SureAI

- It’s a little odd, but according to my map marker I’m supposed to report Lishari’s death to Lexil the Archmage. He’s posed pretty fabulously when I find him, leafing through an ancient tome. #JustArchmageThings.

He has a few kind words for Lishari, but honestly the whole thing feels weirdly understated. They’re kicking the investigation over to ‘Commander Eren’, who I don’t think I’ve ever met or heard of. Not exactly bringing their A-game to the investigation, is what I’m saying.
Lexil and Tealor Arantheal have much more to say about the Beacon than about their ally found stabbed to death in her room. See, it’s got three spots for power to be plugged in. I just knew I was going to have to Legend of Zelda this shit up at some point. I could feel it.
Hey Prophetess, you ever heard of the ‘black stones’?



What kind of undesirable side-effects? Wait, don’t tell me, I can guess.



I said I can guess!
Always, it comes back to insanity and death.
On the upside, good thematic callback to me burning my house down and murdering the fam in a fit of insanity. If I have to go back to my home in Nehrim to get one of your Beacon gizmos, Lexil …
Well honestly, that would be pretty cool. Yeah. I’m down. Who wouldn’t want to sift through the destroyed remnants of their childhood home looking for a shiny ball that’ll probably drive them mad with power, and might have done once already?

- Also:



Elia. Elia, can I … help you?
… No? Not gonna say a word. Just gonna … chill? Okay, cool. You do you, girl.

- Unfortunately, I prooobably shouldn’t have put this meeting off to do Fortress Fogwatch, because Lexil tells me he’s got some things to get together, and to come back tomorrow. So I’m stuck cooling my heels.

- Well, I’ve got a quest from the ‘A GOD AM I’ inventor guy, to go find his wayward apprentice, anyway. So I’m off to a new area called ‘Wellwatch’.



Why is this game so beautiful, holy shit. I mean, I’m not sure how the seasons work in Enderal, but SureAI sure can make some evocative scenery.

- On the way to the campsite where what’s-her-face was dragged off, I run into a bandit camp-slash-quarry that got murdered but good by some… wood elementals or something? Spriggans? Very large dryad type things surrounded by a cloud of stinging flies, named <Goldenforst Matriarchs>.
Whatever, they’re not ‘ard enough to deal with flame-wolf. Bit of a mismatch, there. Right? Fire, meet tree. You already have so much in common; like being on fire.
… Is that supposed to be ‘Goldenforest’, by the way? Just asking.
More importantly, I wander into an innocuous cave attached to the quarry called ‘Cliff Diving Grotto’, and run into a new type of undead. Lost Ones, clad in black and silver armor and wielding bows of similar make.
This is gonna be one of those dungeons.

- Or it would be, except the pathing is REALLY bad, in here. As long as I cower behind this rock and fire about 50 arrows downrange, the two Lost Ones at the entrance just run back and forth and I can take my time and bring them down like one of those carnival shooting gallery games with the cork guns.
The next, a batch of four, are likewise not much of a challenge. I’m not sure if it’s the speed they run at or more bad pathing, but none of them even get close. My wolf doesn’t even deploy, just hangs around doing his best to foul my shots.
Down, then up, and then… Markul Darkhand, kin to my friend from the Madness Time beneath Ark. This one has a pretty nasty fire and ice combination attack: an AOE freezing mist that keeps the enemy from moving at more than a crawl, and then a fireball as a finisher.
That just means my wolf runs in ahead of me as I cower like the coward I am, and tears the poor lich open like a turkey.
This wolf, man. Somebody was talking earlier about who I might be romancing, Jespar or Calia? I’m mostly wondering at this point just how restrictive the local laws are. I mean, what a hero and her elemental wolf get up to behind closed doors is nobody’s business but theirs, right?

- There’s a few more Lost Ones between me and the exit, but I sail right on through to find this guy:



Am I weird for finding him adorable? With his little lantern and sword and skeleton grin?
Just me? Okay then.

- Off to find Pathira, then. There’s a mysterious blood splatter at her camp, so… I’m guessing she’s not off picking flowers. The minimap marker clicks off; it’s time to do some detective work.
Except we appear to be close enough to aggro a Goldenforst Matriarch. No sweat, right? Except during the fight, something goes wrong.
Something about the mob (charm spells?), or a bug, or something... I am beset by base treachery.



Elemental wolf bites hurt a lot.

- That happens twice, actually, and I just barely manage to kill the Matriarch and wolfie with a sliver of health left on the second go-round. I see how it is.
Well, y’know what, wolfie? I don’t even NEED you! I have this hideous thing!



I can barely stand to look at it, but it’s level 30 to your 26, and it’s probably got like, magic and shit. I’m gonna take it on magical adventures in the Goldenforst, and learn valuable lessons and maybe doom all humanity to living under the mighty bootheel of a new Centurion God-king! And it’ll be awesome!
So there. *sniff*


The Takeaway:
I have to say, the Order’s response to Constantine and Lishari’s death is not comforting in the least. After all, I’m a suspicious foreigner, too, y’know? If I died on one of these little jaunts (y’know, for real) (like, permanently) I wonder if the Keepers clustered around that table in the Sun Temple would shake their heads and murmur ‘sad’ before moving on to other business?
Luckily, they can’t get rid of me that easily.

Your last pic is rather interesting. I've used the oorbaya, but I never took a close look at it, as I was usually busy not dying. It looks like it has a giant heart; isn't that a bit exposed? Looks like a combo of too much arcane fever with too many protein shakes.

edit: I do hope you will continue this side quest all the way to its end; I'm sure your impressions will be quite interesting!

It looks like a heart but I'm kind of assuming it's some kind of... tumor or... a sac filled with blood or some other horrifying fluid, or something?

Absolutely disgusting, whatever it is. And a little like you're supposed to hit its glowing weak point for massive damage like a Legend of Zelda puzzle boss.

I'm frankly glad the SureAI team couldn't find a disgusting enough idle noise for it to make; it just roars during combat. The wolf was bad enough; it howls from time to time, and I always spin around expecting to get teeth buried in my throat like usual.

Admittedly as much as I love her, Lishari was a thorn in the side to the powers-that-be, mouthing off in her inimitable way.

As far as being a coward, I'm happy for those chances. It can't be hard all of the time, can it?

The region is almost always named "Goldenforst". I came upon a few instances of "Golden Forest" and I think one "Goldenfrost".

Well I wonder what's the story behind this name, because Goldenforst makes no sense (?) while Golden Forest does. Nevertheless it's in fact a golden forest.

R'Q, I think it was a little lost in translation from the original German. There are a few other words like that popping up.

@R´Q You can report such things in the bugtracker. The exact place would be important.
Sometimes a screenshot is helpful.

It wasn't exactly lost in translation, it just wasn't translated at all in many instances, as "forst" is one of the German words for "forest." (according to google translate, which is never wrong.)

I know, I guess what I meant was that the game (dialog, text, etc.) was translated from the original German to English - not quite 100% though as Kermit alluded to.

- So there we are, following a blood trail for a couple hundred feet that obviously contains more blood than anybody should have inside them.
I’m thinking to myself there’s no way this lady is still alive.
The trail takes us up some wooden palisade type structure, with cannons on it. With bandits in it, of course! I hope the bandits will resist the invading Nehrimese for us, since they control all of Enderal’s mines and quarries and, apparently, our defensive structures too.
Well, maybe they would have if I hadn’t just filled them full of magic arrows.



- I’m not sure why entering some dungeons alerts everyone in the first room, leading to my swift beatdown when my summoned critter doesn’t come through the door with me, and sometimes lets me get the drop on them instead. Maybe that’s intentional?
This is one of the former, so I immediately run outside and begin a fighting retreat back down the structure until the bandits are dead. The first room is actually a huge cavern-type room built into what must be the mountain, with bedrolls and tables filled with clutter and huge kegs of what I assume are alcohol. Aside from a watchtower type structure inside the cavern which doesn’t make any goddamn sense, it’s pretty homey. At least up here, anyway; downstairs is a supply room, and a whole lotta jail cells and bear traps everywhere.

- The Oorbaya does a pitiful fraction of the physical damage my wolf does (which is odd given it’s like 8 feet tall with arms like bloody tree trunks), but it’s pretty sturdy and periodically explodes in a huge purple wave of energy that looks like it hits the entire room. Including myself, although thankfully there’s no damage to go along with the nausea-inducing energy backwash.
It also sounds like a cannon going off, which turns out to be a downside when it aggros every bandit in the place down on our heads.
I’m probably going to be forgiving the elemental wolf pretty quickly if the alternative is ‘fight the entire dungeon simultaneously.’

- Also, the starling lady I came here to find, Pahtira, is actually fine! In a cage, but fine.
She tells me she’s hurt, but she’s not, you know, covered in blood or anything.
It sure is convenient that the blood trail which didn’t actually come from my quarry still led me right to her, but whatever. Maybe the bandits regularly drag prey (human or animal) back to the fort…? I don’t know.

- Pahtira sends me on another fetch quest to get that steering unit to complete the Centurion. It’s apparently located inside yet another old fortress for some reason (that’s been taken over by bandits, of course). Are these bandits raiding Pyrean ruins and making off with the goods?
… It would be pretty cool to see a bandit faction in Dwemer-type gear.

- There are three Vatyr roaming around outside the fort. Been a while since I met any of those, but I definitely don’t remember them moving this quick! It takes these guys about two or three seconds to run from bow range into face-stabbing range.
Then I reload and make sure to put my minion between us properly this time.
I found the Vatyr to be much more dangerous than the bandits inside the fort, leading me to assume that the bandits have been trapped in there for days while the Vatyr prowl around below.
I mean, this guy had his own name, so presumably he was supposed to be some kind of bandit king...



But mostly I’m just impressed with how prettily he burns.
This works so much better when wolfie stays pointed in the right direction.

- So I grab the macguffin and head back to Ark, where of course I find the ‘heavily injured’ Pahtira beat me home. I bet she just didn’t want to assault a fortress manned by bandits after wading through Vatyr, the wimp.
I’m not sure what’s going on between Pahtira and Yerai (that’s the inventor guy), except that Yerai is his passive-aggressive self while Pahtira is coming off very snippy. They do not have a good working relationship, these two.



Look at how sassy she looks! It’s all hands-on-hips and crossed-arms, with her.
I also really like her outfit, with the big stompy Dwemer-type boots and gauntlets. This feels like a lady who does a lot of tromping around and sticking her hands into dangerous places, and needs protection to make sure she’s not pulling back a bloody stump.

- Speaking of dangerous things likely to result in dismemberment, they want me to go a starling spaceship that apparently crash landed here in Enderal, in a glacier. Now that the robot’s chassis is finished they still need a power source to run it.
Pahtira’s tagging along to help with… something or other, but she mentions casually that there’s likely to be an array of traps to turn intruders into dust, bones, or puddles of flesh.
Starling traps apparently come in ‘death’, ‘vaporization’ and ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ varieties.


The Takeaway:
Now, that’s pretty cool (spaceship!), but at this point I kind of want to apotheosize into the golden robot if they’re gonna make me save their lives, finish the chassis and find a power core.
Well, the main quest has ticked over to a new day now, but I figure I might as well finish up this quest line first.
Onward to Agnod!

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

- 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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.