding out in the sewers for several days, it was either being so drunk half my senses shut down or being able to smell where I was. So can we see this treasure?   Only thing you'll be seeing is Lims-Kragma's halls! Look, buddy, pal, friend. We've killed like twenty of your buddies, five-hundred homeless people, three sewer monsters and a pack of ninjas within the last 24 hours, do you think you stand a chance? Maybe y'all are real tired? Not tired of seeing what's in your pockets after I kill you.  Thanks, James, you really are a pal. Reminds me, your daughter's dead. Aw hell. Well, at least I've got William. Y'all want to see that treasure now? Please. ...this is no ordinary pirate treasure. I'll say! With this much, I can understand why Knute thought he'd be untouchable. No, what I mean is this was stolen from the Church of Ishap. Son of a bitch! Now there's no way we'll be able to keep this.In the book, the origin and details of Knute's treasure are actually revealed in the prologue. Bear charters him to raid an Ishapian vessel and, just as they've gotten most of the loot back on board, they have to pull free or get dragged down with it. Bear's on board, yelling for something else of interest, but since he's been exceptionally irrational and psychopathic lately, Knute figures he'll just let him go down with the vessel. He then poisons the rest of the crew, stashes the loot and starts getting paranoid about Bear maybe tracking him down. So he gets in bar fights until the guards arrest him, figuring the safest place to be is in the jail, surrounded by guards, and that he'll buy his freedom with a share of the loot and information on where the ship went down, since he assumes what Bear failed to acquire was something really important. Hm, how are we going to get all of this back to the Palace? Funny you should say that, Mr. Highest Strength Score.Next update: we're out of the sewers and back to menacing the homeless population, also solving crimes and swearing at camera angles.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2022 18:08
|
|
|
Man, I really do not remember having huge troubles with the sewers like this. Like the only problem I even remember of note was finding the Izmali encounter at the cistern really annoying. I didn't bother with a guide to navigate, so I guess I just got unusually lucky with my choices? I don't know.PurpleXVI posted:In the book... it's a lot loving darker. Also, Jesus what the gently caress.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2022 19:41
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:
Shades of the Goldfinger "you know gold weighs a lot, there's no way you can get it out of fort knox by truck" conversation right here
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2022 19:45
|
|
|
I think that the Mocker voice actor pulled what is called a 'Reverse Dick Van Dyke' where, instead of trying to sound cockney he ended up Australian, he sounds like an Australian trying to be cockney. To be fair, I can't do cockney either. My brummie's not bad, but I did grow up near Birmingham. Purple, I know that it's too early to talk about story, but how do you feel so far about mechanics in this game vs BoK vs BoA? I think that it's fair to compare the three games for obvious reasons, even though Return has a very different engine and presentation.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2022 01:43
|
|
|
I wonder if it's worth keeping track of James mary sue-ness: - Only one who could save orphans from a burning building - Has sunglasses which are completely foreign to the settings
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2022 06:25
|
|
|
JustJeff88 posted:I think that the Mocker voice actor pulled what is called a 'Reverse Dick Van Dyke' where, instead of trying to sound cockney he ended up Australian, he sounds like an Australian trying to be cockney. To be fair, I can't do cockney either. My brummie's not bad, but I did grow up near Birmingham. I mean, Antara can just go burn in hell, generally, there's really no reason to even think about it. Now, Return vs Betrayal. Pros for Return: Embryonic "linebacker" abilities for fighters that let them intercept guys running for the mages on occasion, a general absence of "gently caress you, you die now"-spells with no saves or counters, combat settings for fighters give them a bit more detail, the occasional presence of "battle terrain" makes the battlefields a bit more interesting, less fundamentally useless buff items(like the items that exist just to counter a hostile type of weapon booster in Betrayal will NEVER be used by anyone not psychic). Cons for Return: Not being able to equip a bow AND a sword at once makes fighters less flexible, mages needing to be barehanded while casting makes them less flexible, not being able to use weapon greases or buff potions ahead of combat makes them a LOT less worth considering since it's very rare that it's worth wasting an entire turn's worth of actions on using them, quick-cast spell failure chances are fundamentally fine BUT not having the failure chances shown is dogshit, not displaying to-hit chances either is dogshit, having every magic item be super-vague about what it exactly does is dogshit(Betrayal didn't outright state it either, but the effects were generally so simple, +X to a skill, that it was simple to spot by equipping it and having a quick look at the character sheet), the lack of a hex/square grid for combat makes it hard to tell how characters will move, hard to tell where ranged attacks can go and who will block what, hard to tell when a fighter is actually plugging a gap or not.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2022 08:56
|
|
|
Update 5: Mysterious Mysteries, Part 1   So, William has left the party and will not be rejoining the party, though he will be rejoining the story later. This also means that, since William is literally the only character in the game who can use greatswords and axes, any future axes or greatswords we find with anyone else, will be completely useless.  I will miss William, but on the bright side, now you can take those off. I could also keep them on. ...this will be a long day.  So, we're off to find the Wreckers' Guild and hire them to raise a ship containing a Mystery Item of the Church of Ishap. In the game we don't yet know exactly what it is, except that it's very important, but in the book at this point we'd already have been told that it is literally the most vital magical artifact in all of Midkemia, which is a pretty bad thing to lose in the sea. Because I am an extremely predictable creature, though, I go kill a few homeless people first.    And because the game has had enough of my poo poo, they drop a piece of gear that only William would have gotten any use out of.  Whomp whomp.Anyway, predictably the Wreckers are at the Sea Gate.    The only two things of interest in this quarter except for the Wrecker's Guild are a single store, an alleyway and a mysterious warehouse. I wonder if it's related to some cut content since it's got a large front door you can interact with only to get a "these doors are super locked!"-message.   The alleyway is one of the most annoying parts of the game. There is a way to get a homeless guy to spawn here which has some plot info but outside of the first time I played the game, I've never managed to make it loving happen again! Even following the strategy guide, it didn't work! I have no idea if it's either bugged or doing one minor thing out of sequence deletes him from reality.  There are people who live like this? It's not so bad once you learn to use the trash to keep the guards and muggers away.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNJW4Az8ae4 Short Version:  Why the long faces? Who are you? The cops? Nice try, but I'm doing the interrogating here. Guildmaster got murdered, Kendaric did it, Jorath knows more, now get off our backs, we're moping.A dead guildmaster at the guild we need help from? That sounds like a problem.   Sir, could you point us towards Jorath? Just down the hallway behind me, only one on the ground floor that doesn't contain sad dudes and boxes.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH-s1RZKfsA Short version:  Sir, we need to have a ship raised. Ah, yes, would that I could help, but the guild master is dead, you see. And no one else here can help us raise a ship? Well, there was one, but he was, you see, both the murderer, and also an inferior minority. ...excuse me? Being Keshian, you see, he has an inferior brain, and also finds himself prone to violence. Thus, he slew the guild master in a rage. Due to being of an inferior race. ... 'scuse me while I put on this asbestos smock. Are you blind as well as a racist prick? I'm both Keshian and the Prince's court mage. Well I apologize if your feelings were hurt, madam, but it's just facts and science. Facts don't care about your feelings. James, I believe we'll be leaving. I can't believe you didn't set him on fire. That absolute prick should be glad he's wrong about Keshians not being able to control their impulses. Maybe we can find a way to solve this and ruin his life. Let's poke around. For some reason everyone on the ground floor is armed. I have no idea if there's a way to aggro them or something, also none of them can be talked to, so let's shuffle up top.   Up top, we'll head to the dead guild master's room first. The party does the same thing in the book, but, hearing someone inside, they kick the door in expecting an ambush of some sort because a lot of people have tried to stab them this week.  Just like in the game, though, it's just the housekeeper, poor lady almost has a heart attack in the book, though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5lejd3yKF0 Short version:  Hello old crone, please explain what's going on, but without any racism. Well Kendaric yelled at the guildmaster, like always. And the guildmaster had a weak heart, like always. And this time the guildmaster died from all the yelling. ...and you saw this happen? I heard the yelling and then I reasoned out the rest. Like a genius. The guards said I was very clever. Please tell us what other very clever things you're thinking. I'm thinking that it's weird Kendaric would yell the guild master to death seeing how they clearly liked each other a lot and the guildmaster said Kendaric was the smartest member of the guild.  So the people who are desperate to tell us Kendaric killed the guildmaster are a senile old lady and the most racist person in Krondor. Yes, I know, this is an open and shut case. Please tell me you're kidding. Of course I am, now watch the hallway while I break into some rooms down here. To look for evidence? ... ...to look for evidence, right? What a sham! I believe this was Journeyman Kendaric's room, what's wrong with it? Someone already broke open this lock. ...and what does this tell you, James? That someone beat me to it. Or perhaps that someone tried to rob Kendaric on the same night the guildmaster was killed?  Kendaric's room has three poorly visible interactibles. Under his bed and then two points on his desk.  As much as I hate to credit Jorath's analysis of anything, financial issues are often a reason to commit murder. True, if he was the next in line to run the guild, it could have helped him pay his debts. Must've been one hell of a snail in here once. This isn't a natural shell, James, it's a magical artifact, intended to improve water magic. Shame there's no water magic in this game, must be a clue, then. Exactly, someone wouldn't get their hands on this without being good friends with a magic shop owner. Good friends enough for them to shelter him, perhaps...  Then in the drawer of Kendaric's desk is the worst puzzle I've encountered in a long drat time.   The goal is to click on the chunks in the bottom section in the right order to assemble an image. If you take too long between clicks, the image starts fading and will eventually reset completely.  As seen, however, there's no penalty for wasted clicks or misclicks, so just spam clicks on everything on the bottom as the image is slowly assembled.  Put together the hull, then the sails and finally the little white bits at the top of the one sail. Then it's solved.  This is the reward for solving this "puzzle."  So now we can raise the vessel on our own and don't need the Wreckers' Guild, right? I'm afraid that's impossible, James. Ah, drat, I guess one of the casters needs to be a powerful water mage which only a Wreckers' Guild member would have? Nothing of the sort, I just refuse to be a scab.The way magic works and the ubiquity of magic feels hilariously inconsistent from each piece of Midkemia media to the next. In the first few, minor mages seem to be everywhere, but unappreciated and unrespected, and outside of a very few no appreciable talents at all outside of cursing someone's cheese. Then by the time of Silverthorn, there are enough with notable talents like telepathy and oracular vision that a community of them can form at Stardock and they can be discriminated against. We're also introduced to the Pantathians who can delete people by pointing at them and, considering the dearth of anyone else having wizards or magical defenses, it's hard to understand why they do weird-rear end schemes with the Moredhel rather than just walking in and wiping out entire Midkemian armies with magic. In Betrayal, every second encounter has someone who can throw fireballs. In The Assassins there are minor mages everywhere, enough to have stores and to hire themselves out as magical assassins. And in Return... we're a bit back to magic being rare, with the exception of there being a literal Wizard Mart in Krondor. We'll get back to that when we get to Kendaric.    So if that other one was Kendaric's room... ...this must be Jorath's! We're so breaking into this one. A shame, he has left no evidence around implicating him in some horrible crime we could use as an excuse to kick his rear end. ...we could just kick his rear end anyway. Please, let's try to at least pretend to be the good guys. Someone as scummy as Jorath must have something incriminating in his private quarters. Jazhara! Look! This drawer! ...this empty drawer? But maybe it's only empty because it's day. Yes, James, I'm sure that the contents will come back here to sleep at night. Seriously, we'll come back here at night, and you'll see.This is only mildly paraphrased, I still find James' logic here somewhat bizarre.   Now, since Jazhara has given us a lead that there might be a wizard trader in town with ties to Kendaric, we should go look for one.   Since magic is clearly one of the most bougie luxuries, we're off to the Wealthy Quarter.  The Wealthy Quarter has a few stores, like the one we start right next to which is the local Sword Mart.    In addition to selling a bunch of armor and heavy weapons we can't use now, it also sells... ...sir, is this a cursed sword? It is! Special sale today on cursed items! Why are you selling a cursed sword? To go with the cursed armor in the next display, of course.Cursed items are... weird in Return to Krondor. Reading the description, it's always some version of: "Throw this horrible garbage away before it explodes you." But it never actually explains the mechanics of how the cursed items work. What they do is that they inevitably ensure all hits against you are criticals(which have some vaguely defined damage boost), but they also tend to have considerable offensive boost of their own. Some of them are potentially quite worth using. Sure would be great if the game gave you enough info to make this sort of decision informedly.   Next door is a jewelry store. Oh yes. No. Aw, please? You can look, but no stealing. Or killing. Fiiiiiiiine. Inside, some poo poo has obviously gone down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6p4afwR3Ng Short version:  Hm, more holes and less jewels than I expected from a jewelry store. What ho, good merchant? I've been robbed! I suppose that makes sense. Well, nothing here for me to do, then. Waaaaaait! You could un-rob me! They stole my rubies! ...yes, we could follow the robbers and then kill them. And then return the man's rubies, James. And then return (some) of the man's rubies, yes. Let's go!  And we're back in the loving sewers. Still, if you mouse-over the ground below the ladder, there is at least a map the robbers left behind.  I would have loving killed for this an hour of playtime ago.    Oddly enough, I manage to get Jazhara stuck on the ladder as James jogs away and for a while I'm wondering if I've bugged out the game, but eventually she wiggles loose off-screen and follows. It's odd that there's nothing leashing the rest of the party to James whenever the camera changes or something.    Off to the cistern, pick the right turn-off.  Follow the directions until you see these two idiots and then...   You pick Wait and Follow.    I think you either have to go through more hoops to get this fight otherwise or softlock the quest so you can't.    They've got a mage in the background, but thankfully the AI is worse at using mages than it is at figuring out how to bumrush your mages with melee attackers and molotovs.   You'd have to really screw up for this to be a serious challenge. If nothing else you could just pelt them with fire oil until they all die burning and screaming. Now let's peel their corpses.   The mage has a decent amount of payoff, if nothing else, including this staff I will probably never use.  Now, importantly, if you notice that this is one of the rare areas where you can, out-of-combat, adjust the camera, you will find a very important chest!  Now let's see why this is a disappointment for James. No! Don't ruin this for me!Too late.  All the gems are fake. Now in a better game these would still have an interesting use, like you could scam stores with them but then they'd do no further trading with you, or jack their prices afterwards as revenge, so you'd be able to use them for tactical money gains. But there's no use for them in Return.  The note is Gerard ordering a family-sized box of whoop-rear end from J&J Co.  There's also a full suit of enchanted platemail which I'll keep around because I've played the game before. I think this is a random spawn that you might otherwise be tempted to just sell for loot, especially since it's heavy enough to partially collapse James' spine, but don't do this! Keep this poo poo if you get it! You will be thankful!  Well, let's go snap Gerard's neck.  Alright, Gerard, you've got two options. Either I stab you, and rob you. Or Jazhara sets you on fire, and then I rob you. Impossible! It can't have failed! Backup goons assemble!  ...mulligan? Do-over? Nope.The end, no moral. It's a weird little sidequest. You'd figure Gerard would have some sob story about how Bear forced him to do it, or he needed the money to pay for a healer for his sick dog or whatever, but no, some random chubby jeweler dude just decided that he could hire mercenaries and take out the party after digging a huge hole in his own floor. It seems weirdly elaborate compared to just trying to stab the party in a dirty alley again.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2022 01:21
|
|
|
Update 6: Mysterious Mysteries, Part 2   The third interactible location in the Wealthy Sector(which I'll note is the only one aside from the Sea Gate and the Palace sectors to have guards on patrol, makes u think), is the Golden Grimoire at the far end of where you enter, which is the local Ye Olde Wizarde Shoppe.    Moraine here is the proprietor, and has a good deal of dialogue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2mXtOTHCvo Short version:  What a lovely store, miss, do you mind if we ask you a few questions? Sure! I'd be happy to help. Are you familiar with the recent troubles at the Wreckers' Guild? ...very vaguely. There's been a murder, and one of the suspects we're trying to track down was in possession of a Shell of Eortis. What an interesting object that I know nothing about. Curious, considering this is the only place in town he could have gotten one. ... ... I'm not admitting to anything, cop. Ahem, are you familiar with Guildsman Kendaric by any chance? We used to date until my parents broke us up. ...because he's half-Keshian. ...because he's half-Keshian, haven't seen him since. Well, she's extremely suspicious. Let's poke around the stacks for some extremely obvious evidence.  Like this secret door. We should open this at night. Why at night? Then I can pick the front door and loot some of the shelves at the same time.One thing that took me a while to figure out about the Golden Grimoire was how to loving leave the store. I thought you had to use the door at the top of the stairs, but no, it's the door under the stairs that's invisible from practically every camera angle.     In any case, all our various leads now insist on being resolved at night, so let's fast-forward by resting(which we can do at long last) and revisit the Sea Gate and the Wreckers' Guild.    Let's break into Jorath's room (again) first.   That sounds pretty loving incriminating already, I wonder who Jorath could've been planning with.  While we ponder that, let's break into Kendaric's room (again) just for the practice.  Oops all Nighthawks. They made the mistake of bringing a wizard into a phone booth knife fight. This ends poorly for them.    Molotov cocktails and sharp steel to the face resolve the situation. Now let's rob their bodies.   In addition to inexplicably hauling around a full meth lab, the mage also carried yet more incriminating paperwork.  The "item" is clearly the ship raising ritual, and now I guess we have an inkling of who Jorath was planning to meet at the Bitten Dog. I expected that offing these goons would spawn Old Tom the beggar in the alley down below, but sadly it did not. Well, off to a disreputable drinking hole to stab some evidence out of people, then.  It's also worth noting that Jazhara has yet more magic to sling around now. Fire Rain: Hits all enemies, with no chance of hitting friends. Low damage but still nice. Brother to All: No enemies can target the mage. Enslave the Will: Flip a single enemy to the player's side. Thy Foes Enfeebled: All enemies have their strength halved. I am unclear on how much of a damage-dealing reduction this rolls out as since most of James' damage, say, seems tied pretty flatly to his weapon and barely at all to his strength score. Shield of Lightning: The caster turns into a living tazer, enemies attacking them get zapped and they get a zappy attack once per round. Maelstrom: AoE lightning spell that can also hit friendlies. Summon Sky Warrior: Creates an orb that makes a free lightning attack on a random enemy once per round.     Outside the Bitten Dog is an NPC that has no purpose except to spam the same line every time you talk to him. I decided to present it because I thought everyone might enjoy it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmHoSDboHMQ    Let's pop straight over to Pete and see what we can squeeze out of him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq3Plya1rn4 Short version:   Ah, great, it's the cop and the cop's sidekick again. So here's the deal, Pete, I want to hire some muscle. This should be good, what kind? The kind that rhymes with... bightbawk. Are you drunk or just a moron? I'm afraid he's always like this. I'll humour you before I tell you to get the hell out. What kind of job do you want them for? I'll need them to bring their person-stabbing swords... for stabbing... a person. I'm going to count to five and when I hit five someone's going to cave your skull in if you aren't out.So apparently you're meant to ask "slyly" and not "indirectly," which seems like two synonyms to me, pretty much. If you get it right, you're let into the back rooms where the Nighthawks are and aren't expecting to get stabbed in their dumb loving faces so they're hanging out in twos and threes. On the other hand, if you gently caress it up, your only way to push the point is to tell Pete to his face he's a dumb son of a bitch, at which point...  They'll be bringing their stabbing swords alright. Have at 'em, lads!  You get five at once! Three out in the main room and there are two around the curve of the bar. Being rogue-classed, but also quite tough, they'll usually start out by cutting Jazhara to ribbons since you're in a pincered situation.    This is how it usually goes. Jazhara gets dunked on, James cuts down two or three then collapses as well.   After a few tries, though, I luck out and get both James and Jazhara acting before the stabbery squad gets up to their bullshit.   Time for the nuclear option: burning a bunch of the scrolls from homeless people, random chests and evil wizards that I've been hoarding.  It's easy to miss, but despite the low damage it actually kills the farthest Nighthawk behind the bar, so now it's a 3v2 fight.   A 2v2 fight.    And a scroll of Chaos Storm(i.e. off-brand Chain Lightning) and Lightning Strike seals it. Now, the important thing to do is to NOT START LOOTING ANYTHING. IMMEDIATELY OPEN SOMEONE'S INVENTORY. DRINK AS MANY HEALING AND SPELLPOWER REGEN POTIONS YOU NEED TO TAP EVERYONE UP. EXPLOIT THIS FROZEN SECOND.  Because the second time has a chance to advance...  You get the loving second wave. I am not prepared for this level of anarchy.Yes, that's a Nighthawk cosplaying as Zorro, and one with a weird-rear end mask, and a face-busted mage and a loving towering demon. This fight beat my face in for the better part of an hour and a half. Motherfucker. Most fights went as follows:  The demon punches James until he explodes.   And then Nighthawks stab Jazhara until she's out. Sometimes she survives the first wave and the demon steps in and sweeps a big fat paw past James' head to knock Jazhara's face into the dirt. Sometimes the mage blinds one of them with Sunray to make them easier prey. Sometimes Jazhara survives a single round to bust out a Chaos Storm scroll, but it's never enough. I struggle through multiple different setups and attempts at surviving, with Fate modifiers both supportive and not so(I keep praying for a Heroes Accelerate so both James and Jazhara will get to act before being stabbed at, but it never comes up).     I see this poo poo a lot.  And then... well, honestly, I get lucky.  I start off by having James poison his weapon.  Not being immediately stabbed to death, Jazhara weathers a couple of punishing sweeps as she moves out of range of the demon's claws and draws out the nuclear option.   She even manages to get the mage, off-screen, but she confuses every last enemy, which I pray will buy me a few safe actions.  James poisons the demon, which is SUPER resistant to physical damage, it takes about half the damage of a generic human does when whacked, so I hope the poison will do some hard work wearing it down.  It's a severe butt-clencher when the demon gets a move and approaches Jazhara, but isn't fast enough to also attack her.    Chaos Storm makes bargain bin Zorro eat poo poo.  Inexplicably the mage wastes his move running across the room and putting himself in the line of fire, rather than blinding James or blasting Jazhara with magic. Nice enough of him, I suppose.   I've got Jazhara purely on scrolls and molotovs for this fight because I just CANNOT afford for her to literally drop the ball and gently caress up a spell, and there's no peace for her to do Slow Casts. The demon gets put down by a Lightning Strike. The demon really was the big worry, since James now has almost 100 max HP and the demon could still whack him for 50+ damage on a lucky hit, that made it a big threat even when it was on the ropes.    I think either it's the Confusion or the enemy AI is severely bugging out, James poisons one of the Nighthawks and he runs off into a corner of the room to die from it.   I cannot explain the relief I experienced when I finally cleared this fight, I hadn't saved for close to 30 minutes prior to pissing off Pete, and I was terrified I'd painted myself into a corner and had to re-do all of that playing. ...so instead I hammered my head against a wall for three times as long. I'm a genius! The Nighthawks obviously have a bunch of money and potions, but no real noteworthy items, no plot notes or anything. Time to poke the party's heads into the back rooms.     The back rooms are cramped as gently caress. The first one here is a bit odd since one of its off-shoot rooms has no purpose.  No camera angles, can't interact with the chest, can't even MOVE.     There'd be all sorts of cool battles here in manageable chunks if we hadn't already had them all at once. Let's go in that ominously glowing door.   Unlike every other room in this loving place, we can change the camera angle here. And I didn't notice it. So I thought I got all my poo poo done here. This got me very confused for the next bits. With things all sorted I decided it was time to head back to the Wreckers' Guild and confront Jorath.     Most of them members have dispersed by now.   The jig is up, Jorath! We know you had the guildmaster killed! Please, sir, associating with this Keshian must have infected you with her vile temper and lack of logic. Step back, James. I'm very tired of this man. ...not even ashes left, I approve. Thank you, I was saving that one.In reality Jorath just goes "ah yes you're very wrong about my guilt, but I can see you're too silly to reason with" and then vanishes in a cloud of farts and James just goes "drat, he got away!" and it's never revealed if that was a ninja smoke bomb or magic or what. Now let's go break into Moiraine's store.    Instead of JUST needing to find the secret door, you also need to pixel hunt to find the tiny interactible book(lower right of the screen, where the cursor is) that's actually a lever that opens it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLZcZZpUjsA Short version:  What the hell? Did you guys break into my store? What the hell? Are you sheltering a murder suspect? I didn't kill the guildmaster! I swear! I'm inclined to believe you, especially since your main detractor was a racist prick. God, loving Jorath. I don't know, I feel like we're just one piece of evidence away from my believing Moraine. Like what? Do you need an alibi? No, the sort of evidence, I feel, that would be in an eerily lit room with an off-brand pentagram, in a chest contained at a weird angle. ...are you kidding me? I'm sorry, dear, I've met these two before, I'm afraid they're not. Excuse us for a moment.  Without the final piece of evidence, no matter how minor it turns out to be, or how much it just confirms what we already know 99%, James will not believe Kendaric enough to continue the story.     Even at the right angle that loving chest is more a suggestion of the shape of a chest.    There. That's it. That's the only bit of loving evidence that was missing. Now back to Moraine's.  Oh, it's you two again. Thanks for not breaking and entering this time. Well this time we're pretty sure Kendaric isn't guilty.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPVzSoPUo5E Short version:  Not again. Relax, dear! They're here to clear your name! Exactly, you're innocent, so now you can do some work for us. Well, of course, I'll pencil you in for next month, I have to rebuild the guild roster, institute the new methods, rebalance the budget... Dear, you're being unthankful. But think of the back taxes. Kendaric. I'll get my things immediately. Wha-pish. Ha ha, I know, maybe we should bring her instead.And then the chapter just ends pretty much instantly.   Alright, gang, here's the plan. Everyone listening? Yes sir! Step one, we wait for the archers to get into position. Step two, we charge in and cut them all down. Everyone get that? Sir, yes, sir!   Before you get control of anything, this chapter launches you straight into a battle with some mercenaries. You've got four visible swordsmen and a pair of archers off screen.   The enemies are snazzily dressed but generally pretty irrelevant except for the fucker in the platemail with the warhammer. I'm not sure if my rolls were just absurdly bad, but I could not get a single point of damage in on him, despite hits, from anything but the archers, who consistently damaged him.   This is about as close as Return to Krondor gets to scripted set-piece battles(...for now) since there's no thought required and I can't imagine how you could possibly lose this fight.   Any of them still breathing? This one's still alive, sir!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lUIBbTQ1M Short version:   Well, this isn't how I expected my day to go. You could still avoid dying if you tell me where Bear went. Seems fair, gently caress that guy. He's planning to ambush you up the road, but you could turn the tables on him if you rush. Good choice. You get to live. Before you go... which one of my idiot men let you keep that axe? Fella over there. Jackson! Yes sir! Pack yourself up and head back to Krondor with the prisoner. See he gets there safely, and then turn yourself in for a court martial for being a moron. Aw. Alright, this is a good day. Killed a bunch of idiots, none of my men died, only one court martialed and I'll probably get to cut off Bear's kneecaps and carve him a new rear end in a top hat soon enough! Nothing can go wrong. Say, kid, you want to run off and start a new mercenary company with me instead of going to Krondor? Boy do I!Next: Nothing goes wrong. Not a thing. Not at all. Everything goes just as it should.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2022 01:22
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Next: Nothing goes wrong. Not a thing. Not at all. Everything goes just as it should. I'm not sure I believe you
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2022 02:56
|
|
|
quote:I didn't ask for your help! Says the guy who refuses to leave a panic room due to assassins trying to murder him. What was he going to do, splash water on their pants and make them embarrassed?
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2022 03:03
|
|
|
As I recall, if you don't screw up with the bartender then the fights against the Nighthawks are a bit more manageable, especially since the demon and mage stay waiting in the pentagram room until you come to them. Sure, there's no drat room to maneuver in there... but then again, there's no drat room to maneuver in there, so Jazhara is very safely behind James as long as James stays alive. Still, the demon is an incredibly rude boss for a rogue and wizard to take on, I was sorely missing William at that point.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2022 07:13
|
|
|
disposablewords posted:As I recall, if you don't screw up with the bartender then the fights against the Nighthawks are a bit more manageable, especially since the demon and mage stay waiting in the pentagram room until you come to them. Sure, there's no drat room to maneuver in there... but then again, there's no drat room to maneuver in there, so Jazhara is very safely behind James as long as James stays alive. Still, the demon is an incredibly rude boss for a rogue and wizard to take on, I was sorely missing William at that point. When it's just the mage and the demon it's a lot easier to handle because James can usually survive two to three rounds of getting his face smashed in by the demon, especially if he's set to conservative combat style and gets in a few dodges/parries as a result. So have Jazhara firebomb or spell the wizard out of existence, then hit the demon with either the single-target version of Circle of Madness or with Lightning Bolt which has a chance of stunning it and causing lost actions, and you're usually golden.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2022 09:08
|
|
|
Can't get over the shopkeeper trying to convince us she doesn't know where the fugitive is "In fact he owes me a lot of moneeeaayy!"
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2022 09:46
|
|
|
Maybe Old Tom couldn't spawn because the party already killed him in one of their bloodthirsty looting sprees, James.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2022 13:39
|
|
|
Black Robe posted:Maybe Old Tom couldn't spawn because the party already killed him in one of their bloodthirsty looting sprees, James. If you didn't want me to stab him, you shouldn't have given him a loot table.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2022 14:02
|
|
|
By popular demand posted:Can't get over the shopkeeper trying to convince us she doesn't know where the fugitive is Her chiding "Kendaric!" to get him to go along with you is burned into my brain harder than any other sound or line in this game. I have no drat idea why.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2022 17:20
|
|
|
I just found out that Denmark is the only country in the world that doesn't use UTC. Explains so much.
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2022 00:02
|
|
|
I don't know how far I got into the game, but the next part is the last that I remember. And boy, did I have impressions of that impressive untwist even at the time.
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2022 08:22
|
|
|
Update 7: Road Trip  Possibly to the surprise of some, that was all the William we get for now, one single fight and then we're off to rejoin the rest of the fellas again, and this time the team has grown! This is also where, in the book, we're explained why the Tear of the Gods matters so much. Firstly, it's a huge-rear end gemstone. That by itself is super important, about as big as a man's thigh, but the really important thing about it is that it's somehow the mystic conduit that permits for prayers to be answered and for divine magic to be cast. It's proposed as a huge issue if this ceases working because dickheads gank it, even though divine magic has, in the books, been of negligible importance so far. In the original two books, priests cast one spell. In the Silverthorn/Sethanon set of books, there's a single Ishapian amulet used to bless Arutha's sword and one divine security system. But even if we pretend that's kind of a minor thing, we're told that The Bad Guys, whoever they are, could corrupt the Tear to phone up the local equivalent of Cthulhu instead of Ishap & Co. This would admittedly be pretty bad, no one likes having a Cthulhu in their back yard.  Our two new party members are Kendaric and Solon. Let's have a look at their sheets.  Kendaric is Jazhara But Worse, which is serviceable. He'll want a few levels before he'll be reliable at any wizardry, but until then he can burn scrolls and toss molotovs. It's worth noting that this is a huge departure from the book where he's... just some guy. He's not spent his life studying at Stardock, he's not some fated Greater Path mage, he's just a dude who's spent his entire life being discriminated against and learning one spell. This means that while the rest of the party is pretty handy in a fight, in the book, Kendaric just runs around in the background wailing because he doesn't know how to fight and is just generally a constant liability. Throughout the entire book I don't believe he ever kills anything and the only time he contributes positively to a fight is when he curls up into a ball defensively and an opponent trips over him.  Solon, meanwhile, is kind of a repeat of William. He can wear chain and plate, he can use hammers and maces(but not swords and axes because Midkemia is inexplicably D&D in that regard) and he can cast divine spells. If he's not carrying a weapon. Most of his spells are pretty eh, so just give him the biggest armor and biggest hammer you can find and send him in to break faces. He excels at that more than anything. While I don't have a magic hammer for him, he promptly gets the suit of enchanted plate I found in the sewers which makes him more or less immune to any kind of damage that isn't magic.  The divine magic selection isn't particularly varied or interesting. It either does melee range damage, heals(better to spend your turn doing damage, in most cases), blows up undead(which have been pretty rare on the ground so far) or buffs friendly combat abilities(which, if Solon was casting spells, would be just James).    Arutha also splurged on some low-tier gear just in case someone lost their socks while running around the city. I don't know if this is randomized, but if you haven't found something nice for Solon so far, a suit of magic elf armor popped up in here for me(chain mail), but other than that I just snagged the bottles of healing Mt. Dew and skedaddled.   This dumps is in front of the gates with no option but to interact with them and get warped to the world map which we will only see in this chapter.   Clicking on an adjacent sphere warps us to a little section of the world where we're free to move around, though all but... five locations are just empty shells where a random group of NPC's might randomly charge at us and try to cut us open. Among the non-random locations, however, is the very first one we enter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVNH9S26PgI Short version:  Hand over your gold, your gems, your weapons, any deeds to property you're carrying, any gold teeth, valuable spices and- Are you people daft? We're on a holy quest! Sorry, you're obviously holy, but the rest will have to pay up. What if I pay you by slapping your poo poo until you can't move without help? ...seems holy enough to me. Let's get outta here.Only real difference is that in the book Solon seals the argument by actually laying one of the bandits out with a single punch. Come to think of it, I don't remember him casting any spells in the book either, there he just beats the poo poo out of people and monsters.   Heading northwards, the party runs into some mangled corpses. I think these are supposed to be a hint that there's a potential random encounter with some flying enemies in the region, but I never got that one to pop.     Another possible random encounter is this woman and her kids wandering around the same woods where random goblins and wizards are waiting to jump out at people.    The guide says that whatever you ask her doesn't matter but saying she's a housewife is the "funniest" response.  Where we're headed is here, just one point north of the Wayfarer Inn.  Short version:  Greetings, farmer, we're kind of lost so- My daughter! Goblins stole my daughter! A shame we already have a qu- These goblins, did they seem rich to you? ...maybe? For shame, Kendaric! Not wanting to help this poor man, clearly I'll have to show you how a Real Hero does this.Goblins stole this poor guy's kid, and we have the option of going hunting for her before she gets sacrificed in a horrible goblin ritual. In the book, James and Kendaric kind of don't want to go take care of it, but Jazhara eventually shames them into doing it.  I poke around the mountains looking for the goblin lair when I run into some unusual enemies that can only be encountered on the road.   Trolls! One of them wielding a magic warhammer!   In the books, trolls are just kind of like chimpanzees that like to eat people(so chimpanzees), with mountain trolls being chimpanzees with swords and armor. In D&D, trolls regenerate, but not in Midkemia's lore, but that appears to have cross-pollinated here. Their regeneration generally isn't enough to make them invincible, but it's pretty much a free healing potion per round which can make them a good deal harder to put down for good. In the first round, I also have Jazhara slow-cast "Conjure Sky Warrior" so it'll cast some free lightning attacks for her, expecting it to do like 16 damage, like Lightning Blade does.    What the gently caress. That is insanely busted. Turns out it regularly does 70 to 120 points of damage. It's hard to quick-cast because it's almost the apex Storm spell, but that's worth slow-casting.  This means I just saunter Jazhara up the side of the field on her next turn and it roasts the second troll for me. Now let's pick them over and see what cool poo poo they dropped.   One of them drops a cursed warhammer, that's not what I wanted. But might explain why it ate that insane amount of lightning damage, the game never really deigns to explain how crits work.   This is what I wanted. In addition to doing about 50% more damage than a standard warhammer, it also has a huge to-hit bonus and anyone who gets whacked by it has a chance to get "stunned"(i.e. have a chance to lose actions) for 1d4 rounds.   Eventually the party reaches the goblin part of the map, consisting of two map nodes. The first one, here, is a short piece of wall blocking the way to their camp.   Jazhara gets off Speed of Thought which doubles attacks-per-round and movement speed, allowing James and Solon to blender through the defenders with negligible difficulty.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ad8B6za14Y Short version:  Those are an awful lot of goblins. The fury of the unrighteous is no threat to those under the aegis of Ishap. Easily said by someone who's covered in metal. Perhaps we could simply return to Krondor and tell the guards where we found the goblins... Or I could sneak in there, recover the children, strike a cool pose, and sneak my way out. I'm surprised, James, you actually came up with a plan that doesn't risk our lives and doesn't leave children to die. Attacking the goblins or calling out to the goblins gets you the same result: the full party lines up and aggros all the goblins.   If, on the other hand, you try to use James to sneak around... you probably get spotted and aggro all the goblins anyway, but this time James is right next to them while the rest of the party is back at the area entrance. James sneaking in and rescuing the babies on his own is the canon solution, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to make it work without him getting spotted. Another annoying issue with this is that you can't load saves in combat, all you can do is quit, so every time he got spotted or the fight went south, I had to either quit and restart the game OR wait for everyone to die.  So in the end I went for a fight. What you're seeing here, by the way, is the successful fight after four failures. The failures weren't failures due to party wipes, but because someone(Kendaric! You useless goon!) ate an arrow to the face and died, and I can't afford to have him not get the XP from the fight to help lift him out of being a waste of meat and bad facial hair.    So, the goblin mob ahead is made up of four types of enemies. On the left, you've got a pack of four archers with flaming arrows. Against, say, Solon, they do literally nothing, 1 damage at most. Against Kendaric or Jazhara they can one or two-shot them with relative ease.  Hence James and Solon get moved up to stand in the way of the arrows. Then there are two mages, though NPC mages tend to always slow-cast, which opens them up to being interrupted, but like the archers they have the potential to one or two-shot our own mages.  The main mob of enemies are just generic goblins with swords and shields, or daggers and shields, who are absolutely no threat. But mixed in with them are two goblins with greatswords and platemail that are almost impossible to injure, even Solon struggles to do even ten points of damage to them per whack. Having tried several things and failed, I just failed a run where I tried the strategy guide's suggestion of whacking the goblins with Thunderclap. Thunderclap stuns, but does no damage, and has the advantage of being a low-tier spell that's likely to succeed as a quick cast. Instead, I take a risk and have Jazhara crank out a Maelstrom which is like dropping a Lightning Strike on every target in the AoE while the enemies are still at range. And yeah, that super vague cloud with no indicator of exactly who will be affected is all you get for AoE spells and why I hate using AoE spells when there's a chance of hitting allies since it's so hard to tell who you're about to blow up.   It's a success! The enemies with glowing orbs on their heads are the ones that may randomly lose actions to being "stunned," and additionally they're all now somewhat damaged and a couple of weak bottom-tier goblins are outright killed.  Kendaric still can't be relied on to cast anything important without scrolls, so I have him burn a couple to hurl a Chaos Storm into the enemy formation. Oddly enough he can't hit anyone because James and Solon are in the way... except when I realize he can just blast the bouncing projectile right through these big boulders in the middle of the battlefield.  Despite being the top-tier Storm spell, Chaos Storm actually does kind of negligible damage. Its main advantage is that unlike Maelstrom it can't wipe out your own dudes, and any amount of damage is enough to interrupt the goblin wizards.    While the goblins advantage to melee range, Jazhara drops a second successful Maelstrom which finally clears out those loving goblin archers. Except for one fight where a cast from one of the mages wipes out Kendaric, sniping goblin archers were the result of all the others going to hell, so it's very satisfying to murder them all.  Now the main issue is clearing out the melee survivors, which is mostly a matter of patience. If nothing else, Solon will eventually whittle them down, but God, it takes forever to kill these useless assholes.   While Jazhara supports the melee goons, Kendaric gets into a duel with the back-of-field goblin mage, who doesn't get to cast any spells because he persists in slow casting despite eating a scroll-based Lightning Strike every turn.   Eventually the field is covered in corpses and, thank God, Kendaric gets a level-up out of it. This is, numbers-wise, the biggest fight you can find in all of Return to Krondor, but even so it doesn't actually yield an excessive amount of XP. Yeah, it's a lot but... not excessive, especially considering that, say, Solon, starts this chapter needing over 10k XP to level up.   The tent contains a few things. Firstly there's that chest. It's poo poo, contains nothing worthwhile.   If you've read The Assassins, then the name Sidi might be familiar. While out doing his soldiery job, William runs into the guy at an inn where he seems a bit shady(he trades with goblins, but insists he just trades jewels and medicine, not weapons and magical items), but otherwise not notable. He is, however, super-shady.   Interacting with the cage glues the kids to James' back until we return them to Farmer Toth. Those kids look creepy as gently caress, like James is hauling around a pair of Alien Greys.     Toth thanks us(and gives us a negligible XP reward) and we're good to continue on to the Wayfarer Inn... except there's one last unique location I want to show off.   Way up at the north of the map, but west of the goblin zone, there's a little valley that looks different from everything else.   It contains a fight with three trolls, one of them armored.  They're guarding five backpacks and two chests, something that could theoretically yield a shitload of super wild loot. Theoretically.    The fight has some weirdness, when I send James to attack the troll on the left, he runs around the whole formation to attack it from behind, opening Jazhara up to getting her face smashed apart by a troll's axe.  I also drop the upgraded "Deadly" poison on his sword which would normally be big news, except here it barely keeps pace with the trolls' regeneration.   Stunned and blinded, the troll doesn't get any more actions, and being blinded also makes it easier to hit, guaranteeing that Solon actually lands his whacks, allowing him and James to slowly whittle the survivor down to nothing. So what'd we get? All of one item of relevance.   The Draken Plate is, as far as I can tell, as defensively capable as Solon's enchanted plate, but it makes all hits on him crits and makes him 85% immune to fire. I think so far the only fire damage the party's suffered has been the occasional molotov and one of the goblin wizards at the goblin camp blasted Jazhara for 20 fire damage with a spell, so it doesn't seem worth the effort.   Off to the Wayfarer Inn at long last. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POIHhZD1b1g Short Version:   Everyone who doesn't want to sleep in the mud for another night, raise your hands. It builds character. It saves me money. I can't count how many ticks I've had to pick off during this road trip. I vote for the warm beds. Sounds like it's a tie, then. Since I'm able to set you on fire with my mind, that counts as a tie breaker. Well played. Now, you might go: "Dang, Purple, that was a short update, how come you didn't play more?" And I'll retort with this low amount of content taking two hours of play. Not so much because I got stuck on the goblin camp fight, it took me less tries than the loving Nighthawk fight at the Bitten Dog, but more because every second map node contained a bunch of bandits, goblins, goblins and bandits, trolls or goblins and wizards attacking the party and needing to be dunked on. None of them, aside from the trolls that dropped the very OP warhammer, dropped any interesting loot, meaningful amounts of XP or provided any sort of interesting challenge. About the only noteworthy part is that some of the fights occurred at ranges long enough that bows would have a very, very brief window of usefulness. Next time: Everyone gets a nice, uninterrupted rest at the Wayfarer and then we continue the plot.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2022 08:37
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Possibly to the surprise of some, that was all the William we get for now, one single fight and then we're off to rejoin the rest of the fellas again, and this time the team has grown! This is also where, in the book, we're explained why the Tear of the Gods matters so much. So I'm going by memory, not all of this might be 100% accurate. But I think you're wrong about the Tear. I'll put this in spoilers, because it includes info we get in later parts of the series: It goes back to the setting's cosmology. In the Chaos War, a lot of gods died. Including two of the seven main gods: Arch-Indar, the goddess of good, and Ishap, the Balancer. As a result, four of the remaining five main gods worked together to seal away the fifth main god (Nalar, god of evil). They then created the Tear of the Gods, so that Ishapian priest could still work magic. Because mortal faith can actually return dead gods to life (over a span of thousands of years or so). By Ishap's priesthood still having magic, and keeping the fact that Ishap is dead secret, there would still be mortal worshippers of Ishap whose prayers could bring the Balancer back to life. You're right that divine magic rarely played a big role in the books, but there are actually a number of times characters were healed by priests, which is certainly one of the main services the temples provide. Especially for the wealthy, of course. But even less well off people could get a bit of healing at times. Priests can also lift curses and banish demons, which again becomes more important later on. So the Tear of the Gods really is as important as they make it out to be. If it becomes lost for too long, and the priesthood of Ishap loses their ability to work magic, that would be a huge setback in the attempt to bring the Balancer back to life. And if the artifact gets corrupted, that would not only cut of Ishapians off from spells, but can lead to all other kinds of bad consequences.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2022 10:18
|
|
|
This is probably entirely true with relation to bigger metaplot stuff, but as far as they present it both in the book and in the game it'll just prevent the use of divine magic and possibly help someone phone up Cthulhu("The Nameless One"). I'm thinking back to divine healing in the books and... Krondor: the Betrayal, is the only one where I recall any use of magical healing. Even in The Assassins, when a priest is summoned to heal a wound, all he does is basically purge it with fire to remove the infection/poison and then allow natural healing to take its course. Even in Silverthorn, the priests can't actually cure Anita, the best they can do is put her on ice until some perfectly normal adventure hobos slog it out into the wilds, grab the cure and bring it back. Obviously if magical healing was as omnipresent and powerful as in, say, D&D, then it would wildly change the setting, but for its loss to be majorly felt, then it would pretty much have to be. At least up to and including Tear of the Gods, priests in Midkemia don't particularly pull off any healing stunts that a perfectly mundane doctor couldn't. From what I know of the later books, yeah, demons and gods and etc. start becoming very important, but up to this point they've been very minor force compared to wizards and even mundane politics and armies.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2022 10:28
|
|
|
There's the Banath priest healing Erik, the Hantukama priest healing first Keyoke and then later Mara, the Novindus priests trying to help Kaspar with his curse, etc. It's never as flashy as what the mages do, but there are presumably a few more priests than mages. Also, there's tons of mages PoV characters, while priests are nearly always side characters at best.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2022 10:38
|
|
|
This whole era of games completely passed me by. My family always had lovely computers growing up so I got to play all the old (even back then) DOS RPGs and stuff, but by the time I could buy my own PC, this stuff was dead and buried. It's amazing how decent the game's PS1-ish vibe looks and sounds and how obnoxiously ugly the UI is.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2022 14:46
|
|
|
THe problem with having magical healing and especially resurrection (D&D based-books are rife with this) is that, if it exists, why does anyone have to die or even suffer at all? I can't tell you how many D&D books I have read where in one death is treated as irrevocable, while in the next there are casual references to someon being brought back. It's very inconsistent. There was a reference in one of the early books to the death of Aglarrana's first husband, the elf king whose name I do not recall. Apparenlty a powerful priest passed by right after the king died, and this priest could resurrect those gone no more than an hour or so. The elves refused to let him do so because they insisted that the king's spirit was already in their version of heaven and they would not disturb his paradise. Whether that is actually how the elven afterlife works or not is not established as far as I know, but it raises another moral/theological question. In books where it is known, genuinely known as cosmic fact to the people in-setting and not just the reader/player, that here is an ideal afterlife, what's the point of living in the first place?
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2022 18:38
|
|
|
Well, at least for humans on Midkemia it's a wheel of reincarnation instead, though ostensibly if someone has been an immense shithead in life, Lims-Kragma just dissolves their soul instead, and if they've been hyper-good they're elevated to some sort of one-ness with the cosmos that I don't believe is ever expanded upon. But yes, if healing and resurrection are entirely free and cost-less, it opens some questions, at least the few times its performed in Midkemia "on stage," divine magic seems to be very draining for the caster, even if it's a "minor" miracle of some sort. Like, after healing Locklear, Owyn and Gorath, the priest in Krondor: the Betrayal is just about dead on his feet, and when Father Belson in Krondor: the Assassins conjures a fire elemental, he pretty much passes out afterwards.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2022 20:02
|
|
|
JustJeff88 posted:In books where it is known, genuinely known as cosmic fact to the people in-setting and not just the reader/player, that here is an ideal afterlife, what's the point of living in the first place? In most settings you have to earn the ideal afterlife while you're alive. Same with most real-world religions when you strip them down to the essential points. No speedrun strats allowed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2022 20:05
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Well, at least for humans on Midkemia it's a wheel of reincarnation instead, though ostensibly if someone has been an immense shithead in life, Lims-Kragma just dissolves their soul instead, and if they've been hyper-good they're elevated to some sort of one-ness with the cosmos that I don't believe is ever expanded upon. The most famous is probably where Father Nathan puts down Murmandamus's servant. One dark elf puts him in bed for weeks. Black Robe posted:In most settings you have to earn the ideal afterlife while you're alive. Same with most real-world religions when you strip them down to the essential points. No speedrun strats allowed. I just re-read the Avatar series and, especially in the last book, there's a lot of emphasis on the balance of Good/Evil and Law/Chaos and also on the fact that the role of the gods is to take care of their portfolio and that the afterlife is determined by faith, not morality. NeverWinter Nights 2 touches on this as well. As I understand it, the only way to maintain the universe is faith in the gods, and to keep mortals faithful it is necessary to punish faithlesssness in the afterlife.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2022 21:03
|
|
|
JustJeff88 posted:The most famous is probably where Father Nathan puts down Murmandamus's servant. One dark elf puts him in bed for weeks. Which Avatar series? Google apparently only knows Avatar: The Last Airbender. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2022 21:44
|
|
|
Torrannor posted:Which Avatar series? Google apparently only knows Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's a series of books/modules for the Forgotten Realms. The books I haven't read, and they're supposedly pretty decent as far as D&D novels go, but the modules are absolute dogshit. 2/3rds of them are literally just cutscenes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2022 22:23
|
|
|
Torrannor posted:Which Avatar series? Google apparently only knows Avatar: The Last Airbender. There are three 'official' books in the trilogy and two direct follow-ups. I'm not going to lie: in my opinion, the first three books are mediocre, the 4th is good and the 5th quite good, but your opinion may vary. They are entitled, in order, Shadowdale, Tantras, Waterdeep, Cyrinishad and Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2022 00:02
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:I'm thinking back to divine healing in the books and... Krondor: the Betrayal, is the only one where I recall any use of magical healing. Even in The Assassins, when a priest is summoned to heal a wound, all he does is basically purge it with fire to remove the infection/poison and then allow natural healing to take its course. Really, that still leaves it as kind of a big deal, though- in a setting without modern antibiotics, being able to burn the infection out of a wound, even if the wound has to heal the long way afterwards, is still going to save a lot of lives.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2022 01:58
|
|
|
Catching up on this since I missed back when it started. The sewer level is funny for a bunch of reasons, namely that the floor is the exact opposite of how they're actually set up: everyone's walking along the ledges at the side or through the flow down the middle since the way the sewer is laid out in this game would be an inefficient and messy hell. The idea that any mockers would start poo poo with Jimmy is funny on multiple levels. Tl;dr: unless the order came from the Upright Man himself, any Mocker who decides to go after Jimmy on their own accord is a dead man and the only question is how they're going to die. Also as bad as Jimmy and his ilk can be at times, I think a later series character is ultimately worse. Sure, you get plenty of details as to why this character ends up as good as he is in the end he's quite literally the best swordsman in the world, suggested to be a better archer and hunter than Martin, has the same 'bump of trouble' sixth sense as Jimmy, is a world-class chef...etc. I'm not going to give their name but anyone who read the series probably knows who I'm talking about even without looking at the spoiler text. I think the biggest crime of the Krondor games is the lack of a game based on the main character in the Serpentwar books, who is actually interesting compared to most others, though the start of the game would be very on rails I guess. PurpleXVI posted:The way magic works and the ubiquity of magic feels hilariously inconsistent from each piece of Midkemia media to the next. In the first few, minor mages seem to be everywhere, but unappreciated and unrespected, and outside of a very few no appreciable talents at all outside of cursing someone's cheese. I think Stardock's existence and the fact that the Kingdom's popular not-insane war hero king and extremely popular war hero prince both support magic users and Pug being a Riftwar hero and magic user is a big part of shifting the general populace from "magic users is evil" to "well they can't all be bad I guess" or liking them due to personally benefiting from the actions of people like Pug. Then all the stuff with discrimination at Stardock happens. Torrannor posted:There's the Banath priest healing Erik, the Hantukama priest healing first Keyoke and then later Mara, the Novindus priests trying to help Kaspar with his curse, etc. It's never as flashy as what the mages do, but there are presumably a few more priests than mages. Also, there's tons of mages PoV characters, while priests are nearly always side characters at best. I think the most noticeable magic healing in the series is in Serpentwar where Sho Pi talks about using reshi(?) to heal injuries and how it's a process that takes awhile for priests learn, only for Nakor to be Nakor and you end up with the Krondorian Dirty Dozen now having a lay of hands-type ability that they use repeatedly on their missions. JustJeff88 posted:The most famous is probably where Father Nathan puts down Murmandamus's servant. One dark elf puts him in bed for weeks. That's because Father Nathan is actively fighting against Murmadamus's significant magic powers, not some random dark elf, and the only reason he 'won' is because he destroyed the Black Slayer's body which causes the invading force (either Murmandamus's own magic or The Darkness) to disperse. Considering what the latter actually is, being in bed for weeks is getting off lightly.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2022 20:45
|
|
|
Unironically everything I hear about the later Midkemia books gives me the same reactions that I have to Brian Herbert's final Dune books finishing off his dad's series, which is that it sounds like a fanfiction parody of itself.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2022 21:53
|
|
|
This chapter is one of my favorite parts of this game and I do not comprehend why. It is a very weird departure from the rest of the game, wandering a tiny stretch of the countryside near Krondor (seriously, I think it's a shorter distance to cover than you go between Krondor and Sarth in BAK) and just having dumb random encounters where you'll rapidly start ignoring the loot because it turns out whoops that's right the game has encumbrance rules. It's a singularly unimpressive stretch of gameplay that offers and teaches nothing really new at all. It doesn't encourage you to reconsider any gameplay habits except hoovering up loot because of lack of stores. You learn basically nothing new about the characters. But for some reason it's the bit I look back on most fondly. I was always disappointed when it ended. Not even because I hate the coming chapters, I liked basically all of this game - way more than it really deserved, frankly.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2022 22:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 14:08 |
|
|
The fact that Pug is royal family by adoption doesn't hurt. One of the most moving scenes of the Magician books for me, and there are a lot, is when Borric is dying and he tells Pug about that. I just re-read Prince of the Blood. Still a very enjoyable book, despite Suli and especially Locklear being marginalised, but I smiled at the part where Jimmy is marrying into the royal family and Arutha remarks on that with his typical dry humour.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2022 23:18
|
|