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I just caught up on the last update, and I think that 'Headknock Arrow' might be the stupidest name for an item I've ever heard. Call them stun arrows or fowling blunts or something sensible. Might as well call a broadsword a 'Gutpoke Knife' Deciding not to vote. As much as I hate slavery, wage, chattel or otherwise, this is clear an 'everyone's a dick' scenario. Also: quote:Well, while you were away, everyone else hacked each other up. It's just you and the champion. This popped me.
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Feb 25, 2023 21:13
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| # ? May 6, 2024 02:31 |
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Both sides have slaves, and both sides are jerks, but orcs are a new kind of jerk so let's see how the orcs are jerks when they actually do something besides scream and murder you.
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Feb 26, 2023 09:07
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Just finished the last LP, and I didn't notice anyone bringing up the strafing bugs in that one. In the previous two games you could run sideways into most 90 degree corners and pop out on the other side, sometimes swimming (and drowning) in air until you swim into the ground (but not the floor or roof of a building for some reason). In the unpatched original you could even strafe in mid-air, which would stop your fall and also reset the timer for fall damage. Any time you were killed in the air you could also undo that with a quick tap of the strafe key before you hit the ground, but for some reason that ability was removed from both later versions and games.
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Feb 27, 2023 00:58
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Update 03: Decisive Action   Alright, time to get moving. You decided which side of the war you wanted to be on, mercenary? Well, kind of. Squabbling voices in my head decided we were on your side because we saw a slave smoking a joint. ...I hope your choice takes you and the voices in your head far away from here.  So about that slavery thing... Decided you weren't too good for hunting a few escaped slaves, eh? Actually I need to take the job so I can not do it. ...what? Just tell me what atrocity you need done. I was going to ask you to find Harek and bring him back to me so I could take his shirt and make him smoke weed while shovelling manure.    Now tell me not to do it. Please don't! Perfect, what would you like me to do instead? Walk ten steps with me over to someone who hasn't thrown their lot in with the orcs? I'll teach you how to fall down things safely. Deal.You can't even broach the subject with Harek without first taking the job from Gamal, despite his telling you that he's an escaped slave if you give him some food.      Jens is literally sitting within view of the Cape Dun front gate. Gamal can probably see this poo poo going on, but it still works.   Acrobatics is a moderately useful skill since it makes you immune to death from falling damage and also lowers how hurt you get from it. So if you're a moron like me who ends up falling off a lot of things, it saves you a lot of reloading, and gives you an emergency out option if you're being pursued. Now with that sorted... time to visit Reddock again.    The farm with Klint the smith-turned-laborer is on the way.   Inside is Topork. He's a dick that on your first visit rants about how every human must have an owner, and tells you to either gently caress off back to yours or he'll make you his. If you're with the rebels, clearing out this place is one of the missions for them, but even if you're not with the rebels, you want to take offense at Topork's bullshit and duel him.     It's worth XP, it gives you a free point of strength, you can rifle through Topork's pockets afterwards and...  ...he actually respects you more for it. Giving you a pick of either some gold or Klint as your reward, letting you haul Klint off to the rebels for some happy points without needing to kill anyone. Anyway, let's skip uphill, the entrance to Reddock is like twenty feet away as the crow flies, only slightly longer to actually walk to because there are a couple of overlapping ridges in the way you need to walk around. The orcs are legitimately terrible at this "crushing occupation" business, even Blackthorn knew his business better.    I decide to start the fight like most others, at a comfortable range needling enemies with arrows. I figure the above-ground folks in Reddock are all going to pile in and I can shoot them as I kite them downhill.   They oblige me, but are joined by Brenton's woodcutting camp(you can see the archer on the left), which makes things somewhat dicier as I have to dodge arrows while keeping ahead of the melee folks wanting to end my life.     Feeling clever, I lure them down to Topork's patrol to come hang out with the orcs and the pigs.   It works pretty well to start with!   Then it turns out that once Reddock goes on a war footing, it goes on a WAR FOOTING. That's Sebastian, the alchemy trader, who's decided to come up from the depths of Reddock and fling ice bolts and stuff. He can potentially mangle every single NPC by himself since he can cast healing spells and, as mentioned, NPC vs NPC damage is greatly lowered, so he has huge staying power.    This prompts a quick retreat from the farm and also reveals that if the orcs there get killed, you get the reward for it even if A) you never got the quest from the rebels and B) you weren't the one who killed any of them. Score.    Jens and Harek, being unaligned despite Jens wearing orc mercenary armor, watch calmly as a parade of rebels rolls up the road towards Cape Dun.    Thanks for bothering to show up. Excuse me for not being prepared when you lead an entire rebel camp to my doorstep! I had to reload twice to make this work out as I wanted to. The first time, I get a bit dinged up during the fight, so I assume all the rebels are distracted by orcs and mercenaries and decide to chug a potion...   ...at which point Javier just shows up and loving ENDS me, ragdolling me into the sunset.      Second time around Javier doesn't ragdoll me, and the entire procession of rebels gets whittled down as orcs and mercenaries block them up and I put arrows into their heads. It's endlessly funny to me when games like this visually show you the arrows stuck in enemies and you get to turn people into porcupines.  Which leads to the second thing that forced a reload. One rebel remains, and the ground is littered with (mainly rebel, and like one orc) corpses that I can't wait to loot. I let fly the final arrow and...  The game despawns every loving rebel body as the quest completes! Most of them just contain minor loot, but the busted-up shield and sword on Javier are worth like five grand by themselves, that's a whole armor upgrade. I assume this isn't actually intended to delete the corpses, but is just meant to ensure that once you kill the rebel leadership, if there are any stragglers around, they don't hunt you for several hours and suddenly show up in the middle of a swamp or something trying to brain you. It still sucks, though. And no this isn't a Gothic 2-esque "reset to spawn location"-thing, I checked, they just get vaporized to deny me their juicy, juicy loot. That is absolutely a reload.     Because you had faith in me all along, that I could do something your troops couldn't? No, Morra, because I could hear the fighting all the way over here. Well, two of one. By the way, the undercover rebel network is still in town. If you could handle that while you're here, that'd be swell. You got it, boss. I feel like asking you to do it without organizing a mass brawl outside my office would be wasted, but please try. No promises!    Before doing that, I skip town briefly to loot Reddock. Most of it's not too exciting, most containers in the game just have randomized(scaled? maybe? perhaps by area?) loot.    But one of the chests in Reddock is labelled as an Old Chest. Old Chests and Heavy Chests are the only non-random chests in the game, for each Heavy Chest you've opened, the next one will contain a specific weapon, and for each Old Chest, it's the same but it'll contain a specific "mage" item. So you generally want to crack as many of these suckers as possible.    Also worth noting this badly misaligned item. It's in the weapons rack, but to grab it, you actually interact with it like a meter to the right of its actual location. Pretty odd.   Back in Cape Dun, the heart of the Rebel underground is... Phil the guy who shovels pig poo poo. The devs clearly expected you to liberate Cape Dun rather than crush Reddock, since it's the more detailed of the two, including arming up the local slaves to start a rebellion from the inside out, including getting Wenzel the captured paladin(whom the orcs neither disarmed or de-armored...) to start kicking rear end. Which still feels kind of unfinished, since you were told about Gamal stripping Wenzel of his gear and selling it to the orcs, recovering it, and having low, medium and high-quality stuff to score for him, affecting his usefulness in the uprising, could have been an interesting twist. There's also no clever work to finding out Phil is the rebel organizing the underground. Once Javier has mentioned that there IS a rebel underground in Cape Dun at all, you just walk up to him and go "oh hey you're the rebel organizer aren't you." When you're on the orcs' side you can't even, as far as I'm aware, start a fight through dialogue, you have to just start swinging at him out of the blue. Anyway, Phil is a guy with a poo poo-covered shovel. How tough could he be?    He almost loving killed me with one swing! He's more dangerous than Javier! Help! Guys! Orcs!    What the hell is this guy made of?Phil literally tanks the entire town for like five minutes, even with me putting arrows in him whenever I can sneak one past the mob.  And when they finally KO him, this one slave who'd been watching the fight offers up some sarcastic clapping.   Of course, Uruk wants the rebel underground dead, and everyone else in town just KO'd him, so time to finish Phil off while he's down and...  ...because this game is ever so slightly buggy, our brave hero kills Phil by assaulting a pile of wooden planks instead. For gently caress's sake, Gothic 3. Also as a matter of interest, this results in(because somehow one of the farm orcs survived on the second pass, and thus I didn't get that rebel rep boost) a situation where destroying Reddock has left me equally loved by both the orcs and the rebels. And I think that this is actually WITH exploiting every single chance for orc favour provided(herding Harek back to Gamal gives you Hashishin rep, rather than Orc rep).   Time to get outta this area. We're coming back for those ogres and that dragon at some point, though.    The nearest route farther inland is past where Iomar and his busted wagon were.    Ugh, the road splits in two. Does this mean I have to make a decision? I hate making decisions. You're safe from the curse of agency, don't worry. From where we stand, the road to the right leads north, past Vengard(under the dome) and up towards Faring, while the other road leads southwest, down to another intersection and afterwards either northwest to Montera or along a small inlet and along a suspiciously purposeless road leading inland. A: North to Faring. As I recall it, this is the unintended path in terms of difficulty. B: South and, eventualy, to Montera. Which I recall is where the game would like us to go. C: South and off the beaten path. Stumble into some caves, meet some weirdos in the wilderness, swim across the gulf to Lago in Varant.
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Feb 27, 2023 01:10
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C. Off the beaten path is the natural habitat of the adventurer.
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Feb 27, 2023 01:28
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Voting C because it's more fun.
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Feb 27, 2023 02:34
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That misaligned interactable reminded me of a bit of loot in Thief 1 that is almost impossible to pick up. There are only a few pixels that one can click on and they are well off to one side. It's the only time in that game I can recall such a thing; I'm sure that this one holds more such stories.
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Feb 27, 2023 03:31
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If we ever go where the game wants us to go first we're playing it wrong. C is my vote.
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Feb 27, 2023 05:41
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Shei-kun posted:If we ever go where the game wants us to go first we're playing it wrong. Also voting C. And I'm very pleased we've managed to continue playing both sides, even without actually trying to.
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Feb 27, 2023 14:20
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Be nice to the poor game.
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Feb 27, 2023 14:35
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Poil posted:Be nice to the poor game. It deserves no pity. C please Headknock Arrow very much was "Kopfnuss" (Headbutt) in German
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Feb 27, 2023 14:46
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Jack-Off Lantern posted:Headknock Arrow very much was "Kopfnuss" (Headbutt) in German Huh, interesting to hear that "nuss" (lit. "nut") means to strike someone with your head in German as well as in (some?) English.
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Feb 27, 2023 15:39
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Gort posted:Huh, interesting to hear that "nuss" (lit. "nut") means to strike someone with your head in German as well as in (some?) English. Yes. In many British dialects, especially cockney/east end/estuary, it's a common slang term for head. I prefer 'bonce', but I am painfully middle class.
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Feb 27, 2023 19:21
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As dumb as those events were, they're fun in the janky-fun way.
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Feb 27, 2023 20:02
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Let's C where this goes, then
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Feb 27, 2023 23:12
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Update 04: The Best Place in Varant I bet if I go to Montera or Faring, someone's going to want me to do stuff for them. Time to wander into the wilderness and hope no one gives me any quests.    I don't get far down the road before I bump into some people, though, ugh.      A likely story, I bet you're an agent sent by the goblins. By the goblins. Yes! They're out to get me, you know. The goblins, the short green creatures who haven't even invented pants... have hired me to harass you? You're suggesting something but I'm not sure what it is. How about... I go kill the goblins for you, and you stop being insane? Be careful if you do, they're cowardly, they've got some hidden base nearby... I... think I have an idea where they are. I know where they are because the cave they're hiding in is literally across the road from Armon's little camp, in full view.   Also despite being "cowardly goblins" they're as aggro as any other goblins, which is a bit of a missed opportunity. Imagine if they actually fled from the player, lured them deeper into the cave, and then turned and fought when they reached the bottom where there was an ogre or something.       The only interesting part of this cave is that the goblins somehow got a cart in here which is wider than the entrance tunnel and couldn't possibly navigate that hairpin bend in it. Maybe the goblins disassembled it and reassembled it in here.   Since Armon here is a rebel, the point of doing this, aside from sheer bloodlust, is a bit of XP and a +1 to Rebel Rep.    Also while in Gothic 2 pretty much every chest or other container was placed as part of some tableau, like an abandoned camp, an old house, in someone's home, at the back of a cave inhabited by creatures or people who might want to store their things, etc. Gothic 3 just plops down chests in the middle of the wilderness.    Seriously, look at this lazy poo poo. It looks like a random spawn in a roguelite or something. Who OK'd this?   Also who decided to have both giant lizards that can eat you, and lil' salamander fellas that could hide under a fern, and have them both named "Lizard"? I was running in circles around this little guy for like five minutes trying to find the giant lizard. It's a mean bit of development and I wonder if it was intentional to make players think there was a big monster when there wasn't.      In any case, the road south is mostly calm except for the trouble you choose to involve yourself in.  Like a sinister trail of blood leading towards a murky cave! I have a sneaking suspicion I know how this is going to end up.  One thing I do like about Gothic 3 is that torches provide good light in the darker caves, while previous caves have been pretty visible thanks to a good supply of glowing weirdo crystals, in here there aren't any, so alternate light sources are needed.    The downside to torches is that they, obviously, cannot be wielded while you've got a two-handed weapon like a bow out. Also what I want to communicate here, which is hard to show off, is that this cave loving sucks. Like it hyper sucks, it giga sucks, it sucks more than a black hole it- Use your words.Hnnnnnnnnn... okay, so the thing is that it's full of meatbugs. Which are just like, little isopod beetles you can hack up and eat. But the thing is that most targeting in Gothic 3, aside from aiming bows, is snap-on... so guess what? When the cave is full of loving meatbugs, it's practically impossible to target the three(I only see two right now, however...) shadowbeasts in the back there. I also have my doubts about being able to take them out with just the bow, so I conceive of a Cunning Plan(tm).     Summon Animals sucks in a lot of situations since it relies on there being aggressive animals around who'll aggro on the target, and usually you'll have killed most of them while getting TO the target, so perversely what I tend to use it for is getting one animal to attack another animal.   The third shadowbeast doesn't give a gently caress until the second shadowbeast has actually killed the first shadowbeast. THEN they both come for my rear end.  What the hell? These are like the pug dogs of Shadowbeasts. Look what they did to my boy.  That's what they used to be like, now they look like some sort of hosed up rodent with spikes.    I end up kiting them up the road and plugging them with poison arrows, flaming arrows, the works, eventually taking them down. They are each worth 300XP, so 600XP in total, for an encounter that almost kills me, with enemies so fast that I can't rely on arrows stun locking them effortlessly.   Before I head back in, I cast up Light.   And it loving SUCKS. It barely gives ANY light at all. Why is it so incredibly bad?   Then I realize I can't even really interact with the loot in here because the meatbugs keep being interactible, I sigh and decide to hack them apart and...   They're worth 25XP a piece?! Literally the most undangerous enemies in the game that also drop 10% max health healing items on death? I don't keep track, but I believe this cave has enough meatbugs that I hack apart that I actually end up getting more XP from them than from the actually dangerous loving Shadowbeasts inside. What about the actual loot?  Mostly vendor trash and rusty weapons that are also vendor trash, but there IS one Heavy Chest in there, which means another special weapon.  It contains the Bone Bow, which is really just the basic bow with 10 more damage but the same rock bottom Hunting Skill requirement.  ...but if you're actually using bows, it seems completely implausible that you wouldn't already have upgraded to something much better.     Outside of the cave and further downhill, rough stone pillars line the road and dot the landscape off the road.   Some are arranged into circles on little hillocks, where they disappoint me by not indicating any ancient graves for me to loot or otherwise vandalize.    Thank gently caress, a house, I've been out in the rain for what feels like ten hours.    Yeah, so? You can't know everyone around here. Shut it, wise guy, you better head to Montera on the double, or there'll be trouble. Nice rhyme. Just for that I'm giving you a deadline: Three days to make it to Montera. Or what? You'll sic the cops on me? ...no, you'll just miss out on some XP and Montera reputation. So to humour you, which way would I go to get to Montera? Just up over the hill to the north- Sounds easy enough. -if you want to die horribly. It's full of bandits, go west and loop around. Oh, that'll put some sort of intense time pressure on me to reach it? Maybe if you stop to sleep occasionally, but I bet you're one of those guys who just skips sleep by drinking energy potions.    Domenik isn't kidding about the short route to Montera, it's CRAWLING with bandits, this little pseudofort on a ridge has something approaching 15 or 20 bandits crammed into it. Off-screen I murder them all, because their bodies contain delicious, delicious XP, but it's not very exciting, just very methodical, though it does claim the lives of Domenik's two slaves as I end up training several of the bandits back there.     To the south, meanwhile, is a calm road along the river which swings west. There are a couple of bloodflies, and I also stumble over a lone shadowbeast sleeping in the grass, but nothing really worth writing home about.   We're not here for the road, though.     This seems like a bad idea.It's either that or we're going to Montera and you're going to have to get a job. This seems like a great idea!  From here, we're more or less looking straight across the inlet at Lago. I bet no one will make us work there.    Even without Acrobatics, splashing down in water would be safe in any case, no matter how high we're plummeting from.   I've got a good feeling about this.    ...slightly apprehensive, but you never know, the local economy might involve other things than slaves.     I really just smoke weed all day. ...you don't chase slaves? Nope. ...fight rebels? Sounds stressful. ...hunt for ancient artifacts? Nah, I just smoke weed. Have a joint on me, man, you seem tense. I'm... I'm just so happy. I've finally found a place where no one does anything or gives a gently caress.    Shitloads of the best swampweed you've ever smoked. I thought swampweed grew in swamps? Common mistake, it really loves this coastal climate. Only problem is that bloodflies love it, too, awful things. Seriously. I can't believe we haven't exterminated them yet. You seem pretty alright, have a joint on me. ...I never want to leave.  Is this where I settle down? I could see it.     [sigh] Someone raided the great temple in Ben Sala, I'm looking for the missing artifacts. Here? This seems like the sleepiest place ever. I drew the short straw, but the Hashishin here have a prisoner that might know something about them, some old man, tough as bootleather. Sounds like an unsubtle hint that someone could get their trust, see the prisoner and get some plot hooks from him. Be my guest, it's not like I'm going to get anywhere. Not much of an interrogator? No world state for it. Harsh. Well, stay chill.   You can tell me how I apply for residency here. Ahhh... Lago, it's a lovely place, isn't it? Very calm, and so much swampweed, so much excellent swampweed. I feel like you're intimately familiar with it. A smoke when I wake, a smoke to get the day started, a smoke to calm down over noon, a smoke to calm me down for bed at night... and maybe a bit more in between those. Doesn't it get in the way of you doing... whatever it is you do? Not at all! I smoked a bit, and I had the most wonderful dream of an amazing ship, and I drew my design. That can't just be a random comment. Can I have that drawing? No! It's mine... well, unless... Unless? Unless you bring me some wolf hides. Some white wolf hides, from the north. I guess I could do that. I need them to lounge on while I smoke swampweed. I hate to say it, but I think you really need to cut down on the weed.     I've finally found my way. Good for you, maybe you can find some other things while you're here, like something useful to do. Aw man, I have to get a job? I thought I could just sit around and smoke swampweed. You would get that impression talking to people here. But no, there's actual work to be done. Well, I'll work like a fiend for weed. What's up? You could do some morally gray work where you capture a raider that's been harassing the town- Sounds normal so far. -but who's probably an alright person because he freed most of our slaves- I thought it was odd there was only one of them. -or you can go beat the snot out of Grubuz and Mamuk in the arena. Yeah alright, I could do some beating.     Mamuk is the first victim, Fabio seems gleeful about us fighting him because he's so smoked up. I was expecting an easy fight.    And Mamuk whips my rear end like five times, he's TOUGH. He attacks like a whirlwind, and his swords are poisoned, so if he hits me with a lunge that's about the fight done for since I will NOT get the peace to heal while fighting him.    In the end the trick turns out to be being really patient, never getting greedy for extra hits, and backing off a lot because his flurry of swings eats up my endurance when I try to block it due to the volume of attacks.    Grubuz, meanwhile, we actually have to pay Fabio 400 gold to be allowed to fight.   He's actually an easier fight than Mamuk despite being the second fight.  And like most orcs he respects us more for beating a few extra dents into his head in the arena. Aside from the XP and the +1 Strength for each win, this also gets us a prize from Fabio.     The reward? A packet of swampweed! Its visible value doesn't quite seem to refund the 400 gold, but I presume there's an NPC somewhere that pays a premium to get high, so I'll hang on to it rather than selling it.   Finally, a calm town where I'm a valued member of the community and smoking weed all day is socially acceptable. I could settle down here. ...okay, bored now. This is much too calm. I wonder if Domenik was serious about insisting I get to Montera in three days? Vote A: We take Dominic seriously and find our way back to Montera. Perhaps not in three days, but eventually. B: Deeper into the desert, there are more Varantian locations to discover. C: Find this mystery raider that's been giving Fabio a headache, and either help him or help Fabio get rid of him.
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Mar 7, 2023 02:34
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C followed by B. No plot until we've performed the maximum amount of faffing about!
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Mar 7, 2023 03:36
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C. Let no sidequest go unseen, let every land be traveled and scoured.
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Mar 7, 2023 03:38
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B desserts you say
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Mar 7, 2023 05:22
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In case anyone wants to make a bad decision, Gothic 3 is 2.50 american greenbacks on steam this week.
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Mar 7, 2023 06:05
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The lizards and the lizards are probably just lazy translation. The big lizards are Waran in German, which translates to monitor lizard, which was presumably shortened to just lizard. The small ones, if I remember correctly, are Eidechse, which literally translates to lizard.
cncgnxcg fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Mar 8, 2023 |
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Mar 7, 2023 12:03
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Shei-kun posted:C followed by B. No plot until we've performed the maximum amount of faffing about!
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Mar 7, 2023 18:37
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cncgnxcg posted:The lizards and the lizards are probably just lazy translation. The big lizards are lézard is the French for lizard, and one of my favourite verbs is lézarder, which means to laze around as a lizard basks in the sun. quote:A likely story, I bet you're an agent sent by the goblins. Priceless JustJeff88 fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Mar 8, 2023 |
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Mar 7, 2023 21:12
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Update 05: The Skeleton Wars So, Son of Delay, how goes your hunt for Shakyor, the Lion of the Desert? I've found him already. Really? And defeated him, perhaps? Where is he? Let me tell you a story, Fabio, a story about... the Skeleton Wars.  It was a day like any other when I left Lago to search for the infamous Shakyor. Since no one had thought to tell me where he might me, I thought that the Lion of the Desert would be in the desert and struck out a course towards the golden sands.  On the way, I run into these jackals. Jackals are sturdier wolves that suck because they don't drop hides.    This particular pack bugged out and refused to climb the hill to actually fight me, something which happened to me again later with some other enemies, I think Varant is just buggy in terms of pathfinding.    The jackals were guarding this little mine on the outskirts of Lago.    It's mainly made interesting by being the first place we find ore deposits: Gold, sulfur, iron and magic ore in this case, used for various crafting stuff. It's not terribly exciting stuff, but an early investment in crafting can help you jump the queue in terms of both money and gear, since self-crafted versions of equipment hit harder, and self-crafted gear items usually sell for a LOT more than their component items. Look who's learning about the basics of business here.Shush, not every game makes as much sense as this.    In the distance, I spied a great building and thought to myself: If I was an infamous raider with a cool name, that's the sort of place I would hang out. In the most obvious place for miles around? Obviously. What's the point of being infamous if people can't stop by and boggle at how cool I am?   I'd probably pick somewhere slightly closer to the various shops and amenities, though, by the time I got out there, I had sand everywhere.   In my great wisdom, I deduced that Shakyor, being a villain worthy of his title, had recruited the uneasy dead to be his minions. Oh brother. What was that? I said: keep going, I can't wait to see how this ends.  Zombies are insanely annoying enemies because unlike Gothic 2 zombies that were slow, shambling and have their own moveset, Gothic 3 zombies are slow, shambling and use the exact same melee combat moveset(and even idle animations...) as generic human enemies, with the exception that while human enemies predictably flinch when hit upside the head with a sword or when you plunk an arrow into their forehead, zombies only seem to flinch about a third of the time, making them surprisingly dangerous to fight.  You may also notice the arrows clustered right in their dumb foreheads: I think, and some of the other Gothic 3 players think, that there's a headshot damage multiplier, though no one can quite agree how/if it works. It does seem like enemies go down faster when headshot than when I aim for center mass, though, but that may also just be some poorly-documented "critical hit" effect that adds some randomness to the damage in general.   You know, maybe there ISN'T anything here but skeletons and zombies. I must be on the wrong track.     Heading back towards the coast, I decided to travel southeast towards Ben Sala. Because Gothic loving looooves Minecrawlers as much as I hate them, Varant instead has Sandcrawlers: dun-coloured Minecrawlers that don't have the decency to stay underground and also don't even drop mandibles. Awful things.      These sorts of hills seemed like proper bandit country.    In my infinite wisdom, I was right. Robber after robber surged out of the hillside cave, where I destroyed them with my expert marksmanship. I thought this story was about the Skeleton Wars? Everyone has skeletons inside them, even robbers.     The cave is a bit unusual in that the robbers are only in the front part of the cave and the back is completely empty. What's worth visiting for are these "chests of goods" stashed inside, as per usual a half dozen of them, as big as our entire protagonist, easily disappear into our inventory. They're a quest item for Ben Sala, the town down the road.   As night fell, I continued towards Ben Sala, thinking that someone there might have heard of Shakyor.   ...these are an awful lot of undead on the way. That one just walked out of a boulder. I should probably run.   I realized that I had stumbled into the heart of... The Skeleton Wars. Ah, the title drop.    Approaching the gates, the living sallied forth to do battle with the undead, hacking away at their unliving flesh.   The living generally win these fights, but because of the damage modifiers for NPC vs NPC combat, it takes loving forever to happen, plus you don't get XP if an NPC that isn't in your "party" lands the killing blow. So what you want to do is let NPC's distract the zombies, then step in and stab the zombies in the back. This is slightly easier said than done, though, as the auto-targeting keeps trying to select the friendly NPC's instead, plus if an NPC does a big spinning power attack it doesn't give a poo poo who it hits and I repeatedly get flattened by orcs while trying to help them out. Eventually the undead siege out front gets cleared up, however...   I'm here to fight in the Skeleton Wars. Will you help me fight in the Skeleton Wars? I'm not leaving this gate, go talk to Daro, Morra started this problem, Morra can solve it. Oh. Well, have you heard of Shakyor, then? Never heard of him before, now shove off.    Actually, what the hell happened here? The orc by the gate said something about humans causing this. Can't say, all I know is that the undead have screwed everything up. All the other smiths got killed or chased off, and someone even took the chance to steal my steel supply. I'll let you know if I happen to stumble across several tonnes of steel that can I shove into my pockets. Speaking of, know anyone around here who're missing their several tonnes of trade goods? Oh, that'd be Giores across the street.   By skeletons, well, mostly zombies. I got assaulted by living people, and they stole my boxes full of stuff! Well, since I arbitrarily can't crack them open and take all your things, here you go. Thank you! Now you can buy my useless bottles of booze.    I was looking for a criminal called Shakyor- Never heard of him. -but now I'm thinking I should help out with the skeletons here. What happened? Someone hosed around with the temple to the southwest, big sand-coloured cube in the desert, you might have seen it. I'm going to pretend I haven't been loving around there either. Well, whatever they did, it caused us to be up to our kneecaps in the undead. Then clearly we should all run out to the temple, where you can engage the undead in battle while I gain all the glory. Anything that would change your mind? Well, if you singlehandedly destroyed all the undead in our mine tunnels and also killed all the undead up the hill which are my re-animated scouts... I would consider sending someone other than myself with you to the temple.    Rolling up to the mine tunnels behind the town, the guards supposed to stand outside and look at the tunnels sternly have gotten busy fighting the undead inside because they apparently walked too close.    Skeletons are honestly more enjoyable to fight than the zombies, for some reason THEY actually flinch reliably, even if they're immune to normal and poison arrows like in Gothic 2. Funnily enough, they do zero damage and also don't even aggro the skeletons, so you can turn them into a porcupine from range if you're sufficiently bored.     Battling my way through the first mine tunnel, slaying the undead left and right, I felt the threads of reality themselves unravelling.   I think I realized something was up when one of the guards got so tired of fighting the undead that he phased through the walls and disappeared.      Next, it was time to head up the hill and release Daro's unfortunate scouts from their undead state.   Prepared for a lengthy battle, I lined up an arrow on the first of the undead, let fly and...  ...there was no reaction.Like the jackals, while all the undead up top turn to face me and sort of walk to the edge of their little flattened area, none of them react to being shot full of arrows.     Look how many of the loving things there were. Anyway, this is obviously not enough, because Ben Sala has a SECOND mine tunnel away from the town. When talking to Daro about it, the text say it's to the southwest, but the voice clip says it's to the east, and it turns out that it's actually to the southeast along the rough desert trail.     Something is up with the undead outside, some of them look like they're in an aggroed state, standing around with their weapons(sticks) drawn and facing in the same direction like human enemies in the game often do, as they line up and wait to be the next to fight someone.    I clear out the ones around the edges and duck into the mine because I figure that some Ben Sala guard got dragged out here by aggroing off one zombie after another.    Ahem. What the gently caress?Yeah, this guy is just fistfighting the zombies and appears, judging by the de-animated cadavers around his feet, to have crushed four of them bare-handed while having taken only minimal damage. It's actually kind of metal and I decide he needs saving, so I get to work hacking down the zombies.    Having defeated the last undead inside the mine, I approached Miguel, to ask him how he had survived, who had taught him these amazing arts of fisticuffs. But he didn't hear me.   Instead he starts immediately jogging backwards out of the mine to fight the undead outside. It feels like everything that could get janky with this update did decide to get janky.       I don't even know what to loving add to this. Yes, "hiding" by bare-fistedly obliterating a half dozen undead. ...I'd hate to see what happens when you start fighting, then. Want to, uh, not be stuck out here with the undead? Please, I'd like to get back home. To your family? Oh, no, I'd like to get back to Enzo. You know, my owner.Oddly enough as far as I can tell there's no real option to "save" Miguel, you can only escort him back to Enzo, and he specifically asks for that.        Huh, I would've thought he'd want to escape, most slaves do. Same, he just wanted to be escorted back here.   How the hell did you survive that? Actually, never mind, I'm impressed. Impressed enough to help me clear out the temple? Impressed enough to tell Dolok to help you clear out the temple. Hm, good enough.       And so, with my valiant sidekicks, we journeyed into the desert for the final battle of... The Skeleton Wars. Oh, this is getting good, but... what about Shakyor? I feel like that plot thread is still dangling. Don't worry, I didn't forget about him, but there's a cool twist coming.   I need to rely a lot on the orcs as distraction here because I'm almost completely out of arrows.      I could've saved a ton of arrows if I realized I could've used the orcs as tanks here and hadn't wasted time killing that dozen zombies earlier.    As the fight moves to the front gates of the temple, there are two issues. One of them is this guy, the Undead High Priest. As long as he's fighting in melee, he's not a problem, but if he gets some breathing room to cast spells, he can one-shot me with fire and ice spells(though once again they mostly just tickle the orcs a bit) and also cast self-healing spells.    The other thing is that something feels hosed up about the aggro ranges and undead keep flooding up this ramp from the deeper chambers to join in the fighting, so I need to dodge dozens of undead, while the orcs distract the undead priest, and also smashing up the undead fighting the orcs before the OTHER undead catch up.         Long story short, including quickloads generally resulting from me getting blasted by stray fireballs, this fight took like half an hour. -and then I hit a skeleton, and I hit another skeleton, and then I hit the BIG skeleton. I think I'm getting the idea.   But I'm not done yet, now I need to deal with the temple underground, which loving sucks! I hate these loving spiderwebs which are usually just these lovely transparent textures hovering in mid-air.        Combined with the darkness, the dancing shadows from using a torch, everything, even the zombies, being kind of sand-coloured. Ugh. Bad.      Your two options are to either slowly and painstakingly train the undead out in ones and twos to fight either yourself or with the orcs, or to rush in and deal with this swarm of six melee undead at once while another undead priest blasts you with instakill fireballs.    Once in melee he hits like a truck but isn't impossible to defeat.  And once he's down, it's time to get backpats and rewards from Dolok and Daro.      Dolok's big reward is a potion that gives a massive +4 Life Points... in a game where you start with 200 as a base, a bare 2% increase doesn't really feel like a meaningful boost. But whatever. I'll take it.        So you actually solved our problems? Now we just need to clear up the last zombies and we can finally do stuff without risking being beaten over the head by undead with sticks any longer. You should step behind me and tell Julio, maybe he'll be able to tell you about this Shakyor you've been looking for.    Blame some rear end in a top hat named Basir who broke into the temple, it used to be sealed up tight. They all died, though. If you happen to find Basir himself, do me a favour and stab him for me. I'm going to go back to smoking this pipe until I forget the smell of zombies everywhere. Reasonable. I don't suppose you know anything about the villain named... Shakyor? Shakyor? No. Sorry. Wait, wait, wait, that was all a wild goose chase? Pretty much. So you didn't find Shakyor at all? I've been listening to these descriptions of swords hitting zombies for an hour for no reason? Don't be so impatient! Next, I searched high and low...  From the peaks above Ben Sala and Lago...  ...to the dense coastal forests... ...and finally a mysterious cave in the depths of those very same forests! Ah! That must have been Shakyor's hideout!      Actually no, but I did find a very cool skeleton and a dead guy with a magic rock next to him. ...and then you came back here to annoy me? Nah, actually I went somewhere first. You see that hill to the west? The one you can see from here? ...yes? That's where I went next.    It always is the last place you look. Now I can finally ask you the question that's been on my mind for ages.  Really. Yeah, it's really been on my mind a lot. Oh thank goodness, finally someone who doesn't just assume it's because I have a lion for a pet. Man, that would be a silly reason to call you The Lion. Ha ha, yeah... it's actually because I have a magic rock related to lions that a dying druid gave me. Also because I'm large, lazy and make other people do my work for me then take the credit. Clever. So you're not a druid yourself? And a guy who frees slaves and prisoners. Well, you missed a prisoner over in Lago. drat, feel like doing my work for me by finding out who it is so I can decide whether I give a poo poo? May as well, it'll be a break from the Skeleton Wars. The Skeleton Wars? That sounds like some story. Ah, well, you see, it started just a few days ago, a Hashishin had just asked me to track you down... So you killed him by boring him to death, then came right here? I considered that, but instead I bribed Mamul to tell me your prisoner was Vatras, the water priest. That useless stoner prick. And now I'm just waiting for Shakyor to show up and gut you like a fish to rescue him, Vatras is an old friend. ...mind giving me a moment to round up the guards? Seems only fair, you did listen to my story after all.No vote this time, since I figure everyone probably wants to hear what Vatras has been up to in the meantime. Perhaps how he managed to get off the ship and get his dumb rear end captured so quickly. It'll probably be exciting lore!
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Mar 14, 2023 15:55
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A lot of running around and lots of kinda unpleasant fighting. It's Gothic 3. Eagerly awaiting the sequel Skeleton Wars 2: Really Boned.
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Mar 14, 2023 16:48
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Really fun update, love the framing. Actually playing this bit, not so much. In my playthrough I joined the Hashishin for the cool double swords so the whole situation went a lot less bloody but it's a real pain in the rear end to find anything in the desert.
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Mar 14, 2023 18:02
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What a lovely story 
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Mar 14, 2023 19:17
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Poil posted:A lot of running around and lots of kinda unpleasant fighting. It's Gothic 3. I also want to let everyone know that while sometimes I take the piss out of the original dialogue, sometimes I add actual reasons for the baffling decisions and replies NPC's give. I think about the apex of it is the guy we're going to meet in the next update...
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Mar 15, 2023 01:23
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Update 06: That Is My Plan So, first things first. I didn't get a great screenshot of it last time, but I hope this illustrates what I meant about the dastardly raider Shakyor literally being within shouting distance of Fabio's home.   Well, that settles it, then we have to attack.    ...if Vatras wasn't one of my old companions, this is about when I'd be switching sides. Go on then, oh mighty hero, lead the charge.  It's worth noting that Shakyor's lion is smarter than he is and doesn't charge into the fray with him, instead sitting back on the hill where he left it.   Oh, I see, you're not going to gang up on Shakyor, but you're going to gang up on me? Fine, come over here...    My pro strat is as usual to lure enemies over to an NPC(the lion) that they'll decide to fight, then circling around while their buddies chase me, get enough lead-time to blitz down the one fighting the friendly NPC and then do it all over again. It leads to some hilariously janky ragdolls. What even happens to make ragdolls glitch out like this? Is it because they don't really have a "skeleton"?     I think this one is absolutely my favourite. Look at his goofy loving head.  I love this quick bar, nothing like wolfing down a hearty serving of healing stew in the middle of a furious battle.  Eventually, I get around to hacking up Fabio and the stream of enemies stops. But where's Shakyor? Mr. "Wisdom of the Lion" had better not have gotten himself killed, he still owes me some XP.    ... What? I don't know, I just thought you'd want to free Vatras or something before you sat down and start smoking a dead man's swampweed pipe. I thought about it, but I don't know which building he's in. Maybe the only one with a locked front door? Right next to you? No, no, don't get up, I'll handle this.   Look at this poo poo, the door swings in the wrong way compared to the way it's loving hinged, clipping through the wall. Lazy-rear end devs.   Who the gently caress are you? Don't you recognize your old friend and ally, Vatras? Ahem, I mean... He has sent me a liberator! Oh, I don't know, you were good enough at "liberating" yourself from our ship off-shore. What exactly happened there, by the way? The last thing I remember was Girion shouting about pirates and telling everyone to get into the life boat, then someone grabbed me from behind and threw me overboard. How did you make it to shore? Hello? Priest of the God of Water? It was strange, mind you, I never actually saw any pirates... Goddamn Girion, gently caress all Paladins... well, what happened after you got to shore? I got jumped by the Hashishin. Okay, since you're bringing it up again, let me remind everyone of what you looked like last time we met. You've gotten a shave, your face is chubbier, you look less weathered and your hair has gotten its colours back. What the hell? Adanos moves in mysterious ways. Will you drop the subject if I give you a side quest? Hnnnnn... fine, but it better be laden with XP. Go shake down Shakyor for some information and find out where the Nomad Hurit is, then escort me to him.  Now where should I go if I want to find some more pro-Nomad missions? Say... if I wanted to get one from Hurit? Ah, Hurit is to the south, near an oasis.I want to point out that Shakyor's directions suck.  While yes, Hurit is technically to the south and technically near an oasis, if you head straight south, you actually bump into the oasis hosting Atheras first. Hence my being about to go on an extended detour.      And so, I embark into the burning sands of Varant. I feel like there might originally have been some thirst/overheating mechanics in the game, considering that Shakyor teaches me to "resist heat" which either does nothing because it wasn't implemented right(it says it adds a heat resistance but if so, it's not noted on my character sheet) and overheating(which I'm 90% sure isn't a thing), and some settlements have specific merchants that just trade in water and little else.      This is taking a while... are you sure you know where we're going? Shakyor said south, we're going south, aren't we?    And there's an oasis down there!What I've cut out is a lot of Vatras losing the plot and suddenly running backwards away from me when crossing certain thresholds, forcing me to chase after him to get him back in line. Goddamn pathfinding.     Look, there are even nomads here!    Don't you be smug at me, how was I supposed to know there was more than one nomad in Varant? I'm not saying anything.   On the way back, I notice this ominous ruin with a weirdo hanging out on top. I figure that now I have Vatras for extra firepower, I can take out Scorpion Boy here...    A bit of help?! Just as soon as you admit I was right about the route.Vatras won't engage it until it swings at me or I swing at it, which is rude, but once he does...   ...his first resort is blasting things with Ice Block which is still very much a battle winner like it was in Gothic 2.  So what was this thing guarding? Um.   Starting to think it was trying to keep people out for their own good.There's no treasure here, just some buggy-rear end geometry.     Returning back to the northern half of the deserts, there's a set of ruins south of the relevant oasis. You actually want to go there rather than the oasis itself to find Hurit.     Live and drink. I assume you're Hurit? I brought your Vatras back to you.  That's at least one thing that's going right today. Yeah? Related to why you're hanging out in these dry ruins rather than at your lush oasis? Bingo, some dickheads are camping down there and they have it out for us. Well, if they're Hashishin, how about we go there and cut their brains open?     As far as I can tell the only purposes Hurit has in the game are that you can deliver Vatras to him, help him retake his oasis or help the dickheads at his oasis hunt him down and kill him.      There's little to mention about this fight except that during it, I accidentally whack one of the Nomads and he takes offense to it. That attack he's winding up for there is an attack against ME.  It's thankfully non-lethal and leads to this goofy tableau.  So, uh, what's next? You guys wanna come liberate a city or something? Free all the slaves? You go on ahead, maybe we'll catch up with you.   North of Hurit's oasis is the Hashishin town of Ben Erai.     It has a LOT of slaves.    Slaves who aren't taking breaks and smoking joints.        I know your kind, you're just here for the gold! I didn't even know there was any until you mentioned it. ... Can I have some? No! Now go away before I gut you like a fish! Man you are no fun at all.     What if we said I was? Then I might help you get closer to it. You'd just need to kill a whole lot of sandcrawlers for me. A whole lot? How many is that? It's a whole lot! Now get to it.    Hey, I'm a nameless protagonist. Why does everyone seem kind of snippy and on edge here? Well, first Ben Sala gets attacked by zombies, then Lago gets raided by Shakyor... That bastard. Rar. Someone should do something about him. Etc. So, you know. No weed, desert full of zombies, takes a bit of the fun out of things.  Sancho is the chief of Ben Erai. He won't talk to me because Fabio in Lago is dead, and I believe his only quest is sending me to go talk to Fabio. I think this also means I can't actually get enough Ben Erai rep to get into the mines "legally," at the very least not without running out into the wastes and killing Hurit which I'm not going to do for THESE dickheads. Anyway, about those sandcrawlers.      This is going to suck so hard.   So, taking out sandcrawlers isn't too hard. Lure them away one by one and I can take them down usually without even getting a scratch, but!  There are a loving shitload of them. I'm cutting out all the time it took to murder the sandcrawlers and ensuring their bodies ended up in roughly the same spot for this screenshot. Suffice to say it was extremely tedious. Mind you, this isn't even all of them, there's another handful stuffed in a cave right next door.    All this place has is slaves, grouchy dickheads and bad quests- Hey there, friend Are you here for the gold as well? Since it's all anyone here talks about, sure. Any ideas for how to get it?  Are you... encouraging me to kill everyone and take all the gold? Oh, heavens no. Shame, that would've been refreshingly direct. I'm saying that if you start killing everyone, me and the slaves are going to help you. So... me, one guy with a spear, and five unarmed, malnourished guys? Yes! I'll need a moment to think about that one.Unironically this is as far as I can tell the only way to "liberate" Ben Erai rather than just murdering everyone on your own: paying Lukar 2000 gold to get his and the slaves' help murdering the guards.  So, pros: I'll liberate the slaves, I'll make a friend, I'll get rich.. Cons: There's at least a dozen armed people here who'll try to kill me before I kill them. Oh and if I want Lukar's help I'll have to start swinging right in the middle of town rather than working my way in. This can't possibly fail.Next: The nameless hero takes on an entire town largely by himself. Maybe I'll even manage to save some of the slaves.
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Mar 17, 2023 13:00
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I think you have reduced stamina regen if you don't have desert training while in the desert. Possibly only during the day? He was waaaay over there, and the swamp weed is right here.
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Mar 17, 2023 16:29
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Look on the bright side... you not only murdered someone in the desert, you collaborated with a lion to kill someone in the desert.
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Mar 18, 2023 00:57
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Oh, drat. I missed that the new thread has already started. Fine work, once again. I think you might be right that the heat mechanics are bugged. It worked when I played but that was with alternate balancing. Most Hashishin-armor and I think also that of the nomads gives you the trait to endure heat. So there is no real point to learning it. Even less so when it doesn't even work.
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Mar 22, 2023 11:19
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Wasn't Vatras... black?
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Mar 22, 2023 11:58
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anilEhilated posted:Wasn't Vatras... black? I think it can be argued that Gothic 2 vatras was tanned rather than black, it's hard to say which considering the comparatively low fidelity of the graphics, but he was definitely not a pudgy-faced, middle-aged white man. Rubberduke posted:I think you might be right that the heat mechanics are bugged. It worked when I played but that was with alternate balancing. Most Hashishin-armor and I think also that of the nomads gives you the trait to endure heat. So there is no real point to learning it. Even less so when it doesn't even work. It's honestly hard to tell, my stamina regen in the desert might have been slower without the heat resistance trait? This game, like Gothic 2, is somewhat coy about letting the player in on the actual mechanics under the hood. I definitely know that the actual fire resistance part of it doesn't seem to be working listed on the character sheet.
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Mar 22, 2023 14:36
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Hmm, I think your bar turns grey or something if you are in the desert and haven't drunk water recently. But that might aswell be a different effect and I don't remember right.
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Mar 22, 2023 16:54
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Rubberduke posted:Hmm, I think your bar turns grey or something if you are in the desert and haven't drunk water recently. But that might aswell be a different effect and I don't remember right. The bar turning grey seems to be the "Disease" effect you get from being punched by mummies or bitten by (big) lizards, which more or less stops your stamina regen dead.
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Mar 22, 2023 17:37
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A brief placeholder since the next update is slightly delayed: I was battling with getting the game to draw in detailed stuff(and entities and plants and stuff) at a larger distance, since it looked like dogshit when it didn't. I found out that there was a way to do this in the .ini file even if you couldn't do it in the in-game settings! Success! ...or not. Because it turns out that the distance at which things load in is also related to the distance at which they are audible... and the distance at which entity AI kicks in. So you end up hearing waterfalls from halfway across the gameworld and enemies engaging in epic treks to assist their "faction" allies in fighting you. Thus: the game is going to continue looking like poo poo at times.
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Mar 27, 2023 14:13
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Update 07: Let's Fight Everybody NOW! So, where were we?    Ah, yes, we were hanging out with the world's most suicidal man.    I leave him to pick a fight with ten people at once while I try to save some of the slaves. It... doesn't go well, but they die valiantly to distract some Hashishin guards so I can cut them down from behind unopposed and then sprint away before the rest catch up with me.   Everything about these models is so janky. But also, note that neither I nor Lukar have used arrows in this fight yet. Eusebio here got shot in the rear end by one of his own buddies who was presumably trying to hit me.  Once most of the slaves die, things boil down to a pretty standard configuration: Lukar is at the center of a swarming ball of angry Hashishin who honourably only engage him one at a time-   -and I peel off one or two at once to engage, heal up, and then head in for another bite out of them.   It requires being pretty fast, because the locals are so eager to kick my rear end that the moment I'm no longer killing any of their buddies, they're literally phasing through the walls to come kill me.   I eventually have to switch over to the bow once only the sturdier locals remain, since they actually start being able to kick my rear end in a fair fight. My solution to that is to not give them a fair fight.   And then before you know it, we've killed enough people that Ben Erai is "liberated." Also Jesus Christ look at that poor guy's hosed up model. What the hell?    Surviving named NPC's run for the hills. I'm not sure if they've got somewhere they end up or just evaporate, while the settlement "leader" and any nameless goons seem to stick around to fight to the death.  You good? Perfectly! Now I can finally fulfill my darkest dreams...Let's leave him to that while we scour the place for any left-behind loot that no one can stop us from stealing.    ...why are you back here standing guard? You own this place now. Eh, I don't really know what to do with a town. I know what to do about standing guard.So yeah, at least Shakyor sat down to smoke weed and chill out. Lukar? He just stands around staring emptily into the air like he did before.    Probably the most valuable thing in town is mining all the gold deposits up in the hills, which no one will now stop us from doing.       Out of the ten or so slaves in Ben Erai, only ONE of them was smart enough to just hide at the back of a cave rather than charging to his doom at the hands of people with actual swords and armor.    Most of the homes in Ben Erai are pretty spartan, but Sancho's pad is pretty well decked-out.  These little fruit pans still feel like they're more at home in a grocery store than a home, though, yet they seem to be in every Hashishin dwelling.  Since I haven'y yet pissed off the Hashishin enough to kill me on sight, I decide to continue heading west towards Braga.         The way over is mostly a dusty road filled with Lizards(the big kind. If they actually hit you, it turns out they Disease you, which stunts your stamina regeneration and sucks) and Jackals(which, when their pathfinding DOESN'T bug out, are actually kind of hard to kill before they bite off my ankles and tend to be present in upsettingly large packs).    On the right is Braga, a small, walled town. On the left is a giant field of ruins about ten times the area of Braga.   Why would someone just be sitting around in the ruins?     Oh, you actually look like yourself. Considering what happened to Vatras... Yes, we were rather surprised that Adanos was also the God of Whitewashing. Anyhow... feel like escorting me somewhere through a bunch of danger while I'm completely unhelpful? I'm getting a lot of practice in, so why not? Where are we going? Asaru, one of the Nomads. Yeah, speaking of, what's up with you Water Mages and the Nomads? Oh, we're from the area but we emigrated years ago because we thought that helping King Rhobar of Myrtana exploit slave labor to make magic weapons would help defeat the orcs. ... Hindsight is 20-20. Let's just get moving before I regret this.     Riordian thankfully leads the way to where you're meant to go, and actually largely picks a safe route except for one butt-puckering moment where he almost decided to run through a solid dozen Sandcrawlers.     He does sprint through a pack of jackals that aggro, however, but he doesn't actually turn around to fight them until they're actually biting off his toes at which point he blasts them with fireballs.      Well, for once it was actually no problem. I'm gonna go ask if anyone here wants something from the shops or a bunch of contract killings or something. Adanos be with you and etc.   Well who could resist the call of sitting in a cave that smells like feet with a dozen other guys watching a single woman jiggle all day? Hey, gently caress you, alright? It's the desert, we have to take what we can get. Anyway, we both know I'm in as long as you've got some XP. What's the deal? Yeah, surprising even myself, I haven't actually sold any nomads out yet. What needs to be done? Take Alia and bring her to Braga. That way, Nafalem, their leader, will think I'm dead. Oh, and then she'll poison him in the night or something, right? ...poo poo, we should've thought of that. Probably too late to get some poison or something. Maybe she'll just punch him once we attack.    Why? You already seem pretty well-armed. Entertainment's short out here, we gotta have something to throw in the campfire and watch it burn.Marus has a short but slightly amusing tangent where he explains that the Nomads get supplies by robbing Hashishin merchants, then give the valuables to slaves in the cities, which the slaves sell to their merchant owners... and then the Nomads rob the slaves' masters again.    Lastly, Ayitos wants us to clear out the entire ruin fields outside of Braga of monsters and bandits. It seems like a trivial ask, but it really isn't.    Alright, let's mosey. ...you don't wanna go grab a pair of shoes or something first? Maybe a weapon? It's rough out there. I said let's mosey. Fine, fine...    Watch out! It's a Bloodfly! Hiyeargh!    Get clear! Jackals! Rargh! ...healing potion? I'm good. Sorry. You have no idea how much aggression you work up when your career consists of jiggling in front of a bunch of lazy dickheads all day.Aila is actually surprisingly sturdy despite being unarmoured and unarmed. Even if she doesn't one-shot enemies, she still ties them up with the best of them for me to fill full of arrows or stabbery.        Hey, wanna work off some more aggression? Always.         Goddamn, you punched him so hard he's merged with the boulder! Don't mess with these hands.Actually the jackal just phased in there to attack me from below. Geometry is a suggestion in this game.     Aside from about 5000 jackals that are in huge packs, can phase through the geometry, etc. that I kill off-screen, the ruins field also hosts a band of robbers. They're actually dangerous enough that they can kill Aila, so I have to outrun her and get her stuck on stuff so I can take them out without her getting involved and getting herself stabberated.   They're mostly noteworthy because one of them is named and his bounty is worth money in Braga. He's also carrying a note implicating Braga's weapon dealer in trading weapons to the bandits, but I couldn't find any way to blackmail him or otherwise make use of it. You're supposed to be able to do so, or to turn the note in to Nafalem in Braga(because once again, everyone in the Gothicverse signs their extremely implicating correspondence), but I never got the option to pop up in dialogue.     Anyway, Braga. The first view when coming in from the desert is three skinny, half-naked slaves in manacles being displayed for sale on the platform on the left. Charming place, I look forward to eventually burning it down already.    I'm about five steps in when this rear end in a top hat pipes up out of nowhere and wants to buy Aila off me. That is one hell of a way to say hi to someone. It's what we call a sandbreaker here in Varant. A sandbreaker? It's like an icebreaker, but we don't really have ice here. I'm going to go away and not speak to you again now.   I used to know a bunch of those, my favourite was summoning a bunch of skeletons to do my work for me. If you know magic, then I'm a jackal. Like I said I used to, turns out using rocks to do everything isn't sustainable... Mmm, yes, you had magic, skeleton-summoning rocks. How about I give you some work and you go away for a while? Deal. Well, the idiots in this town owe me their taxes. Because they're morons, rather than just giving them to me, they gave them to one guy, who then managed to wander outside of town and get mugged. I get you, you want me to go make sure they still pay. On it, chief.  Wait, Diego?! Oh, the usual, stealing everything not nailed down, doing whatever minor acts of violence people will pay me for, maybe learning some dark magic if I have the time for it. You?  I thought I'd do a bit of hunting. Ugh, snappers. Even when I could kill dragons, snappers were hell to deal with. I'll leave you to them for now.   Hello identical merchant #285. Wow, rude. Want to buy some swords? Sure, I can browse before I beat you up. Anyway, the only reason I post a screenshot of Bernado's store inventory is so it's clear that he has 15k gold.  I already paid! Not my fault it got stolen. Dude, it's like 500 gold, it's not even 10% of your liquid funds, not to mention all your inventory and your house and the stuff I'm going to steal from you. But if you insist...   Should've just given me the money, dude.   I empty his pockets, loot his house and pick the lock on his chest before he wakes up. This also gives me the bundles of weapons I need for the Nomads waiting to attack Braga.  Getting my rear end beat shows I don't really have a choice. Dick. Pleasure doing business.    And if I don't have it? Beat your rear end until money comes out. ...what if I gave you a nice armor upgrade instead? Just bring me a few pieces of snapper leather. Deal, that armor probably costs like five grand, I'll take it for five hundred.   ...I was looking forward to kicking your rear end, too. Just waiting for an excuse. Now... who's left?      The last couple of tax-non-payers are hanging out outside of town.     Very dry. Also somewhat sandy. And for that smart-rear end response you're getting a double helping of rear end-kickings if you can't deliver. Looks like Nafalem wants a... chalice from you? Really? I don't just have a second chalice. Who would have two chalices? You could beat me up, but the only way you're getting a chalice is to hunt down the bandits who took it. I'll bow to your chalice-related logic.    So wait, you're the dumb rear end in a top hat who lost everyone's money? And the reason I have to go around threatening everyone? I think you're lucky you just got banished. Look, okay, I know it was stupid and there's no explanation for how I managed to get ambushed by bandits in a town about ten meters across where everyone can see me, but! Consider that I'll show you where the bandits are so you can beat them up and take their stuff, too. Not exactly saying a lot, but sure.    And so we're off, following Tufail around the side of the ruin fields. The robbers he's about to lead us to are actually some of the ones the Nomads want us to kill, too, so I may as well have Tufail's help taking them on. I tried it with Aila but it turns out that while she can tank an entire pack of jackals, she cannot tank an entire pack of bandits without even wearing shoes.     The bandits' cave is... weird in how it seems to be completely untextured inside and out.    Also all the bandits pile on Tufail instantly and then come out to fight me one at a time, letting me toss their leader into the sky with a bunch of sword slashes until he stops moving. But yeah, look at this poo poo.      I don't even really have words for how loving awful this looks. I know the rest of the game isn't exactly a work of art, but this is just an INCREDIBLE step down.   If it wasn't for the XP and how we needed to do this for the nomads anyway, this would be a pretty bad deal, since the "loot" from this cave is barely worth a few hundred gold, much less the five hundred gold or so in taxes that Tufail expect us to cover for him. We do at least find Abbas' chalice here, though.  And some spare bundles of weapons for the next time we need to arm a slave rebellion.       Changed your mind, then? Papa needs a new pair of shoes. And a new shirt. And some fresh pants. In fact I've been wearing this same outfit for like a week now and it's so crusted with blood I can barely raise my arms.    So Diego leads the way around the right side of the ruins field. What's important, and I mean REALLY important, is that you get ahead of him. Because if you don't...     He runs right up into the middle of the Dark Snappers and a fight with them involves aggroing ALL of them, and they're both pretty fast and pretty tough, definitely not pushovers.    Instead, piss them off from out here and you can split the pack in half, taking on first three, and then two, rather than five at a time.   As usual the strat is to use Diego as a distraction and then filling them full of arrows/swords while they're on him.     What the hell does THAT mean? It means I'm not going to take any responsibility for what happens. Come say hi if you want a helping hand, though.This frees up Diego as someone we can just go tell to accompany us any time we want it. I'm not sure if there are any limits to where he'll go or help us kill. For now I'm gonna leave him here in the sand to play with lizards, though, I don't want him getting killed when I aggro something inadvisable.     So this is gonna be like Snapper Denim or something, right? It's gonna make me look all tough and badass? Ha ha, no, you're just gonna get this old armor I found on a back shelf. Thanks for the leather, though, finders keepers, no takesie-backsies.It's honestly not a huge upgrade, but I'll take any cheap suit of armor I can get, plus a slight chance of appearance keeps things fresh. Now, to give Nafalem all the money and his new pimp chalice.      Something wrong? Not exactly, I suppose I just expected you to kill Tufail rather than actually getting some money out of him.  Good to know I'll be welcome in the heart of your dark empire if I ever feel like visiting. I'll also teach you some real magic if you like. Thanks for the offer, but I'll just go talk to the pineapple-shaped rock I found by Cape Dun if I want to learn some dark magic.   Before leaving, Nafalem's bookstand here is another free +5 Ancient Knowledge. We're now at 25 Ancient Knowledge out of... literally over a hundred needed to learn any meaningful spells. I think that for the next while I'm going to focus on buffing Ancient Knowledge so I can eventually start complaining about the game's magic system rather than just the combat system in general.    VOTE A: Leave Varant and return to Myrtana to look around B: Stay in Varant, explore everything, then side with the Nomads and end slavery C: Stay in Varant, explore everything, then side with the Hashishin and end the Nomads
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Mar 28, 2023 12:03
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A) Let's go have a look somewhere outside the desert for a bit.
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Mar 28, 2023 12:13
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| # ? May 6, 2024 02:31 |
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This Gothic is the one that I have the least amount of memory of even though I seem to have put a few hours into it back in 2015. I've only just learnt that the developers of this series went on to make the Risen games, which explains A LOT!
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Mar 28, 2023 12:25
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