20.05.2017 03:50badgesareus wrote:I don't see your images so I assume this is the bakery in the merchant quarter. If so, be sure to visit the "bread lady" in the foreign quarter, whose conversation shouldn't be missed!That, my friends, is a bakery.
your journal is an absolute delight to read; please keep up, your style is awesome 
also, the pictures are now visible
also, the pictures are now visible
I'm not seeing any picture, there is just the word "image" in gray. When I go to the topic "can we just appreciate how beautiful enderal is" I can see all the pics posted there. I wonder why I can't see yours, but urst can see them.
hm :/
in my answer I meant to write "can't see theam either", scrolled down again to the actual post,
and could see the pics
I assumed dyslexicfaser had changed something with the tags/links/something.
since then they are displayed correctly.
strange stuff.
(I always use imgur to post pics here, never had problems)
@dyslexicfaser
could you maybe post a snippet with the image - tags you're using?
(using the "code "- tags)
would look like this
in my answer I meant to write "can't see theam either", scrolled down again to the actual post,
and could see the pics
I assumed dyslexicfaser had changed something with the tags/links/something.
since then they are displayed correctly.
strange stuff.
(I always use imgur to post pics here, never had problems)
@dyslexicfaser
could you maybe post a snippet with the image - tags you're using?
(using the "code "- tags)
would look like this
Code Select all
[img]http://static.giga.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/enderal-logo.png[/img]- Jespar is waiting for me in the marketplace, but while I'm in the area, there's a quest for buying back and/or stealing an item from a merchant that he got off a debtor who wants it back. Conveniently, this is labeled 'Ironford's Lute' in his inventory, or I'd have no idea what the heck I was looking for. I suspect I'm missing some backstory to this quest.
I buy the thing mostly because I'm coasting along on the impetus of this being a quest with map markers and stuff, and find out the lute was Ironford's daughter's. And on the back is 1/3rd of a code to her 'treasure casket' that is almost certainly going to contain friendship or lightness of heart of peace of mind or something like that.
Maybe later.
- I happen to run into a nameless guard sighing wistfully and reflecting that they really do take it too easy on 'the scum.'
Enderal, ladies and gentlemen. I only hope I'm not the scum in question.
- Jespar has dressed me up like he's taking me to my quinceanera. Green gowns (with unfortunate stitiching), 'gallant shoes' and fine hats that are the height of Endaralean fashion. I already like this plan.
- What's less fun is the endless jaunt he takes me on through like 4 loading screens, up to the tippy top of the Sun Temple. I make a note to come back here since this seems like a likely place to find spell-sellers to see if there's a more advanced bear summoning. There's arcane enchanter tables, which is the first I've seen in Enderal. Apparently provincial backwaters like Riverville don't get mages.
Jespar spins a line of bullshit with the guard about me being the owner of the greatest perfume chain in foreign lands, and says the archmage is eager to meet me, and boy wouldn't he be upset if some well-meaning guard delayed us, etcetera. The guard acknowledges that does sound like the archmage, and lets us in.
I kind of want to meet the archmage, now.
Also I'm more than half convinced that this was all entirely unnecessary and Jespar just wanted to have some fun, but he apparently is supposed to be a clandestine spy type, so who knows?
- When I meet Constantine Firespark, it is in the midst of his alchemy lab exploding. This seems like it will set the tone for our relationship.
Constantine mistakes me for Jespar's doxy, and berates him for being the worst spy ever and to not bring his whores in here. Jespar always takes me to the nicest places.
I do wonder if that means Jespar sometimes does show women around the Sun Temple to try and impress them.
Constantine Firespark is a treasure. He talks like that all the time.
- Apparently having arcane fever is basically becoming a mage, and after putting me in a chair and doing some green magic hoodoo, he drops some world lore on me. Or rather, when he tells me to pick up a book like a nerd, Jespar succinctly summarizes the whole mage thing while browsing through the shit on Constantine's desk in the background. Mages can see other realities, and can bring phenomena from those realities into Enderal. Not just bears, but like, there's some world out there where Constantine's beard is on fire (Jespar's example, not mine), and I can take from that world and make it manifest in this one.
The locals spend a year fasting and praying to get it under control. Both Constantine and I think that's stupid, and he advises for me to go meet one of his fellow... Nehrimese mages? I think Nehrimese. Apparently she can pop my chakras open like it ain't no thing, or something like that.
I am all about quick shortcuts, so I'm down.
- He also thinks that Future Vision is me being under a lot of stress, or possibly drunk.
- Jespar leaves the party. I actually meet up with him later at the tavern for one last quest, which involves having a seat with him at the tavern and rapping with him for a while. It gets pretty philosophical, and is honestly more engaging than anything I got out of my poor packmule of a bodyguard Lydia in Skyrim.
Jespar's thinking is that everyone's on this world for the purpose of pursuing happiness. People dress it up in a lot of fancy words, about religion and purpose and honor and all that, but that mostly just ends up letting them get used by some tyrant or god. At the end of it he pretty much says his work is done and he wishes me the best. There's a boat headed for Kile in the morning, and he's going to be on it.
I can respect the game for definitively ending an engaging companion's involvement in the story in a way that makes sense to the character's core values, but my experience with games and the amount of detail SureAI put into this guy makes me think he'll still have a part to play later. Possibly he'll decide I'm too cute to bail out on, which is only the truth. We'll see.
- I do decide to swing by the cave the Ironford girl left 1/3rd of her code in before I head on to ancient ruins and the main quest. There are holes in the roof to let light in, streams are flowing everywhere, and there's a light mist. It's pretty, of course.
It's also filled with spiders, of course. And an Adept-level chest, the first I've ever found. Since I'm not a rogue-type and lockpicking Adept chests are like 4 memory points up the 'bow + lockpicking' tree, I have to leave it be.
I try swinging a fire-sword into it just in case it lets me bash the lock or something. It does not.
Just to be petty about the damn spiders and their tenaciously locked loot, I devour the spider mom's soul. It heals me back up good, no Crusty Endralean Bread necessary. This is what I bought last level instead of lock picking.
- I also head a few steps up the beach and run into some bad customers.
Apparently 'Soil elementals' in Enderal can cast lightning spells, because why the hell not? I am swiftly turned into a rather pretty corpse. It's been a while since that's happened! For having no legs, those fellows can really roll out.
The Takeaway:
I'm really starting to like Jespar and I can't decide if I hope he sticks around or if they actually retire him from the story which feels like an appropriate ending for his character. Constantine is also a wonderfully acerbic eccentric. I still don't really have any idea where the plot is going but the character writing in this section is really strong so I don't mind the journey getting there.
Now, stocked up on bread and souls and properly chastised for trying to wander off the beaten path, I'm back to working on the main quest.
I buy the thing mostly because I'm coasting along on the impetus of this being a quest with map markers and stuff, and find out the lute was Ironford's daughter's. And on the back is 1/3rd of a code to her 'treasure casket' that is almost certainly going to contain friendship or lightness of heart of peace of mind or something like that.
Maybe later.
- I happen to run into a nameless guard sighing wistfully and reflecting that they really do take it too easy on 'the scum.'
Enderal, ladies and gentlemen. I only hope I'm not the scum in question.
- Jespar has dressed me up like he's taking me to my quinceanera. Green gowns (with unfortunate stitiching), 'gallant shoes' and fine hats that are the height of Endaralean fashion. I already like this plan.
- What's less fun is the endless jaunt he takes me on through like 4 loading screens, up to the tippy top of the Sun Temple. I make a note to come back here since this seems like a likely place to find spell-sellers to see if there's a more advanced bear summoning. There's arcane enchanter tables, which is the first I've seen in Enderal. Apparently provincial backwaters like Riverville don't get mages.
Jespar spins a line of bullshit with the guard about me being the owner of the greatest perfume chain in foreign lands, and says the archmage is eager to meet me, and boy wouldn't he be upset if some well-meaning guard delayed us, etcetera. The guard acknowledges that does sound like the archmage, and lets us in.
I kind of want to meet the archmage, now.
Also I'm more than half convinced that this was all entirely unnecessary and Jespar just wanted to have some fun, but he apparently is supposed to be a clandestine spy type, so who knows?
- When I meet Constantine Firespark, it is in the midst of his alchemy lab exploding. This seems like it will set the tone for our relationship.
Constantine mistakes me for Jespar's doxy, and berates him for being the worst spy ever and to not bring his whores in here. Jespar always takes me to the nicest places.
I do wonder if that means Jespar sometimes does show women around the Sun Temple to try and impress them.
Constantine Firespark is a treasure. He talks like that all the time.
- Apparently having arcane fever is basically becoming a mage, and after putting me in a chair and doing some green magic hoodoo, he drops some world lore on me. Or rather, when he tells me to pick up a book like a nerd, Jespar succinctly summarizes the whole mage thing while browsing through the shit on Constantine's desk in the background. Mages can see other realities, and can bring phenomena from those realities into Enderal. Not just bears, but like, there's some world out there where Constantine's beard is on fire (Jespar's example, not mine), and I can take from that world and make it manifest in this one.
The locals spend a year fasting and praying to get it under control. Both Constantine and I think that's stupid, and he advises for me to go meet one of his fellow... Nehrimese mages? I think Nehrimese. Apparently she can pop my chakras open like it ain't no thing, or something like that.
I am all about quick shortcuts, so I'm down.
- He also thinks that Future Vision is me being under a lot of stress, or possibly drunk.
- Jespar leaves the party. I actually meet up with him later at the tavern for one last quest, which involves having a seat with him at the tavern and rapping with him for a while. It gets pretty philosophical, and is honestly more engaging than anything I got out of my poor packmule of a bodyguard Lydia in Skyrim.
Jespar's thinking is that everyone's on this world for the purpose of pursuing happiness. People dress it up in a lot of fancy words, about religion and purpose and honor and all that, but that mostly just ends up letting them get used by some tyrant or god. At the end of it he pretty much says his work is done and he wishes me the best. There's a boat headed for Kile in the morning, and he's going to be on it.
I can respect the game for definitively ending an engaging companion's involvement in the story in a way that makes sense to the character's core values, but my experience with games and the amount of detail SureAI put into this guy makes me think he'll still have a part to play later. Possibly he'll decide I'm too cute to bail out on, which is only the truth. We'll see.
- I do decide to swing by the cave the Ironford girl left 1/3rd of her code in before I head on to ancient ruins and the main quest. There are holes in the roof to let light in, streams are flowing everywhere, and there's a light mist. It's pretty, of course.
It's also filled with spiders, of course. And an Adept-level chest, the first I've ever found. Since I'm not a rogue-type and lockpicking Adept chests are like 4 memory points up the 'bow + lockpicking' tree, I have to leave it be.
I try swinging a fire-sword into it just in case it lets me bash the lock or something. It does not.
Just to be petty about the damn spiders and their tenaciously locked loot, I devour the spider mom's soul. It heals me back up good, no Crusty Endralean Bread necessary. This is what I bought last level instead of lock picking.
- I also head a few steps up the beach and run into some bad customers.
Apparently 'Soil elementals' in Enderal can cast lightning spells, because why the hell not? I am swiftly turned into a rather pretty corpse. It's been a while since that's happened! For having no legs, those fellows can really roll out.
The Takeaway:
I'm really starting to like Jespar and I can't decide if I hope he sticks around or if they actually retire him from the story which feels like an appropriate ending for his character. Constantine is also a wonderfully acerbic eccentric. I still don't really have any idea where the plot is going but the character writing in this section is really strong so I don't mind the journey getting there.
Now, stocked up on bread and souls and properly chastised for trying to wander off the beaten path, I'm back to working on the main quest.
Last edited by dyslexicfaser on 17.12.2017 20:17, edited 1 time in total.
I can see the pics in the 20.05.2017 13:50 post, but still not in the earlier post. If you did something differently it is working.
confirming, pics visible, journal awsome 
Hi, you don't have to use memory points for lockpicking (especially if you don't want to be an archer), you can use crafting points instead. You just need 25 lockpicking skill for adept locks (50 for expert, 75 for master). Or you can buy/find lockpicking scrolls, but they are expensive and limited.
Keep it up
Keep it up
Thanks for the heads up on that! I've been buying up Rhetoric and Handicrafts, but I'll start saving my crafting points now.
- So I'm going off to get my magic unlocked or whatever. The quest suggests I take a 'Myrad.' I wonder what that is?
I kind of feel like I should be going after this creature with fire and sword, not getting on his back and letting him fly me where I need to go. Who first looked at one of these things and thought, 'Hey, that sure looks comfy. Imma ride it'? The first Myrad tamers must have had balls that clanged when they walked like they were made of the Metal of Ancient Nations.
- Pro tip: I bought the Mark and Recall spells in the Sun Temple. Very handy. Cast the Mark spell in Ark in front of one of the signposts, then Recall there whenever you want.
- I get a little turned around (and then off a cliff) and wind up in a mine instead of the ruin I'm supposed to be going to. I suspect that 'Guarding Cave Trolls' are the next step up the evolutionary chain from regular Cave Trolls, because these guys are hard as iron, particularly the two-troll groups you have to fight once or twice. Generally I can trade a ghost-bear for a troll at a 1-to-1 ratio, but I usually don't have the mana to cast the summon spell twice in one fight. In the two-troll groups I actually have to get up there and fight one mano-a-mano, and that doesn't end well for me a couple times.
The old iron fire-sword is feeling its age; I've switched out for a 'Dagger of Despair', which has a similar level of damage but instead of setting things on fire it swings faster and has a 5% critical bonus. It fits well with my combat style which I call 'frantic wild stabbing in the dark until I hit something'.
Deep in this troll-infested mine, I find a single glimmerdust smuggler. Why? No idea. Is he using the trolls as puppets? Did he feed them some weird potion? Is he their prisoner, forced to make them mushroom-drugs? Have I stumbled onto a troll opium den?
I never find the answer to these questions, sadly.
- The only reason why this little side trip is important is that I find a spellbook to summon a level 16 fire elemental. I am level 10. This seems promising.
The fire elemental doesn't do as much damage in one hit as my old bear, but she shoots little fireballs at enemies from range like cannon shells, and up close she unleashes sprays of flame.
'Guile,' you might say. 'If you love your fire elemental so much, why don't you marry it?'
To which I would tell you, give me time. I'm looking into the local laws on the subject.
- Anyway, after this brief detour (and a few cases of arson-murder among the local bandit population to test out my new pal) (and the reminder that I still suck when I almost die to a pack of wolves again), I do find the ruin I'm looking for.
I meet 'Lashiri' moments after I almost get exploded by a stray 'Qyran dust crystal'. She's a smartly dressed woman in leather rather than... whatever I was expecting. Also, turns out Constantine doesn't have a memory for names.
Lishari explains that she's got some shit going on, which means work for me. Mercenaries popped up, killed Lishari's companions and decided to start burning the magical macguffins they were studying. Turns out her assistant Sveg let them in (I feel like I should thank the mercenary guild for making it a law to always keep all plot-relevant notes on your person), but she doesn't want me to kill him. Presumably she wants the pleasure of squeezing until his head pops off like a grape herself.
- The next segment involves me running around in the dark with a dagger in one hand and a fire extinguishing spell in the other, fighting mediocre mercenaries and putting out fires. I'm not sure if it's a timed puzzle; I suspect it is, since one of the macguffins broke in the middle of the fracas. After that, I left the mercs to my fire elemental and devoted myself to putting out fires just to be on the safe side.
Sveg is actually slowly burning to death when you find him. I'm tempted to let him burn to death if he can't figure out that maybe he should move out of the fire, but remembering Lishari's request I do put him out and then get back to work on the macguffins.
By the time everything is put out and all the mercenaries are dead though, Sveg ran away or teleported or something. Oops.
It's probably fine, what are the odds that decision will come back to haunt me?
- Once all that's taken care of, Lishari does open my mind or settle my magecraft or however that works.
Is... is it working yet?
She claims 'This might tingle a little' as I slowly rise into the air, explode, and slam down onto the ground face first with a sliver of health remaining.
Lishari swears that wasn't supposed to happen.
The Takeaway:
Lishari's okay. Pretty standard badass mage (who dresses in leather because... I don't know, because she looks great in it?) character. She's not the shining brilliance that is the ancient curmudgeon that sent me on this quest, but she's about at Jespar's level. The Taming the Waves quest is a lot of frantic button mashing on a timer while everything is on fire, and was pretty fun. Not something I'd want to do every main quest, but good for a change.
I'm a little disappointed that it's looking like I'm probably going to be the One Last Hope For The World or The Legendary Knife-Summoner or something like that. I was just assuming that turning into a pretty okay warrior a couple of weeks after landing in Enderal was just a game conceit, but apparently it's baked into the storyline.
I kind of feel like I should be going after this creature with fire and sword, not getting on his back and letting him fly me where I need to go. Who first looked at one of these things and thought, 'Hey, that sure looks comfy. Imma ride it'? The first Myrad tamers must have had balls that clanged when they walked like they were made of the Metal of Ancient Nations.
- Pro tip: I bought the Mark and Recall spells in the Sun Temple. Very handy. Cast the Mark spell in Ark in front of one of the signposts, then Recall there whenever you want.
- I get a little turned around (and then off a cliff) and wind up in a mine instead of the ruin I'm supposed to be going to. I suspect that 'Guarding Cave Trolls' are the next step up the evolutionary chain from regular Cave Trolls, because these guys are hard as iron, particularly the two-troll groups you have to fight once or twice. Generally I can trade a ghost-bear for a troll at a 1-to-1 ratio, but I usually don't have the mana to cast the summon spell twice in one fight. In the two-troll groups I actually have to get up there and fight one mano-a-mano, and that doesn't end well for me a couple times.
The old iron fire-sword is feeling its age; I've switched out for a 'Dagger of Despair', which has a similar level of damage but instead of setting things on fire it swings faster and has a 5% critical bonus. It fits well with my combat style which I call 'frantic wild stabbing in the dark until I hit something'.
Deep in this troll-infested mine, I find a single glimmerdust smuggler. Why? No idea. Is he using the trolls as puppets? Did he feed them some weird potion? Is he their prisoner, forced to make them mushroom-drugs? Have I stumbled onto a troll opium den?
I never find the answer to these questions, sadly.
- The only reason why this little side trip is important is that I find a spellbook to summon a level 16 fire elemental. I am level 10. This seems promising.
The fire elemental doesn't do as much damage in one hit as my old bear, but she shoots little fireballs at enemies from range like cannon shells, and up close she unleashes sprays of flame.
'Guile,' you might say. 'If you love your fire elemental so much, why don't you marry it?'
To which I would tell you, give me time. I'm looking into the local laws on the subject.
- Anyway, after this brief detour (and a few cases of arson-murder among the local bandit population to test out my new pal) (and the reminder that I still suck when I almost die to a pack of wolves again), I do find the ruin I'm looking for.
I meet 'Lashiri' moments after I almost get exploded by a stray 'Qyran dust crystal'. She's a smartly dressed woman in leather rather than... whatever I was expecting. Also, turns out Constantine doesn't have a memory for names.
Lishari explains that she's got some shit going on, which means work for me. Mercenaries popped up, killed Lishari's companions and decided to start burning the magical macguffins they were studying. Turns out her assistant Sveg let them in (I feel like I should thank the mercenary guild for making it a law to always keep all plot-relevant notes on your person), but she doesn't want me to kill him. Presumably she wants the pleasure of squeezing until his head pops off like a grape herself.
- The next segment involves me running around in the dark with a dagger in one hand and a fire extinguishing spell in the other, fighting mediocre mercenaries and putting out fires. I'm not sure if it's a timed puzzle; I suspect it is, since one of the macguffins broke in the middle of the fracas. After that, I left the mercs to my fire elemental and devoted myself to putting out fires just to be on the safe side.
Sveg is actually slowly burning to death when you find him. I'm tempted to let him burn to death if he can't figure out that maybe he should move out of the fire, but remembering Lishari's request I do put him out and then get back to work on the macguffins.
By the time everything is put out and all the mercenaries are dead though, Sveg ran away or teleported or something. Oops.
It's probably fine, what are the odds that decision will come back to haunt me?
- Once all that's taken care of, Lishari does open my mind or settle my magecraft or however that works.
Is... is it working yet?
She claims 'This might tingle a little' as I slowly rise into the air, explode, and slam down onto the ground face first with a sliver of health remaining.
Lishari swears that wasn't supposed to happen.
The Takeaway:
Lishari's okay. Pretty standard badass mage (who dresses in leather because... I don't know, because she looks great in it?) character. She's not the shining brilliance that is the ancient curmudgeon that sent me on this quest, but she's about at Jespar's level. The Taming the Waves quest is a lot of frantic button mashing on a timer while everything is on fire, and was pretty fun. Not something I'd want to do every main quest, but good for a change.
I'm a little disappointed that it's looking like I'm probably going to be the One Last Hope For The World or The Legendary Knife-Summoner or something like that. I was just assuming that turning into a pretty okay warrior a couple of weeks after landing in Enderal was just a game conceit, but apparently it's baked into the storyline.
Last edited by dyslexicfaser on 17.12.2017 20:28, edited 1 time in total.
This is a hilarious read. Can't wait to read more!
- Archmage Arantheal wants to rap with me when I get back.
- I haven't even started talking to him, and he's already speaking cryptically in Capital Letters. It's going to be one of those conversations, I can just tell.
We have a bit of a walk and talk.
It looks like everything's getting a little Mass Effect in here. Not only is The End Coming, but the world of Enderal seems to be moving in cycles. Civilizations rise, then there's a big calamity, wizards rise up as gods, get thrown down by plucky heroes, and then shortly thereafter everything just fucking dies? And this has happened hundreds of times? That's rough.
Turns out I was right about having some Grand Destiny (I'm 'Prophet'), but it looks like I'm only one of many. He's one too ('Ruler'). That's cool. Long story short, I'm now in tight with the Big Religion of the land. But he wants to make this all official-like with the other Keepers, and makes me take an initiation test.
- Is it just me or is the Archmage's son probably the protagonist of the last game, the total conversion mod for Oblivion?
He just feels like a protagonist. Fighting for injustice and self-determination, befriending his enemies, killin' gods.
- While I'm kind of looking forward to seeing what this initiation is all about, I am left wishing the Archmage had a leetle more ultimate power. What's even the point of being in the Special Secret Capital Letter Club with him if he can't just appoint me to some high post? What a gyp.
So he sends me out to the Heartlands border to get this shit done with, but I decide to do a little sidequesting first.
- I've had a quest sitting in my journal for ages to go steal a bank key from a guy's druggie sister that takes me to Undercity. Normally I'm not one for the thief and Dark Brotherhood-like quests I expect to find down there, but I kind of want to check it out anyway.
Why are the thief guilds literally underground in games like this? Little on the nose about the class structure to actually find the deepest darkest hole you possibly could to toss the Pathless down into, don't you think?
- I know I say this a lot, but Enderal is really pretty. Admittedly, it swiftly gets less pretty later on when I get into the slums and the 'fleshmaggot sufferers', which are like beggars but more tragic. This feels like Enderal in a nutshell.
An interesting bit of cultural difference I notice right away; up there with the 'sunchildren', the lady in the Dancing Nymph is called a prostitute. The lads down in Undercity just call them whores.
I think this is indicative of a serious class divide, and- what do you mean 'why is this the first thing I notice?' It just... I...
- Moving on, on the way to the other quest I run into a lady trying to score Red Vynroot to help ease the suffering of the guys with fleshmaggots and y'know what, that sounds like something I could get behind. I shell out 300 gold pennies, turn them in to her with a turnaround time of about 1 minute, and get a whole bunch of exp.
It would be pretty cool if there were fewer of these 'fleshmaggot sufferer' NPCs down here after this little quest, it would make me feel like I made a bit of a difference with my altruism. Well, not really altruism, I was mostly just in it for the exp, but y'know... it'd be nice.
- Anyway, I go work some Rhetoric on the lady, Sila, who instantly folds and tells me the location of the hidden key. In and out, I can dig it.
Unfortunately, the skillbook merchant is gone when I come back topside and a person's worth of blood is splashed everywhere. Only now, without easy access to skillbooks all in one merchant, do I realize my folly. What I had, now that it's gone.
Also when I return to check in with Sila I find a horrifying thing called an Aborted Pus Creature in her house. It's like an armored centipede as wide around as a small man. Is the hideous thing a guard creature? A pet? Do the people of Enderal make a habit of subjugating the most monstrous creatures on the continent? The last time I saw a creature this scary I was paying a man 25 pennies to ride it.
I admit, when I first walk in and get a faceful of green goo I assume someone heard about the bank key and put out a hit on Sila. And is using nightmarish monsters to assassinate people.
- Clues in the house lead me to a small, burned down fishing village. With a pile of burned-black corpses piled up on the pier like macabre driftwood.
Milbert and Sila fled to the city years ago. Why are these still like this? Who even bothers to stack up the corpses of their victims into a funny pile like that?
- Also it appears that while I was traipsing around Ark and fighting her hideous pet pus beetle, Sila managed to abscond with her brother in broad daylight and drag him all the way out here. I took a Myrad, did they take a Myrad? Does the unconscious guy you have slung across your shoulders with a bloody knot on his head count as a passenger or baggage?
I will mention that up until this point Sila seemed bitter but not really dangerous, until she dragged her brother out here and locked him in a man-sized cage. Now, I know that feeling, I have a sibling myself, but I control my urges and so should she.
Does glimmerdust cause violent paranoia? That shit sounds dangerous.
Things... don't end well for Sila, and Milbert sounds a little broken up about it. I actually get to keep the key they were feuding over. Go figure.
- Well, that's enough lazing around I guess. Time to go ... beat up some fellow initiates? I'm not sure how initiation into a religious order works.
The Takeaway:
As far as RPG scenarios go, 'save the world' is an old, old staple, but I admit I'm kind of interested to see where this is going. There being multiple Dragonborn equivalents is a great twist and makes me feel much better about my new pals than, say, the Blades from Skyrim.
The Divide and Conquer quest was a bit of a sour note. The characters feel kind of schizophrenic, and I still don't know what's up with that horror in Sila's room. Does she feed it the souls of door-to-door salesmen? Oh well, they can't all be gems.
- I haven't even started talking to him, and he's already speaking cryptically in Capital Letters. It's going to be one of those conversations, I can just tell.
We have a bit of a walk and talk.
It looks like everything's getting a little Mass Effect in here. Not only is The End Coming, but the world of Enderal seems to be moving in cycles. Civilizations rise, then there's a big calamity, wizards rise up as gods, get thrown down by plucky heroes, and then shortly thereafter everything just fucking dies? And this has happened hundreds of times? That's rough.
Turns out I was right about having some Grand Destiny (I'm 'Prophet'), but it looks like I'm only one of many. He's one too ('Ruler'). That's cool. Long story short, I'm now in tight with the Big Religion of the land. But he wants to make this all official-like with the other Keepers, and makes me take an initiation test.
- Is it just me or is the Archmage's son probably the protagonist of the last game, the total conversion mod for Oblivion?
He just feels like a protagonist. Fighting for injustice and self-determination, befriending his enemies, killin' gods.
- While I'm kind of looking forward to seeing what this initiation is all about, I am left wishing the Archmage had a leetle more ultimate power. What's even the point of being in the Special Secret Capital Letter Club with him if he can't just appoint me to some high post? What a gyp.
So he sends me out to the Heartlands border to get this shit done with, but I decide to do a little sidequesting first.
- I've had a quest sitting in my journal for ages to go steal a bank key from a guy's druggie sister that takes me to Undercity. Normally I'm not one for the thief and Dark Brotherhood-like quests I expect to find down there, but I kind of want to check it out anyway.
Why are the thief guilds literally underground in games like this? Little on the nose about the class structure to actually find the deepest darkest hole you possibly could to toss the Pathless down into, don't you think?
- I know I say this a lot, but Enderal is really pretty. Admittedly, it swiftly gets less pretty later on when I get into the slums and the 'fleshmaggot sufferers', which are like beggars but more tragic. This feels like Enderal in a nutshell.
An interesting bit of cultural difference I notice right away; up there with the 'sunchildren', the lady in the Dancing Nymph is called a prostitute. The lads down in Undercity just call them whores.
I think this is indicative of a serious class divide, and- what do you mean 'why is this the first thing I notice?' It just... I...
- Moving on, on the way to the other quest I run into a lady trying to score Red Vynroot to help ease the suffering of the guys with fleshmaggots and y'know what, that sounds like something I could get behind. I shell out 300 gold pennies, turn them in to her with a turnaround time of about 1 minute, and get a whole bunch of exp.
It would be pretty cool if there were fewer of these 'fleshmaggot sufferer' NPCs down here after this little quest, it would make me feel like I made a bit of a difference with my altruism. Well, not really altruism, I was mostly just in it for the exp, but y'know... it'd be nice.
- Anyway, I go work some Rhetoric on the lady, Sila, who instantly folds and tells me the location of the hidden key. In and out, I can dig it.
Unfortunately, the skillbook merchant is gone when I come back topside and a person's worth of blood is splashed everywhere. Only now, without easy access to skillbooks all in one merchant, do I realize my folly. What I had, now that it's gone.
Also when I return to check in with Sila I find a horrifying thing called an Aborted Pus Creature in her house. It's like an armored centipede as wide around as a small man. Is the hideous thing a guard creature? A pet? Do the people of Enderal make a habit of subjugating the most monstrous creatures on the continent? The last time I saw a creature this scary I was paying a man 25 pennies to ride it.
I admit, when I first walk in and get a faceful of green goo I assume someone heard about the bank key and put out a hit on Sila. And is using nightmarish monsters to assassinate people.
- Clues in the house lead me to a small, burned down fishing village. With a pile of burned-black corpses piled up on the pier like macabre driftwood.
Milbert and Sila fled to the city years ago. Why are these still like this? Who even bothers to stack up the corpses of their victims into a funny pile like that?
- Also it appears that while I was traipsing around Ark and fighting her hideous pet pus beetle, Sila managed to abscond with her brother in broad daylight and drag him all the way out here. I took a Myrad, did they take a Myrad? Does the unconscious guy you have slung across your shoulders with a bloody knot on his head count as a passenger or baggage?
I will mention that up until this point Sila seemed bitter but not really dangerous, until she dragged her brother out here and locked him in a man-sized cage. Now, I know that feeling, I have a sibling myself, but I control my urges and so should she.
Does glimmerdust cause violent paranoia? That shit sounds dangerous.
Things... don't end well for Sila, and Milbert sounds a little broken up about it. I actually get to keep the key they were feuding over. Go figure.
- Well, that's enough lazing around I guess. Time to go ... beat up some fellow initiates? I'm not sure how initiation into a religious order works.
The Takeaway:
As far as RPG scenarios go, 'save the world' is an old, old staple, but I admit I'm kind of interested to see where this is going. There being multiple Dragonborn equivalents is a great twist and makes me feel much better about my new pals than, say, the Blades from Skyrim.
The Divide and Conquer quest was a bit of a sour note. The characters feel kind of schizophrenic, and I still don't know what's up with that horror in Sila's room. Does she feed it the souls of door-to-door salesmen? Oh well, they can't all be gems.
Last edited by dyslexicfaser on 17.12.2017 20:29, edited 1 time in total.
macguffin
But please don't take that as encouragement to dig through your thesaurus.
Seriously, this forum has been nearly dead for months and you've brought it back to life!
- I grab a Myrad and hook up with the leader of the initiation and the two initiates further northwest.
The level of snide I'm receiving is impressive even for Enderal, where hateful xenophobia is usually the default expression. Signet Leader Jorek's voice actor in particular does a great job of conveying his opinion of my general worthlessness as a human being.
One of the initiates is nice, seems to be impressed at the way I took on an entire mercenary company and saved the day like a big damn hero the other day.
My knowledge of story structure suggests someone is going to die off before this quest is over. They're wearing bright red; they are literal red shirts. I just can't decide if it'll be the mean one (less visually interesting than the girl with the face tattoo) or the nice one (pathos), or even the boss and we have to fight our way out without him. And then the mean one would probably blame everything on me; he's kind of like that.
- It seems that the forest we're going into is home to a particular breed of giant mushroom that makes arcane fever worse.
Why is it always mushrooms around here?
- Now, you might look at the following screenshot and think 'how much wine did you have before setting out, dyslexicfaser?' but this is what visions look like.
Right, so Arentheal explained what this is. Apparently as the Prophet I'm getting visions from previous cycles, which are basically Future Vision because the cycles are just that similar. Everything is the same. Predestination. Creepy.
Hypothetically the lines said by the mysterious voices will make sense only later in retrospect, but I'm sure I'll forget about them by then.
- Later, we meet a friend! He appears to be suffering from a bad case of pink-eye. He does a lot of chanting about 'She wanted to leave, she wanted to leave, now she'll never leave', and there's a corpse in a pine box he's building for her.
- This is what Red Madness looks like: I'm not sure if it's named for the color of the eyes, the caked blood around the mouth, or the general transformation into murderous psychopath.
Dunwar (mean initiate) blows him away with a lightning bolt, and it's kind of hard to fault him for it.
The bossman faults the hell out of him for it, though, saying some apothecarius would give their left arms for a chance to study a live victim of the disease. You'd think they'd be warier given the way Yero (possibly not a victim of Red Madness, but they don't know that) exploded and killed 30 people.
I almost feel bad for the novice, but I'm sure he'll say something that annoys me the next time he opens his mouth.
- So we get to the sacred spot, and the bossman drops the fact that the gods are all dead. I knew this already, and most of the non-Enderal world believes it too, but this is news to the initiates. Dunwar flips his shit so hard I'm half surprised the ruin doesn't land upside down.
He blames the nice initiate for being a witch, the bossman for being drunk, the order for taking in Pathless like us two assholes (me and the nice one), and the world for being pointless and meaningless now that the gods are dead. Bossman shouts him down in proper drill sergeant style, but I almost have to be impressed by the size and shine of this stupid kid's brass balls.
- There's a kind of suspicious stammer in the bossman's voice when he tells us to drink down our [Strange Potions] that sets off warning bells in my head.
My vague worries are immediately proven prescient when I hit the deck and my vision fuzzes out.
- I wake up in a prison cell. I'm actually kind of surprised this hasn't happened to me before, you know? It's just been that kind of week.
At this point I'm about evenly split between 'Is this a vision quest?' and 'Is the Signet Leader trading in nubile young Keeper initiate flesh?'
- I'm locked in with a new guy named Aixon. At first his ramblings sound like it's the latter and I'm going to have to go it slave gladiator style for a while, but then I add another possibility to the pile: 'Is Aixon one of my past selves, or a past Prophet, or something like that?' because he is talking kind of mystical and like this always happens, in between whimpering about somebody called the Suppressor.
He posits a kind of interesting idea: he says that I died a week ago, sunk to the bottom of the ocean tied to my old peasant buddy. This whole thing has been a fever dream. Magic shit, you know?
I don't think that's actually true, but
- I'm not entirely sure how I get out of the cell. Like, the wall actually changed into a door for me.
Aixon is just as confused as I am, and I'm really impressed with his voice actor right around this part. He absolutely nails a voice half 'stunned like a poleaxed cow' and half 'dare I hope?' with a touch of 'why couldn't I do that?' thrown in for good measure.
Right around when instead of fighting prison guards I'm stabbing ghosts, I'm going with 'Vision quest thanks to a dodgy potion' but I'm not entirely dismissing 'Temporarily dead (will probably get better).'
- I'm reduced to a knife and a hunk of Endralean Crusty Bread (just like old times!) but the prison didn't remove my ability to summon a fire elemental that one-shots the ghosts.
There's corpses and ghosts and hanged people and traps. No Suppressor, though. I die once to a spiked ball trap, but otherwise this segment is a little spooky but not very hard. I find a skull labeled 'Regret' which I have no idea what to do with. I end up dropping it in a minute, when the exit door sends us right back into our prison cell. My knife disappears.
- Aixon starts pouting just because we're probably going to be tortured or whatever for trying to escape, like a baby.
I decide to catch some shut eye while we waited for the Suppressor, but three days later still nothing happened. Afterrubbing my face against every wall, clicking on everything in the room and sleeping in Aixon's bed, I decide to punch Aixon in the face.
- Apparently, that advances the quest.
Aixon isn't sure if I figured it out or just got pissy, but he drops the act. He's me - somehow. All the little whimpering, scared, stupid feelings I'm keeping deep down inside while I play the big hero outside.
Okay.
- I wake up, and Jespar is waiting for me. That's nice.
Except I swiftly deduce we're entering Inception territory, right around when Jespar's voice changes, other characters start teleporting into the room, everyone turns into beings of pure red air, and the room gets all... like this:
- I'm still dreaming, but it's pretty obvious something's hijacked the dream. And it is not impressed with me.
Which, duh. I walked face first into a spiky ball trap like a minute ago and died. I die to wild animal attacks all the time.
- They namedrop The Cleansing, which is probably just The End of The World in smoke person speak.
- Then I actually wake up! Calia (the nice initiate) greets me.
This has been one hell of a ride, Calia. One hell of a ride.
- You can get into her backstory (she killed the family that took her in too, maybe! We're like murder sisters!), but I'm still processing main quest stuff right now and have no time for Calia.
Also, Dunwar's probably not going to wake up. Ever. Probably bossman's fault for laying that 'the gods are dead' bit on him before making him fight his inner demons.
Bummer, I guess, but mostly at this point I'm just glad it's him and not me.
The Takeaway:
Enderal's weird dream game is strong. No idea where this is going now; there's been a few leads dropped here and there. Peghast, Signet Stone, these new smoke people. Who knows? First things first, probably go meet up with Arantheal again. Maybe yell at him some, for not filling me in on having to fight evil smoke monsters from beyond our reality.
At the moment though, I'm just going to have Calia take me on a tour of the sun temple and try not to think about how my insecurities are apparently a cringing white guy with an emotive voice.
The level of snide I'm receiving is impressive even for Enderal, where hateful xenophobia is usually the default expression. Signet Leader Jorek's voice actor in particular does a great job of conveying his opinion of my general worthlessness as a human being.
One of the initiates is nice, seems to be impressed at the way I took on an entire mercenary company and saved the day like a big damn hero the other day.
My knowledge of story structure suggests someone is going to die off before this quest is over. They're wearing bright red; they are literal red shirts. I just can't decide if it'll be the mean one (less visually interesting than the girl with the face tattoo) or the nice one (pathos), or even the boss and we have to fight our way out without him. And then the mean one would probably blame everything on me; he's kind of like that.
- It seems that the forest we're going into is home to a particular breed of giant mushroom that makes arcane fever worse.
Why is it always mushrooms around here?
- Now, you might look at the following screenshot and think 'how much wine did you have before setting out, dyslexicfaser?' but this is what visions look like.
Right, so Arentheal explained what this is. Apparently as the Prophet I'm getting visions from previous cycles, which are basically Future Vision because the cycles are just that similar. Everything is the same. Predestination. Creepy.
Hypothetically the lines said by the mysterious voices will make sense only later in retrospect, but I'm sure I'll forget about them by then.
- Later, we meet a friend! He appears to be suffering from a bad case of pink-eye. He does a lot of chanting about 'She wanted to leave, she wanted to leave, now she'll never leave', and there's a corpse in a pine box he's building for her.
- This is what Red Madness looks like: I'm not sure if it's named for the color of the eyes, the caked blood around the mouth, or the general transformation into murderous psychopath.
Dunwar (mean initiate) blows him away with a lightning bolt, and it's kind of hard to fault him for it.
The bossman faults the hell out of him for it, though, saying some apothecarius would give their left arms for a chance to study a live victim of the disease. You'd think they'd be warier given the way Yero (possibly not a victim of Red Madness, but they don't know that) exploded and killed 30 people.
I almost feel bad for the novice, but I'm sure he'll say something that annoys me the next time he opens his mouth.
- So we get to the sacred spot, and the bossman drops the fact that the gods are all dead. I knew this already, and most of the non-Enderal world believes it too, but this is news to the initiates. Dunwar flips his shit so hard I'm half surprised the ruin doesn't land upside down.
He blames the nice initiate for being a witch, the bossman for being drunk, the order for taking in Pathless like us two assholes (me and the nice one), and the world for being pointless and meaningless now that the gods are dead. Bossman shouts him down in proper drill sergeant style, but I almost have to be impressed by the size and shine of this stupid kid's brass balls.
- There's a kind of suspicious stammer in the bossman's voice when he tells us to drink down our [Strange Potions] that sets off warning bells in my head.
My vague worries are immediately proven prescient when I hit the deck and my vision fuzzes out.
- I wake up in a prison cell. I'm actually kind of surprised this hasn't happened to me before, you know? It's just been that kind of week.
At this point I'm about evenly split between 'Is this a vision quest?' and 'Is the Signet Leader trading in nubile young Keeper initiate flesh?'
- I'm locked in with a new guy named Aixon. At first his ramblings sound like it's the latter and I'm going to have to go it slave gladiator style for a while, but then I add another possibility to the pile: 'Is Aixon one of my past selves, or a past Prophet, or something like that?' because he is talking kind of mystical and like this always happens, in between whimpering about somebody called the Suppressor.
He posits a kind of interesting idea: he says that I died a week ago, sunk to the bottom of the ocean tied to my old peasant buddy. This whole thing has been a fever dream. Magic shit, you know?
I don't think that's actually true, but
- I'm not entirely sure how I get out of the cell. Like, the wall actually changed into a door for me.
Aixon is just as confused as I am, and I'm really impressed with his voice actor right around this part. He absolutely nails a voice half 'stunned like a poleaxed cow' and half 'dare I hope?' with a touch of 'why couldn't I do that?' thrown in for good measure.
Right around when instead of fighting prison guards I'm stabbing ghosts, I'm going with 'Vision quest thanks to a dodgy potion' but I'm not entirely dismissing 'Temporarily dead (will probably get better).'
- I'm reduced to a knife and a hunk of Endralean Crusty Bread (just like old times!) but the prison didn't remove my ability to summon a fire elemental that one-shots the ghosts.
There's corpses and ghosts and hanged people and traps. No Suppressor, though. I die once to a spiked ball trap, but otherwise this segment is a little spooky but not very hard. I find a skull labeled 'Regret' which I have no idea what to do with. I end up dropping it in a minute, when the exit door sends us right back into our prison cell. My knife disappears.
- Aixon starts pouting just because we're probably going to be tortured or whatever for trying to escape, like a baby.
I decide to catch some shut eye while we waited for the Suppressor, but three days later still nothing happened. Afterrubbing my face against every wall, clicking on everything in the room and sleeping in Aixon's bed, I decide to punch Aixon in the face.
- Apparently, that advances the quest.
Aixon isn't sure if I figured it out or just got pissy, but he drops the act. He's me - somehow. All the little whimpering, scared, stupid feelings I'm keeping deep down inside while I play the big hero outside.
Okay.
- I wake up, and Jespar is waiting for me. That's nice.
Except I swiftly deduce we're entering Inception territory, right around when Jespar's voice changes, other characters start teleporting into the room, everyone turns into beings of pure red air, and the room gets all... like this:
- I'm still dreaming, but it's pretty obvious something's hijacked the dream. And it is not impressed with me.
Which, duh. I walked face first into a spiky ball trap like a minute ago and died. I die to wild animal attacks all the time.
- They namedrop The Cleansing, which is probably just The End of The World in smoke person speak.
- Then I actually wake up! Calia (the nice initiate) greets me.
This has been one hell of a ride, Calia. One hell of a ride.
- You can get into her backstory (she killed the family that took her in too, maybe! We're like murder sisters!), but I'm still processing main quest stuff right now and have no time for Calia.
Also, Dunwar's probably not going to wake up. Ever. Probably bossman's fault for laying that 'the gods are dead' bit on him before making him fight his inner demons.
Bummer, I guess, but mostly at this point I'm just glad it's him and not me.
The Takeaway:
Enderal's weird dream game is strong. No idea where this is going now; there's been a few leads dropped here and there. Peghast, Signet Stone, these new smoke people. Who knows? First things first, probably go meet up with Arantheal again. Maybe yell at him some, for not filling me in on having to fight evil smoke monsters from beyond our reality.
At the moment though, I'm just going to have Calia take me on a tour of the sun temple and try not to think about how my insecurities are apparently a cringing white guy with an emotive voice.
Last edited by dyslexicfaser on 17.12.2017 20:31, edited 1 time in total.
- Arantheal also had the weird smoke monster dream, and agrees that they're connected to the Cycle. And also are assholes.
I also get into some of his backstory, what being locked up for years,then getting out just in time to dive into this End Of The World nonsense is like. He's of the opinion that 'What would I go do instead? A life as a fisherman?'
He's a rock, this guy.
- Constantine is also still awesome. His mouth speaks the words that are in my heart.
- The Order needs some time to get a fancy ceremony together. Fingers crossed for getting to put on a pretty dress and dance with all the boys, but given what I know of this religious order it's probably going to be a bunch of solemn chanting about how superior they are to the shitty Pathless, and the less said about those foreign dogs the better.
If this ends with me becoming a werewolf, I'm gonna be pissed.
- Jespar also sends a note saying he'd like to see me again, and to meet him at night in a deserted watchtower on the outskirts of Ark for what, I am sure, are perfectly innocent reasons.
It is not night time, and Enderal doesn't let you just fast forward time with 'T', so I wander about on my own for a while. There are a lot of farms and windmills and things around Ark, so I decide to check those out.
- I wander around for a few minutes. A flyer told me I could find fantastical adventure! if I went out to a little island in Ark's bay, but that turned out to be a bust. Highwaymen, you know how it is. Usually a mugging isn't the peak of excitement, but, well. Enderal.
I'm a little sad I didn't get to go on the adventure, though. Whoever wrote that flyer seemed like the type to Talk In All Caps and be Constantly Excited About Everything.
- I wandered into a cute little farming village. Hay everywhere, goats and cows and... farm things.
A particular door declared itself to be 'Lower Haystacks.' I open it up without giving it another thought, thinking it might be a granary or a saloon or something.
It is nothing like that thing I just thought.
- I am immediately beset by a Vatyr and his two 'Mad Rat' companions. I've run into Mad Rats once before, when I wandered into a vault in the sun temple that I'm probably supposed to visit for a quest thing at some point, and they are surprisingly dangerous. With preparation, I can fight two at once; blindsided, and with a Vatyr too? I know what move to make here.
I run, screaming, for the door only to emerge into bright sunlight with the Vatyr on my tail and at a fraction of health. I die.
Then the game reloads, and I die again.
Exiting a building auto-saves the game, natch.
Third time's the charm, though, and I manage to pop a potion and start life-draining the Vatyr until it's him, not me on the ground.
- Well, I figure once my heartrate slows down, might as well investigate since I'm here. The place is absolutely covered in mushrooms. I find 20 of one kind, and a handful of other types. If I was an alchemist type, I would probably be excited right now.
A hidden trapdoor drops me into a fight with two more Vatyr, and some kind of boss Vatyr with heavy armor on. His armor is one of those magical set pieces, boosting two-handed weapons for Vandal types. More potions and life-draining, plus fire elemental backup, pulls me through on this one but it's a close thing. Then a couple more Vatyr, a little wandering around and Vatyr again, before I pop up out of an inauspicious manhole into the Farmer's Coast. More idyllic countryside and scenic farms.
... Did I stumble into a quest halfway through? What the heck is going on here? Why are there a dozen goatman monsters camped out in some random farm? One that's obviously still in use? Are they, like, Vatyr sympathizers? Are the Vatyr noble rebels, unfairly discriminated against by the surface worlders?!
I'd totally join their secret club if they didn't keep trying to violently murder me every time I show up.
- I still have more time to kill until evening when Jespar's quest becomes available, and I see there's a lighthouse and a mine nearby, so I make for them.
The lighthouse is abandoned. And is set on a river, not any kind of ocean, which kind of defeats the purpose? I don't know, who am I to tell people they can't build lighthouses wherever they want to.
There's a trapdoor with a slightly soggy vault beneath it.
Inside is what is apparently the new evolution of the Lost Ones; this zombie guy is a mage. He's throwing fire around everywhere and he's got some serious HP, but he gets into a slugging match with my elemental so I'm free to jab him in the buttocks repeatedly until he dies.
- The mine is covered in highwaymen. There must be at least six to eight of them just hanging around the entrance, shooting the shit.
This is the second or third time this has happened. Are there even any mines still controlled by the government, or non-evil mining consortiums, or anything? Considering this mine is a silver and gold mine, why are these blokes still highwaymen and not wealthy landowners by now?
Maybe they don't want to sell out and are staying real, I don't know. OG highwaymen.
- Putting down an elemental and watching from cover like a pussy, I'm reminded that this game has a neat little mechanic where if a bandit goes down, sometimes their buddies will have a line like, 'That was my friend, you bitch! I'll kill you!' or something like that.
That's cool. I always felt like in Skyrim the bandits weren't properly recognizing me for the blood-stained god of war that I am, even after I turn 15 of their 18 man bandit camp into gently steaming corpses with lightning or whatever.
Aside from my elemental reminding me that her fireball ability has knockback by interacting weirdly with the game physics and launching a highwayman twenty feet across the room and onto a balcony, the other notable thing here is the guy sitting on the gold vein:
A Marauder.
This guy is clearly a next gen bandit. Decked out in steel armor, shield and rune mace, and with his inferior buddy distracting my elemental, he reminds me of the first hour of the game when Enderalean banditos were the stuff of nightmares.
I have to break out my old standby of 'backpedal while power attacking and life-tapping' and he still comes within a hair of taking me out with just a couple swings of that mace.
... I think I'm going to go sell off all this stuff, visit Jespar, and then never go wandering again. If the picturesque farms are this dangerous, what am I going to do when I have to actually fight the End Of The World? The smoke monster guys are probably going to show up on fire-breathing dragons.
The Takeaway:
I must have hit a new plateau in levels or something, because the game is clearly stepping up its, well, game. Sometimes it'll throw weakling highwaymen at me, but sometimes now it's magical skeletons or bandits armed to the teeth and trying to beat me like a pinata.
Possibly the game thinks I was able to buy skill books for the 30+ unused skill points I've accumulated and is strengthening its enemies accordingly, but I don't know how that would be possible. Adept skillbooks (the ones that get you up to 50 in a skill) are expensive as hell. I pick up and sell everything and make gear to sell for extra cash when I find the ingots and spare parts, and I'm still broke as a joke.
I also get into some of his backstory, what being locked up for years,then getting out just in time to dive into this End Of The World nonsense is like. He's of the opinion that 'What would I go do instead? A life as a fisherman?'
He's a rock, this guy.
- Constantine is also still awesome. His mouth speaks the words that are in my heart.
- The Order needs some time to get a fancy ceremony together. Fingers crossed for getting to put on a pretty dress and dance with all the boys, but given what I know of this religious order it's probably going to be a bunch of solemn chanting about how superior they are to the shitty Pathless, and the less said about those foreign dogs the better.
If this ends with me becoming a werewolf, I'm gonna be pissed.
- Jespar also sends a note saying he'd like to see me again, and to meet him at night in a deserted watchtower on the outskirts of Ark for what, I am sure, are perfectly innocent reasons.
It is not night time, and Enderal doesn't let you just fast forward time with 'T', so I wander about on my own for a while. There are a lot of farms and windmills and things around Ark, so I decide to check those out.
- I wander around for a few minutes. A flyer told me I could find fantastical adventure! if I went out to a little island in Ark's bay, but that turned out to be a bust. Highwaymen, you know how it is. Usually a mugging isn't the peak of excitement, but, well. Enderal.
I'm a little sad I didn't get to go on the adventure, though. Whoever wrote that flyer seemed like the type to Talk In All Caps and be Constantly Excited About Everything.
- I wandered into a cute little farming village. Hay everywhere, goats and cows and... farm things.
A particular door declared itself to be 'Lower Haystacks.' I open it up without giving it another thought, thinking it might be a granary or a saloon or something.
It is nothing like that thing I just thought.
- I am immediately beset by a Vatyr and his two 'Mad Rat' companions. I've run into Mad Rats once before, when I wandered into a vault in the sun temple that I'm probably supposed to visit for a quest thing at some point, and they are surprisingly dangerous. With preparation, I can fight two at once; blindsided, and with a Vatyr too? I know what move to make here.
I run, screaming, for the door only to emerge into bright sunlight with the Vatyr on my tail and at a fraction of health. I die.
Then the game reloads, and I die again.
Exiting a building auto-saves the game, natch.
Third time's the charm, though, and I manage to pop a potion and start life-draining the Vatyr until it's him, not me on the ground.
- Well, I figure once my heartrate slows down, might as well investigate since I'm here. The place is absolutely covered in mushrooms. I find 20 of one kind, and a handful of other types. If I was an alchemist type, I would probably be excited right now.
A hidden trapdoor drops me into a fight with two more Vatyr, and some kind of boss Vatyr with heavy armor on. His armor is one of those magical set pieces, boosting two-handed weapons for Vandal types. More potions and life-draining, plus fire elemental backup, pulls me through on this one but it's a close thing. Then a couple more Vatyr, a little wandering around and Vatyr again, before I pop up out of an inauspicious manhole into the Farmer's Coast. More idyllic countryside and scenic farms.
... Did I stumble into a quest halfway through? What the heck is going on here? Why are there a dozen goatman monsters camped out in some random farm? One that's obviously still in use? Are they, like, Vatyr sympathizers? Are the Vatyr noble rebels, unfairly discriminated against by the surface worlders?!
I'd totally join their secret club if they didn't keep trying to violently murder me every time I show up.
- I still have more time to kill until evening when Jespar's quest becomes available, and I see there's a lighthouse and a mine nearby, so I make for them.
The lighthouse is abandoned. And is set on a river, not any kind of ocean, which kind of defeats the purpose? I don't know, who am I to tell people they can't build lighthouses wherever they want to.
There's a trapdoor with a slightly soggy vault beneath it.
Inside is what is apparently the new evolution of the Lost Ones; this zombie guy is a mage. He's throwing fire around everywhere and he's got some serious HP, but he gets into a slugging match with my elemental so I'm free to jab him in the buttocks repeatedly until he dies.
- The mine is covered in highwaymen. There must be at least six to eight of them just hanging around the entrance, shooting the shit.
This is the second or third time this has happened. Are there even any mines still controlled by the government, or non-evil mining consortiums, or anything? Considering this mine is a silver and gold mine, why are these blokes still highwaymen and not wealthy landowners by now?
Maybe they don't want to sell out and are staying real, I don't know. OG highwaymen.
- Putting down an elemental and watching from cover like a pussy, I'm reminded that this game has a neat little mechanic where if a bandit goes down, sometimes their buddies will have a line like, 'That was my friend, you bitch! I'll kill you!' or something like that.
That's cool. I always felt like in Skyrim the bandits weren't properly recognizing me for the blood-stained god of war that I am, even after I turn 15 of their 18 man bandit camp into gently steaming corpses with lightning or whatever.
Aside from my elemental reminding me that her fireball ability has knockback by interacting weirdly with the game physics and launching a highwayman twenty feet across the room and onto a balcony, the other notable thing here is the guy sitting on the gold vein:
A Marauder.
This guy is clearly a next gen bandit. Decked out in steel armor, shield and rune mace, and with his inferior buddy distracting my elemental, he reminds me of the first hour of the game when Enderalean banditos were the stuff of nightmares.
I have to break out my old standby of 'backpedal while power attacking and life-tapping' and he still comes within a hair of taking me out with just a couple swings of that mace.
... I think I'm going to go sell off all this stuff, visit Jespar, and then never go wandering again. If the picturesque farms are this dangerous, what am I going to do when I have to actually fight the End Of The World? The smoke monster guys are probably going to show up on fire-breathing dragons.
The Takeaway:
I must have hit a new plateau in levels or something, because the game is clearly stepping up its, well, game. Sometimes it'll throw weakling highwaymen at me, but sometimes now it's magical skeletons or bandits armed to the teeth and trying to beat me like a pinata.
Possibly the game thinks I was able to buy skill books for the 30+ unused skill points I've accumulated and is strengthening its enemies accordingly, but I don't know how that would be possible. Adept skillbooks (the ones that get you up to 50 in a skill) are expensive as hell. I pick up and sell everything and make gear to sell for extra cash when I find the ingots and spare parts, and I'm still broke as a joke.
Last edited by dyslexicfaser on 17.12.2017 20:32, edited 1 time in total.
26.05.2017 01:58dyslexicfaser wrote: I must have hit a new plateau in levels or something, because the game is clearly stepping up its, well, game. Sometimes it'll throw weakling highwaymen at me, but sometimes now it's magical skeletons or bandits armed to the teeth and trying to beat me like a pinata.
Just curious, dyslexicfaser , what path(s) you have pursued using your memory points. Also, you might consider the side quests which you probably have in your journal such as the egg collecting & wanted bounties to gain gold. And some of the best weapons and equipment can be found in dungeons which are not quest-related; there are many dozens of those. Some are at your fingertips, such as the crypt accessible at the Ark cemetery.
26.05.2017 19:38badgesareus wrote: Just curious, dyslexicfaser , what path(s) you have pursued using your memory points.
I had vague plans to aim for light magic as a side thing. That didn't survive contact with the game.
Then when I noticed how great summoning was, I went in hard for Sinistrope. Still haven't found any of the damage-self-to-hurt-others or psionic spells, I just do summoning.
I'm at level 15, with a roughly even split between Sinistrope and Keeper.
I'll probably dip into Blade Dancer at some point, once I've gotten all the 'makes stuff hurt less' perks in Keeper.
Also, you might consider the side quests which you probably have in your journal such as the egg collecting & wanted bounties to gain gold.
Hmm, I've done 3 playthroughs but I've never tried those disciplines. Seems like you have to be a shield/block type to get the most out of keeper, not my thing. I've read some players say that bound (summoned) weapons can be powerful, but if you summon creatures probably not much left to summon weapons -- I don't even know if you could summon both at the same time. Get loot, sell loot, buy skill books -- piece of cake!
27.05.2017 02:57badgesareus wrote: Hmm, I've done 3 playthroughs but I've never tried those disciplines. Seems like you have to be a shield/block type to get the most out of keeper, not my thing.
I've read some players say that bound (summoned) weapons can be powerful, but if you summon creatures probably not much left to summon weapons -- I don't even know if you could summon both at the same time.
Profile - dyslexicfaser
Profile - badgesareus
Profile - dyslexicfaser
Profile - badgesareus
Profile - Zorg
Profile - dyslexicfaser
Profile - dyslexicfaser
Profile - VexiiShoal
Profile - dyslexicfaser
Profile - badgesareus
Profile - dyslexicfaser
Profile - dyslexicfaser
Profile - Zorg
Profile - badgesareus
Profile - dyslexicfaser
Profile - badgesareus
Profile - dyslexicfaser