Enderal first time, impressions

[R'Q]

Agnod is my favourite location as for now (and I've explored like 90% of the world now). I like Starlings and their magitek.

[dyslexicfaser]

- Oh hey, so, remember that hideous Oorbaya monster? Which, by the way, I feel like every time I summon it is more horrible than I ever imagined. Note the way it simultaneously has not enough hands and way too many:



Guess where those come from? A loading screen is so helpful as to tell me:
The Oorbaya, or ‘Blue Death’, is what happens when a mage fails to control his arcane fever.
Since mages in this mod make magic by taking phenomena from some other world and expressing it in this one (some world where Constantine’s beard is on fire, remember), the Oorbaya is presumably… trapped between worlds so to speak, constantly expressing this interdimensional magic through its own flesh? Summoning in more and more magic – unable to stop – and expressing it out as phenomena (the hands grasping hands grasping hands and the purple explosions)

- So to take my mind off the horror of my own character’s existence, let’s think about how to get to that spaceship.
The crashed spaceship is up at the ass end of the world. I honestly have no idea how to get through the nearly impassable mountains so I just fly a Myrad as far north as possible, then start heading northwest and hope for the best.

- I work my way through the pink crystal forest, and discover that the Great Snowy North is hardcore.
Just north of the crystal forest I run into a pair of mages and three elemental wolves living harmoniously together. It’s kind of neat that unlike basically everything else in this game, mages run away to their maximum distance to start flicking icicles or fireballs or whatever at you. Combine that with some dangerous in-fighters like elemental wolves, and you’re in for a bad time.
Once I manage to kill them, I unfortunately find mountains in my way, and have to keep going around. So that was pretty much pointless.

- I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out the purpose of the ancient buildings on the plateau, though. Something like a Stonehenge-like plinth with a cyclopean lintel, and then these huge professionally-made arches with regular brick sizes heading up into the hills… half an aqueduct maybe? Some device that in better times helped people make it over the mountain like a dry Panama canal? But then what is up with that pillar with the stone arms holding up a spiky piece of rock?



Spent way too long trying to figure out what’s going on, there.
Enough amateur anthropology, I have stuff to do.

- This picture encompasses what the Great White North is like, for me:



You think, oh, you’re level 32. You’re a tough guy. Right? You can handle the North.
Wrong.
The wolves and the four-tusked mammoths are okay, but pretty much everything else up here will destroy me in one or two hits.
Snow bear: two swipes.
Frost troll: one swing.
Vatyr: three or four punches, but there’s no escaping them, even on brave Whirlwind the donkey.
The giant spiders will reach out and brush you with one hairy leg as you ride by, and instantly kill you right off the back of your horse.
But – and this is the important bit – none of these deadly monsters can see much further than the nose in front of their face.

- It produces an interesting semi-tactical rogue-like element.
“Okay, so this is where the snow bear is. Go around. Work your way up the mountain. Not that way; that’s where the spiders are. There’s a mammoth; you can kill mammoths…”
I feel like my elemental wolf is working with me on this ever since I came to the North, although I think it’s actually part of the AI behavior for near-death fleeing. It’ll get up in some monster’s face, take one hit, and then run the fuck away at full speed. The monster will chase after it, letting me run in the opposite direction or take potshots at it with my bow (and hopefully actually hit it sometimes, but it’s hard to lead the right amount on this thing)

- So basically the map takes you all the way around the northwestern tip of the map to get to the spaceship. I get some vistas that would probably be pretty amazing if it wasn’t constantly overcast and snowing:



I kind of wanted to work my way down to that ship to see if some poor bastard from Nehrim managed to land in this frozen hellhole, but I’m stuck way up on the mountain and that sounded like a pain in the butt.
The music, at least, is very atmospheric. Quiet, almost fragile piano notes disappearing into the quiet snow.
The snow in this metaphor is hiding killer snow bears, but you know, that’s Enderal for you.

- There’s some pretty cool set pieces in the Great North.
- A single, lonely home at the end of the world. A warhammer, a skeleton and a book on Master Rhetorics, half-buried along with their house in an avalanche.
- Two mages and their frost elementals in a tower. The top of the tower is a warm, inviting spot with a stew on the fire and a pair of bedrolls across from one another, beating back the frozen night. I, of course, was welcomed with a rain of icicles.
- Further up the mountain from them, the last Homely House. Well, it actually reads something about Deep Diggers, and a bunch of killer Vatyr are living there now. My strategy here involves opening the door, murdering something really fast with a double power attack using my bound swords, and then closing the door and running away to gnaw on crusty Endralean bread to regenerate health.
- Even further beyond that is the Deep Digger Settlement. A whole town, with water wheels and… stuff. This seems to be the very top of the mountain, and the undead here are commensurately the ‘ardest motherfuckers I’ve ever run across.

- I heroically meet the gatekeeper – a Grotesque Lost One too high-level to enslave with my entropy talent – in honorable battle, while he’s trapped in a narrow passage:



I manage to kill a few more of the beasties, but there’s nothing much to scavenge. I manage to score an Ice Elemental II spell (level 36) from one of the houses, which makes up for the lack of material loot. When going downstairs saw my new towering, majestically-glowing frost elemental pop in one hit from a Lord of Lost Ones like a balloon, I decided I’d had enough and headed back towards Agnod at top speed.
I’d gone right past it because this tip of the mountain stuff was pretty interesting.


The Takeaway:
Wasn’t I supposed to be looking for a spaceship?

[badgesareus]

And they say men are the ones who don't want to stop and ask for directions!

[Ragnarok]

This exploration thing you have going here is another game within Enderal's main game... and it is fun.

I don't know for sure, but you may be overdue for an armor/gear revamp? Is too under-leveled for your char, perhaps?

Or maybe some new protection spells?

[dyslexicfaser]

This exploration thing you have going here is another game within Enderal's main game... and it is fun.

I don't know for sure, but you may be overdue for an armor/gear revamp? Is too under-leveled for your char, perhaps?

Or maybe some new protection spells?

I've got a full set of pretty good heavy armor: the Echoes of the Fallen. And I went all the way to the top of the heavy armor perk tree. Doesn't really matter to these snow bears.

I am a little worried I'm going to hit Agnod and get my ass kicked like I have been from one end of the North to the other, I admit.

And they say men are the ones who don't want to stop and ask for directions!

I'm fine! I don't need directions! I know exactly where I am!

[R'Q]

edited by urst:
deleted the content
(just kept the post so the later ones don't look off)

[badgesareus]

I have no personal experience with bound (summoned) weapons, but it may be they just aren't as effective against higher level enemies. Maybe you rely too heavily on them.

P.S. The Deep Digger area has at least 4 dungeons/mines to explore.

[dyslexicfaser]

Probably better to spoiler them and I'll avoid them, r'Q. Some people prefer these 'in which I play' type things to be done pure.

[Buccaneer]

- I work my way through the pink crystal forest, and discover that the Great Snowy North is hardcore.

Yep and you haven't even come close to the hard parts yet.

I feel like my elemental wolf is working with me on this ever since I came to the North, although I think it’s actually part of the AI behavior for near-death fleeing. It’ll get up in some monster’s face, take one hit, and then run the fuck away at full speed. The monster will chase after it, letting me run in the opposite direction or take potshots at it with my bow (and hopefully actually hit it sometimes, but it’s hard to lead the right amount on this thing)

This.

[dyslexicfaser]

I have no personal experience with bound (summoned) weapons, but it may be they just aren't as effective against higher level enemies. Maybe you rely too heavily on them.

That's possible, but as far as I can tell in pure base damage they out-damage anything I've managed to find out of dungeons so far (Sword/Mace/Bow of Frost Wrath/whatever-the-heck) by like 20 damage. I can kill... MOST things I've run across so far in 3-5 swings, which feels right (except the ice bear, I saw my swords shave off a tiny chunk of health and was like 'oh no' even before its return swipe carved open my face).

I feel like the problem is that my defense isn't keeping up with my damage output without a shield, despite the heavy armor (and like 65 heavy armor skill). I've started leveling handicrafts in the hope that a master blacksmith will be able to pile enough armor onto a piece that it would actually be worth setting aside the Fallen set bonus, but that won't reach mastery for like 10 more levels.