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Oh lord. Infinite numbers of rats. That seems kind of ridiculous but grinding must get awfully slow after a while.
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Mar 30, 2015 04:34
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rujasu posted:
I feel as if the game designers missed a very important opportunity.
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Mar 30, 2015 05:52
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Forest beats Phoebus 5-2. I've started on the update, planning to post it toward the middle of this week.
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Mar 31, 2015 08:16
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Update 10:   Paragraph 70 posted:Mighty oaks intertwine above your head to form a living gateway to this enchanted forest. A fresh coat of sparking dew lays over everything, lending a fantastic quality to the scene. The ground is covered with an inviting blanket of green moss. Faerie lights glimmer from within the boles of dark yet pleasant trees. This is a magical place. So, this is the Magical Mystical Enchanted Fantastic Faerie Wooded Forest of Magicalness. The game designers certainly knew how to use a thesaurus. Naturally, the best thing to do when presented with a mysterious magical forest is to walk straight ahead until we find something.     Tracker isn't really a necessary skill. Following tracks doesn't take us anywhere we couldn't go otherwise. Still, it's kind of cool, adds to the atmosphere, and is at least marginally useful at several points. It's no Lockpick, but it's not the worst. Now, if we walk one step in front, we'll face a battle with a random enemy.  A pack of dogs might not seem so bad, but they're tough enough to survive a couple rounds of Elvar's, and this can happen:  Fortunately, they're 40' away and don't have magic, so we can safely run. Another, more interesting random battle we can get:  Hey look, it's a new sprite! These guys are trouble. Their weaker attack does a ton of stun damage:   In this case, we killed one out of two before the whole party was stunned, so we got a few experience points. Being stunned just pushes us back a tile, much like running away. That's not a problem, but watch out for their breath attack, which does real damage. Anyway, this is what the tracks are actually meant to lead us to:  Select either King's or Quag, and...  Yep. You thought the Underworld was convenient? This can take you to two different places on the other side of Dilmun in one shot, and both of those places will allow us to hop right back to Mystic Wood if needed. This is not strictly necessary to beat the game, but it's immensely useful. We'll come back to this shortly. Also, in case you were wondering, Madrick notices the nexus because he's the first (only) person in our party with the Arcane Lore skill. If nobody has Arcane Lore, it randomly warps us someplace else (one of the two options) and there's no return trip. So it's good that we have someone with Arcane Lore. It's easily the most important of the Lores. Anyway, speaking of the Underworld...  We can use "Climb" here to go into the well.   Of course, we can walk right back up the well to return to the Wood.  So remember, the Underworld takes us to Purgatory, Tars, Lansk, Mystic Wood, and some other places we haven't yet discussed, while the Mystic Wood takes us to Kingshome and Quag, with the city of Phoebus right next door. This doesn't quite mean we can go to all of the places in the game yet (remember Freeport?) but it's quite a bit of freedom. The Mystic Wood in a nutshell:  Also, this wall is the side of a building which is important for a different reason.   Paragraph 6 posted:Here you find a simple wilderness shrine, tended by a lonely druid. He welcomes you to his temple, saying the place of worship is open to all. More info on Enkidu, and it seems to match what we've heard previously. That statue up ahead must be of him, so let's take a look at it.    The Beast Horn casts the "Beast Call" spell. It's Druid Magic, as you might expect, and it summons a Beast. I like the Beast a little more than the Air Elemental, but there's not a huge difference. However, the Horn itself is special. Like the Magic Lamp, the effects of the Horn last indefinitely. Note that the Horn has only 10 charges, so we can't mess around with it too much.  Besides, trying to summon a Beast won't work now, as we have a full party. This really limits the usefulness of summon spells, since they can't be used after you have 7 permanent members. However, Beast Call at least has a use other than summoning a meat shield. If we look up Beast Call's entry in the Dragon Wars manual, it states, "This holy spell of Enkidu is used in secret Druid rituals." What happens if we cast it (by blowing the horn) right in front of Enkidu's statue?  Paragraph 73 posted:This hidden glade is charged with magical energy. The rocks marking this clearing form a ring of deliberately-placed standing stones, the focus of which is upon the earth where you now stand. You feel power rushing from the roots of the earth and into your soul. Enkidu himself stands and regards you. Whoa. I guess that answers the "what happened to Enkidu" question.  Not only do we meet Enkidu, we get to challenge him to a wrestling match. We can select one of our party members to take him on, or we can press ESC to exit, in which case...  ...he picks a random party member to tangle with.  The wrestling match is a Strength test, but there's some random element to it. Louie (14 Str), Dolph (12), and Madrick (10) do not have high enough Str values to win the wrestling match. Kali (17), Ulrik (20), and Piers (21) all have a chance to lose the match, but can also win. After experimenting a bit, there's a Strength roll that goes something like this: Str - chance of winning 15 - Always lose 16 - 1/8 17 - 1/4 18 - 3/8 19 - 1/2 20 - 1/2 21 - 5/8 22 - 3/4 23 - 7/8 24 - Always win I haven't statistically tested this or anything, but it's something like that. In a nutshell, 15 and under is not enough, 24 or more is a guarantee, and 16-23 is a maybe. With his 21 Str, Piers is our best bet.  If we fail, we just blow the Horn again and re-try. This will continue to work even if the Horn runs out of charges.      Sweet! Piers just out-wrestled a loving demigod to become the champion of the Druids! No, he doesn't get to equip a Druid Heavyweight Title Belt raising his Str by 50 or anything like that. Instead, look at the following screenshot. Notice anything different?   Yep. Piers is a magic user now! Piers: Magic?! Noooooooooo! Not just that. He's currently our best magic user.  The character who beats Enkidu gets a skill level of 2 in Druid Magic, and instantly learns 7 spells. This is a one-time thing per game, so it's best to pick someone who doesn't already have Druid Magic. If the character isn't already a magic user, he or she doesn't automatically learn Low Magic, so this means Piers can't increase his Druid Magic skill beyond 2 unless we build up a bunch of skill points to go back and learn Low Magic. We won't need to do this, however. Druid Magic doesn't have many variable-MP spells, so a skill level of 2 is plenty. The bigger problem with Piers as a spellcaster is that he has only 10 Spirit, giving him just 20 MP. In this sense, Ulrik might have been a better choice because he has higher Spirit, though he also has lower Int. Anyway, those spells. We know about Scare, Greater Healing, and Beast Call already. The others: Death Curse: 3-18 damage to one enemy, 40' range, costs 6. The damage/MP ratio isn't great compared to Fire Light or Sun Stroke, but anything that can take out a dude from 40' has its uses. Fire Blast: 4-24 damage to a group, 30' range, costs 12. Twice the power of Elvar's Fire for twice the cost. Piers can only cast this once without recharging, so we can't use this too liberally, but this is easily the strongest combat spell currently at our disposal. Spells like this are essential for winning harder fights. Insect Plague: -2 AV/DV to a group, 60' range, costs 4. I never really used this. I guess it could be okay, but it's probably just better to cast a group-damage spell. Whirl Wind: Pushes a group backward 30', 40' range, costs 4. Again, I never really used this, it might be good for a defensive strategy of some sort. Most likely we'll just have Piers throw a Fire Blast whenever we're in a jam, but there are a number of other options. By the way, Air Element has 16 Str. So this can happen:   Air Element can't actually cast any of these spells, as he has a Spirit of 0 which cannot be raised. So let's not do this. Another thing about Air Element is that after waiting around for a minute or two, the spell runs out, and he just dies.  It's nice that he doesn't just vanish. He can actually carry items and gold, so you'll want to trade anything good to someone else. Once that is done with...  Let's use the Horn to get a buddy who won't randomly vanish from our party.   Beast is a pretty cool guy, nothing special, but he'll do a decent job up front. Moving on, we'll walk down the western shore, avoiding most of the fights, but there's one we do want to take on.  We can take one of these guys.  Beast brings pretty consistent damage.    More AC is always welcome. The Wand does this:  It's limited to 20 charges, but it's our first access to a heal-all spell. I shouldn't have to explain why that's a great thing to have. Let's follow the shore just a bit further.    Awesome. Other things in the Mystic Wood:  We can't do much with this yet. We'll come back to it later.  We'll have to come back to this later as well. Seems this really was the hotspot for the Druids.  And finally, we'll grab some of these mushrooms. What could they be used for? We now have a number of options open to us, so it's VOTING TIME! Places we can go include: - King's Isle (featuring Kingshome, naturally) - Quag (featuring the City of the Yellow Mud Toad) - Phoebus (featuring the Temple of the Sun) - Cross the Heavily Guarded Bridge Lots of exciting possibilities this time around, so voting will be open until at least some time on Friday.
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Apr 2, 2015 06:47
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Pheobus, the Temple of the Sun sounds like a hot destination 
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Apr 3, 2015 21:02
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Phoebus sounds fun!
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Apr 4, 2015 13:30
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Dragon Wars rocks. Throwing in another vote for Phoebus.
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Apr 4, 2015 15:04
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Magic Rundown - More Druid Magic: Death Curse (6mp): 3-18 damage to a single enemy within 40 feet. It's not super efficient, but it has an okay range. Fire Blast (12mp): 4-24 damage to a group within 30 feet. It's basically two Elvar's fires stapled together, but in Druid magic. Kind of expensive - frequently more expensive than you actually need for that number of targets - there's not a lot you want to use this on that Elvar's Fire isn't very nearly as good at dealing with. Insect Plague(4MP): Decreases AV and DV of a group within 40 feet by two each. It's cheap, but it doesn't see a lot of use - reducing AV and DV by such a low amount rarely has a large impact on combat. It might stack though, possibly making it hilariously potent? Or you can just blast it with fire and other ranged weapons and the problem is solved. Whirl Wind (4MP): A group within 40 feet of you gets pushed back 30 feet. Useful if you have a solid range superiority over a guy who has a devastating melee attack. Rarely useful. Scare(2MP): Improves the party's AV by 2. Whoopdyshit. Once again, might be good if it can stack, otherwise not really going to substantially impact a combat. Beast Call(1MP+): It's like summoning anything else, but it's a beast! It gets in the way of enemies and takes hits for you! I don't recall any of the summoned creatures really standing out. High Magic: Cloak Arcane(1MP+): This gives +2AC for the party. This seems like a minor bonus, and it kind of is but... it's cast out of combat, so it's not occupying one of your mage's turns. It lasts for an hour per MP. It's not the best effect, but it certainly doesn't hurt anything! Sense Traps(1MP+): Let's say that you were worried about traps and wanted a way to find them with magic. This is it! Good work!
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Apr 4, 2015 17:29
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Phoebus sounds good to me too!
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Apr 6, 2015 23:41
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Okay, we'll be going to Phoebus! In the meantime, here are some enemy GIF's from Mystic Wood:    And a preview shot for Phoebus: 
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Apr 7, 2015 03:19
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rujasu posted:
Man, robo-arm Fountain/Mirror thing is pretty cool
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Apr 7, 2015 03:28
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Nevermind 
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Apr 7, 2015 07:40
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Ah, what I've come to think of as the standard mythology mashup for these early RPGs.
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Apr 10, 2015 01:53
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Update 11: Phoebus, City of the Sun! Before we get started here, I'll mention that I finally distributed some of the free skill points we had picked up. Piers gets +2 Spirit, bringing his MP up to 24. He'll now be able to cast Fire Blast twice if needed. Kali gets +1 Spirit for the same reason, with the other points going into her Bandage skill. Dolph gets a boost to Int and HP. Louie gets +2 Str and +1 HP, bringing all of his attribute totals to 16. Hoping to get a little more melee damage out of him. Now with that out of the way...   Paragraph 26 posted:The walls of this city are of bright marble that seem to glow with an inner light. The streets are paved and clean, and there is no sign of poverty or disorder. The horse carts run on time. You can't shake the feeling something is about to go tragically wrong. In general, one of the prevailing themes of Dilmun is: the nicer the place looks, the more hosed up everything actually is. Paragraph 25 posted:"Welcome to Phoebus, City of the Sun!" chirps an odd mechanical voice. You stop in your tracks, trying to identify the source of the voice. After a few moments, you hear the message again, and determine it is coming from a raised stone dais and plaque directly in your path. Evidently the message is activated by your presence. "Welcome to Phoebus, City of the Sun!" the voice says again, this time a little slower than before. You examine the plaque and see it is a a map of the city. "Welllcoooome tooo Phoeeeeebussss, Ciiiityyy offff theeeee Sunnnnnnnn..." the voice intones, now perilously slow. Something's wrong with the device. A mechanical hand protrudes from the dais, frantically trying to shake your hand, but there's no way you're getting near it. Two stern looking gentlemen dressed all in black stare at you, making you nervous. Committing the details of the map to memory, you hurry away from the silly device."Wellllllllllllllcooooooooooommmmmeeeeee. . . !" The paragraph suggests that you memorize a map of the city, but you don't actually get a map or anything. You have to actually walk around town if you want anything to show up on the automap. Speaking of walking around: let's do just that. There are a lot of places to check out in Phoebus. And in many of those places, we'll find... these motherfuckers.  Don't worry. The Stosstrupen in Phoebus aren't dangerous. They only ever do stun damage! How much stun damage, you ask?    They also take a lot of damage to kill. Fortunately, at this point in the game they don't show up in large groups. One or two, we can handle. You may remember that the Stosstrupen are Namtar's secret police. Obviously, Namtar is in charge of things and has a significant presence here in Phoebus. We've already been tipped off that Mystalvision is allied with Namtar, so this shouldn't come as a huge surprise. Also, we don't have to fight any battles to make our way to the northeastern part of the city, where we'll find this:   Naturally, our first order of business is to "Ask for volunteers."  Of course, we've already hit the limit on characters. In order to recruit anyone, we'll need to dismiss someone. The only sensible option is to send Beast packing.  One thing I don't like about this game is that if you do everything right, summon spells aren't useful. We got a little bit of mileage out of Air Summon and Beast Call, but with a new party member set to join us, we won't be able to do anything with the other summon spells. That said, it's quite possible to permanently miss Louie and other recruitable characters and you could potentially escape Purgatory without missing Ulrik if you don't know the game well. I assume the summon spells would be essential for someone who was playing this for the first time and got stuck with only 5 or 6 party members. Thanks your suggestions though, we basically progressed through the game in the ideal way to quickly recruit a full cast of permanent characters. This is a good thing. We won't miss Beast very much, and here's why:     Valar is Level 2 and doesn't come with any skills, lores, or weapon specialties. However, he has 18 Int, 32 MP, and a point of both Low and Sun Magic. Once he levels up a bit, we'll put his points into the Sun Magic skill to power up his Sun Stroke. He'll prove to be very valuable in the long run. Speaking of which: we know what Sun Stroke does, and having two guys who can cast it for big damage is nice. Guidance is another one we already have, it makes a compass if we're in a dungeon. Armor of Light gives one party member +2 AC for the duration of combat for 6 MP. It's an embarassingly bad spell, one of the worst in the game. Remember, Cloak Arcane does this for the whole party for as little as 1 MP. Heal does exactly what it says. It heals 2-8 HP for one member for 4 MP. It's more powerful than Sun Light or Healing, but it still only heals one character. In battle, that's usually too slow. Out of battle, we can just use Bandage. We give Valar a Bow and some Arrows and Madrick's Brigandine. Party order will be Piers, Ulrik, Kali, Louie, Valar, Dolph, Madrick. With another magic user in the party now, Kali gets to move back into melee range.     All of these hints are meaningful and will be important later. I won't say too much about them for now, however. We'll file them away in our notes.  Across from the tavern is this scripted encounter. The number of rats is random. It can be as low as 1, and I've never seen more than 19. They're always 20' away, so we could just cheese this by running away and coming back until we get a low number. Or...  The building next to the rats (to the north) is empty. It's the one directly across from the Tavern that we want to get to, and that means tangling with some Mad Dogs. Anyone who has played The Bard's Tale just tensed up reading that last sentence.  It's always 4 of them, and they're always at 40'. Mad Dogs are... slightly less threatening in this game.   They do enough damage to make us Bandage up afterward, but if we had used magic, we could have made it through this fight without a scratch.  Another easy chest, Madrick can open it with his knowledge of Lockpicking 101.  The Mage Cloth give +3 AC and requires a Low Magic skill of 1. It can also cast Mage Light. I don't know if it lasts forever the way Magic Lamp does, but it has 10 charges. Also, it's an armor with no AV penalty, which is kind of nice but not especially useful for mages. We'll throw it on Madrick so he has some kind of armor. The Magic Plate is the reason we came here. It gives +10 AC like the Plate Mail, but only -2 to AV. It's the second-best armor in the game. I put it on Kali, figuring she might be able to tank & heal in a tough fight.  Heading south, we hear marching soldiers. This is something to check out, but let's investigate the rest of town first.  Hmm. For some reason I get the idea this house is bad news.  Yep. We could beat those Stosstrupen by throwing a ton of magic at them, but there's no point. They're not guarding a treasure or anything.  These guys, in the western part of town, are guarding a treasure. They're also pathetically easy to beat. We take them out in one round. You know the drill: we find a chest, it's an easy lock, Madrick opens it.  Poogs Vortex is the High Magic version of Fire Blast (or double Elvar's Fire). Instead of costing 12, it costs 11, and the range is only 20' instead of 30'. The key here is that Madrick has enough MP to cast it three times without recharging. Mithras' Bless gives +3 DV to the whole party for the duration of combat. 5 MP. Never used it. Create Wall doesn't raise AC, or protect against magic, or anything like that. It literally makes a wall. Let's try it out!   Hmm. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea. The game has no problem letting you box yourself into an unwinnable state. After reloading the game, we'll check out one more building in the northwest.  In case there was any doubt, Mystalvision is running the show around here. Let's show off some of our shiny new magic.  Stosstrupen are especially tough when accompanied by a group of enemies who can actually deal damage. They stun your front-linters right away, then the other group one-shot kills your now-exposed squishy mages.  Ulrik still just has a Hand Axe, but thanks to his 20 Str, he continues to deal consistent damage.  Fire Blast is expensive, but it really does wreck enemy groups.   Remember, Valar only has a 1 in Sun Magic, so his Sun Stroke is only for 2 MP. It can still do solid damage.  Like Fire Blast, Poog's Vortex has a high cost but really brings the pain.  Level ups! Valar will get +1 Sun Magic. For Ulrik, I use all of his remaining skill points to bump his Dexterity up to 20, just enough to give him an AV/DV bonus. The building contains, you guessed it, yet another locked chest. I hope I've made it clear by now that Lockpick is an essential skill.  Now you see why I was so quick to unload the heavy magic on those guys. The game gives out Dragon Stones like candy, to the point where inventory management is becoming tricky. Magic Shield is +4 AC. I give it to Louie who was slightly under-protected. All of our front-liners have double-digit AC now. The Tri-Cross is the first crossbow we've picked up. The Bolt is crossbow ammunition and comes in a pack of 30. Crossbows aren't great in this game, but the Tri-Cross is kind of interesting so we'll give it to Dolph for now. Valar and Madrick don't have the Dexterity needed to handle it. And with that... we've checked out most of Phoebus. It's strangely not much of a town. There's a tavern, no shops, no real dialogue, not much going on. But there are two places left to check out. One is the Temple of the Sun. We've stocked up on armor and spells, but are we ready yet for a showdown with Mystalvision? The other place is in the southwest. Remember those marching soldiers we heard earlier?  Walking around a bit, we find a guard house. Before going inside, we have this order of business:  Kali: Hey, that's not nice! Piers: Let's show these creeps how it's done!  They do pretty good stun damage, but they're not tough to beat.  We don't get anything special for beating the soldiers or saving the poor guy, but we do get some easy experience.  All the armor on our front-liners is dragging down their AV, so I give Piers +1 Swords, Kali +1 Axes, and Louie +1 Flails.  Paragraph 28 posted:Two officers occupy this building, evidently associated with the military force drilling on the parade grounds outside. The officers quickly shuffle aside the dice game they were playing when you entered, and snap to attention. They relax when they see who you are, and you sense a change in their attitude. The elder of the two officers gives you a close inspection. "Such a fine lot of patriotic types," he says. "It's about time someone from this feeble little burg enlisted in the army! Welcome to the service of King Drake. Hail Namtar!"  Well, this is interesting. An offer to join the army of our most hated nemesis? What's our play? Shall we join Namtar's army of Kingshome? Or shall we not join the army and go to the Temple of the Sun?
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Apr 10, 2015 04:25
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Hmm. If we join up, we can get to Namtar that much faster. On the other hand, not joining the army and going to the Temple of the Sun can get us some character points to beef ourselves up so we can handle those drat Stosstrupen. I say we join the army. Piers was already in one army already, shouldn't be that bad!
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Apr 10, 2015 05:08
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I'd be wary of traps for the unwary. ...you know what I mean.
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Apr 10, 2015 17:19
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Let's join the army.
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Apr 10, 2015 18:01
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You may be strong, but you're not army strong. So go and kill the mad wizard of Phoebus in the Temple of the Sun.
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Apr 11, 2015 21:57
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Time to do our civil duty and join the army.
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Apr 12, 2015 11:17
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We all look great in Camoflage - time to Join the Army!
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Apr 13, 2015 00:20
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Update 12: We're in the Army Now: Siege Camp Dolph: Let's join. That way we can infiltrate Namtar's forces and destroy them from within! Madrick: Normally I'd be opposed to such an idea, but such a conniving scheme is too much fun to pass up! Piers: If it gets us one step closer to putting a sword through Namtar's... whatever vital organs he has, I'm up for it. Kali: Let's do it! Valar: Yeah! Louie: I have a bad feeling about this. I don't think we should... Ulrik: Sounds like it's unanimous then. Let's go! So we're going to join the army. But what would happen if we decided not to join?  350 gold isn't really a big deal, but still, kind of a dick move from the game. If we refuse to pay, we can't fight them or anything, we just get drafted into the army automatically.  Paragraph 86 posted:You are pressed into service and sent directly to the front. The army makes no attempt to provision or train you - it's evident they consider you a band of cutthroats, and that they like you just the way you are. For reference, let's take a look at the map found in the Dragon Wars manual:  You can see here that there are bridges leading from Forlorn (Purgatory/Tars) to Isle of the Sun (Phoebus/Mystic Wood) to Lansk to Quag (Mud Toad). There's no direct route to walk to King's Island (Byzanople/Kingshome), but we can get there by joining the army (one-way trip obviously), using the Mystic Wood transportation nexus, or taking a trip through the Magan Underworld. Getting to Necropolis, Nisir, and Rustic is a bit trickier, and Freeport isn't even on the map at all. There's plenty to check out on King's Island. But for now, we're stuck in the Siege Camp (one tile south of Byzanople).  For now, we don't have any orders. We can wander around the camp and do whatever we want, including picking fights with our fellow soldiers:  Or we can head south and just leave...   Sure, there are guards at the exit, but we can take them down if we use our magic. It's a tough fight, however. This is generally a tougher area than Phoebus.   Valar gets more Sun Magic; he's at 3 now. It's enough to do some serious damage with Sun Stroke, at least.  So anyway, we can just walk right out of the camp here, leave the army, and go do other things on the island if we want. It's not like anyone's going to come after us. But that would take the fun out of this being the "join the army" update, wouldn't it? So let's turn right back around and return to camp, after having now slaughtered 13 of our comrades-in-arms.  Now that we're going into the camp and not out of it, reading Paragraph 87 is more appropriate: Paragraph 87 posted:Directly ahead you see the semi-permanent camp of the Kingshomer campaign army. The army occupies a valley between two mountain peaks. A wooden palisade has been erected across the mouth of the valley, providing the camp with a measure of protection against raiders from the south. There is no evidence of an enemy army anywhere in the area. From the looks of the camp, it seems likely this is a base from which the Kingshomer army is besieging an enemy fortress or city. Several guards lounge before the entrance to the camp. They eye you with suspicion.  Despite our desertion + murder spree from five minutes ago, nobody recognizes us and we are immediately recruited back into the ranks. If we say no, there's no indemnity fee this time. We're just told to leave:  But if we say yes instead, right into the army we go:  We also get to read Paragraph 59, which is just a variation on Paragraph 86: Paragraph 59 posted:You are admitted to the camp and immediately pressed into service. The army makes no attempt to provision or train you - it's evident they consider you a band of cutthroats, and that they like you just the way you are. It's a nice little detail, I think. There's two different ways to join the army, and the texts are a little different even though we end up in the exact same situation. And yes, if we turn around and try to go back out, we'll be greeted by another 10 guards ready to slaughter us for going AWOL. With that diversion out of the way, let's visit the healer right around the corner.   The nice part about this healer is that it's free. We can get everyone fully healed here, getting those extra few HP that Bandage can't reach. The odd part is that they offer full and partial healing options. Why would we choose partial if it's free either way?  North of the healer is another building, one that I'm very happy to visit.  Upon entering the first store we've seen since Purgatory, our first move will be to sell off all of the useless chaff we're carrying around. We unload the Spear, Hammer, War Axe, War Flail, Polearm, Ruby Dagger, multiple Brigandines, and the Fire Spear. I may not have mentioned this before, but the Spear and Fire Spear are especially useless. They're thrown weapons, which means they can hit enemies from a range, but it also means that once you throw it, it's gone. One shot. Doesn't do great damage or anything, and can't be used by a back-line party member. That's obviously a complete joke, so we might as well get a few $ instead. We'll also sell the Mage Cloth since it's worth decent money and it's not great armor. After selling all of this, our party has a total of 5649 gold. Now for buying. The Black Market has three categories of items for sale. There are weapons:  Bows:  And armor:  Now, the melee weapons aren't useful at all. More ammo is potentially useful, even if bows don't do much damage. But forget about that for now. At the Black Market, we can buy shields. They're tough to find otherwise, so being able to buy them off the shelf is huge. The Large Shield costs the same amound and gives an extra AC, but the Shield is better since it doesn't reduce AV. We buy four of them and sell off our Large Shield. Madrick buys a Chain Armor as well, so our back three all have AC's of 9. We also buy some extra packs of crossbow bolts and sell Madrick's bow -- his AV and damage are so low that there's little point in having him attack at this point. Better to free up his inventory slots. Even better stuff can be found right behind this building.   As usual, loot is just lying around! The Lance Sword does better damage than the Firesword, and it can melee from 20' away. We give it to Piers. Still, the Firesword gives +2 to AV and does decent damage, so it's a good choice even for someone without the Swords skill. We give it to Kali for now. The Silver Gloves give +3 AC. That may not sound like much, but there are only two types of "gloves" in the game, and these are better than the Gauntlets. We give them to Piers as well. There's one other piece of loot to find around here, and it's to the south. On our way, we encounter a lone Pikeman.  Let's use this as an opportunity to play around a bit. If we use the "Fight" mode rather than "Quickly Fight" we'll get access to the special ability of the Tri-Cross:  "Burst" fires three bolts instead of one. This allows us to get in multiple hits:  The damage and accuracy are still awful though, so it's not really that exciting. Usually just wastes ammo. If you really want your back-row members to do damage, cast spells. There is an exception to this which we will find later. Also, when we're facing down a single melee enemy, we can stall forever by using the "Block attack" command with everyone:  This is 100% successful against the Pikeman, but only works on the first enemy who attacks that round, so against multiple enemies it's not great.  The Lance Sword does great damage. Anyway, we had to get through that Pikeman to get to a locked chest with just a pack of 10 Silver Arrows. They're better than the regular Arrow or White Arrow, but there's only 10 of them so it's not that exciting. That's all there is to pick up at the camp. Let's find our "commanding officer" and check in with him.  Paragraph 90 posted:This is the office of the supreme commander of the campaign army of Kingshome. General Buck Ironhead regards you from behind his desk. Ironhead is a frightening sight. His arms are a mass of scar tissue from a sequence of wounds too tedious to list. His face shows no mirth. His hands continually clench and unclench. His head is completely flat - you could balance an egg on it. If we try to talk to Buck again, we get thrown to the front lines:   This doesn't prevent us from turning right around and going back into the camp, but we were headed this way regardless.   Nothing to vote on this time around, the next update will be Byzanople! rujasu fucked around with this message at 07:16 on Apr 13, 2015 |
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Apr 13, 2015 07:13
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rujasu posted:Nothing to vote on this time around, the next update will be Byzanople! I should point out that we're not actually forced into going to Byzanople. We could just turn around and desert again and go do something else. But I generally see Siege Camp + Byzanople as one big event, so I think they should be done together. Glazius posted:I'd be wary of traps for the unwary. I'm well aware of where to be wary.
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Apr 13, 2015 07:23
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Oh man this loving game. I had it as a kid but always got annoyed at having to read stuff out of the manual all the time, plus it was on the same disc as Descent and Stonekeep 
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Apr 13, 2015 09:09
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dis astranagant posted:Oh man this loving game. I had it as a kid but always got annoyed at having to read stuff out of the manual all the time, plus it was on the same disc as Descent and Stonekeep I didn't have a huge problem picking up the manual and reading a paragraph every now and then, but it could be a problem if you misplaced the manual. Actually, not that huge of a problem because reading the paragraphs isn't usually necessary to advance in the game, though occasionally you might get a puzzle where you'd have no idea how to solve it without reading. I have a version of this on a CD compilation set (Ultimate RPG Archives, I think?) and for that version they actually gave you both a printed manual and a .txt file on the disc with all of the paragraphs. Still, this wasn't as bad as some of the "copy-protected" games of the era where you couldn't even start up the game without checking the manual or one of those stupid cardboard wheels for a secret code word. There were times when I was a kid when we misplaced a manual for some game, and just couldn't play the game until we found it.
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Apr 13, 2015 15:03
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I liked those "stupid cardboard code wheels" that came with some games. Actually, I didn't mind the typical late 80s/early 90s manual check; one of my favorite games ever, Planet's Edge, at least justified it by saying "Yeah, there's a group of aliens masquerading as your party. Just to make sure you're really the four people we're sending out into the galaxy to go save Earth..." Then gaming moved from stacks of 3.5" floppies to CDs, which required the disc to be in the drive. Then people got smart and games required a unique serial number found on the jewel case. .....Then direct downloads happened and now we have Steam and Origin replacing part of my childhood. You don't even get a manual to look up the first verb that starts with D on page 39 of the manual anymore. Ugh. I'd die a happy man to see a modern game come with a manual like Planet's Edge or Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession had.
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Apr 13, 2015 18:30
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Snorb posted:I liked those "stupid cardboard code wheels" that came with some games. I'm guessing you never lost one of those manuals or code wheels. If you keep all of them in the same place next to the computer, it's not too big of a deal, but when I was growing up, we didn't have such a good system. Stuff just got buried or misplaced constantly, so we'd go for months not being able to play half of our DOS games. (Our copy of the Future Wars manual was lost permanently, so we never did figure out what happened after the first room in that game.) I did like how the paragraph system for Dragon Wars allowed them to put long, descriptive texts into the game rather than being forced to condense everything to fit the disk & screen. (And guess what they had to do in the Famicom version!)
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Apr 13, 2015 20:19
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I think Dragon Wars is one of the best and also most ground-breaking RPGs of that era. Apparently there's a motion by "Burger" Heineman, the Dragon Wars designer, to do some sort of spiritual sequel: https://twitter.com/OldeSkuul I wouldn't hold my breath though. Neither for that, nor for Brian Fargo's Bard's Tale IV (imho).
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Apr 14, 2015 18:12
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Update 13: We're in the Army Now: Byzanople  Paragraph 33 posted:Ahead you see the walled city of Byzanople. The tattered banner of Byzanople still flies above the city's unbreached walls. The approaches to the city are occupied by the army of Kingshome. The besieging army is spread across thecountryside, indicating it has been several months since Byzanople was invaded.  The suicide mission begins! To our left is the main pathway into the city. Paragraph 34 posted:A rough pile of rubble marks the perimeter of the Kingshome advance siege camp. The cyclopean walls of Byzanople are just a few yards away. A twisted path leads through the rubble toward the gates of the city. The path passes beneath the walls of the city, forming a savage killing ground. The path is littered with broken arrow shafts, debris, and the bodies of others who have tried to take this city by storm. Sure enough, if we walk in this direction, our whole party takes damage from arrows with each step.  After just a few steps, we'll have about half of our HP depleted. Before we reach the gate, our weaker characters will be dead. We can actually counteract this by using the Bandage skill every few steps, but perhaps we should look for a way to get in without becoming human pincushions. In fact, such a way is right in front of us. Paragraph 37 posted:Several squat figures surround the entrance to a tunnel leading under the walls of Byzanople. A wooden palisade shields the tunnel entrance from the eyes and weapons of the city's defenders. You recognize the figures as siegeengineers, and surmise they are attempting to undermine Byzanople's walls. A short and powerful man covered with mud and sweat emerges from the tunnel. "I think we're through," he says. We had to find our way through a patch of granite, but I think we've come up against a cistern or basement wall. He looks at you expectantly. "All we need now is a pack of brave idiots to try the tunnel, find their way into the city, and open the gate for us."  That's more like it. We're not arrow fodder, we're a pack of brave idiots!   Whenever you see a message like this, it's time to use the old Strength attribute. Piers or Ulrik can do it, the others aren't strong enough.  We're now in the Byzanople dungeon. Quick, let's find a way to infiltrate the city from here!  ...crap. I suppose there's a joke to be made about a woman in red asking us to "surrender," but surely I wouldn't be one to make such a joke. But really, surrender? To guards? Never!  So, it turns out this is Princess Myrolla of Byzanople. We don't actually want to fight her, so let's try running away. This is effectively the same as if we surrendered.  Yeah, no sexual undertones there. But anyway, yeah, we've now gone from going AWOL to becoming POW's. Of course, we weren't actually on the side of Kingshome to begin with. We've been captured by the good guys.  Attempting to break out of our cell definitely does not work. However, walking into the door a few times will move things along.  Myrolla and her "escort" take us to see her brother, Prince Jordan. Paragraph 108 posted:You are led to a secret throne room beneath the city of Byzanople. There Prince Jordan and several advisors huddle around a map in a council of war. Jordan is stunned when he sees his sister has brought you into the heart of his defenses. Jordan's private guards tense as they lock eyes with you.  Hmm. Should we really turn our backs on Namtar's army and ally ourselves with Byzanople? (Yes.) Paragraph 109 posted:Jordan smiles. He leads you to the map he and his men were examining. You recognize it as a plan of the Kingshomer siege camp. Jordan pumps you for information concerning the camp and the size of the force stationed there. "We'll attack them tonight," Jordan decides. "There is a secret way from the citadel to the enemy camp - we will take them by surprise." Jordan looks at you as he continues, "Feel free to explore the city until we are ready to leave. And with that, we're left in an unlocked room of the dungeon. It's a small dungeon, and since we're now allies of Byzanople, there are no enemy encounters here. There is, however, one spot we really want to visit. All we have to do is break into the room right next to us, and...   The Magic Chain (Chain Armor without the AV penalty) and Magic Shield are two good pieces of armor. But that's not the Big story here. Big Chill. Much like the Humbaba, it is Big with a capital "B". It's High Magic. Like Poog's Vortex or Fire Blast, it deals 4-24 damage to enemies. It costs 15 (slightly more than the other two spells), targets all enemies, range is 30'. Read that again. It does not target an enemy group. It targets ALL ENEMIES within 30'. As you can imagine, this might come in handy when taking on the Kingshome army. Dazzle costs 3 MP and causes an enemy to miss a turn. Not all enemies or even a group, one enemy. Yawn. Not very dazzling. Naturally, I don't plan on using it. Long Bolt is better than Bolt. Again, not that exciting. Returning to where we met Myrolla, we find a set of stairs leading up to the city of Byzanople.  Paragraph 110 posted:"The time has come," Prince Jordan says as he meets you on the stairs. Together with several of Prince Jordan's best fighters, you sneak away from Byzanople through a secret passage. Only a skeleton garrison is left behind - you realize Jordan is throwing everything into this attack. Next update: we put the Kingshomer army on ice!
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Apr 16, 2015 05:57
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I like how you have to join the bad army in order to get to the city to help the good guys. It's something you'd see in a spy movie.
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Apr 17, 2015 00:44
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Can't Dazzle be used as a puzzle solution in a couple places? Or am I thinking of Quest for Glory?
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Apr 17, 2015 00:50
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Seyser Koze posted:Can't Dazzle be used as a puzzle solution in a couple places? Or am I thinking of Quest for Glory? There's a Dazzle spell in QFG I (Erasmus' Razzle Dazzle), so you could be thinking of that. I've never used Dazzle to solve a puzzle in Dragon Wars, but Reveal Glamour is used to solve at least one.
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Apr 17, 2015 01:39
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Update 14: We're in the (Byzantian) Army Now: The Battle with Kingshome All right, now it's time to take on those Kingshomers! ...Almost.   There's no rush to get to the battle. The war will wait for us. Let's get ourselves ready first. There are three "shops" in this courtyard, including the Town Healer:  Bart's Weaponsmithing:  And finally, Malik's Armory:  There's not much to get here, but we have just enough to buy this Long Mace for Louie:  The Long Mace gives +1 AV, does better damage than the Barbed Flail, and can hit from 20'. This isn't necessary for the next fight, but it's always nice to upgrade when we have the chance. Note that we can't actually leave Byzanople right now. More on that later. For now, we go back to the hidden passageway.  The passageway actually takes us to an isolated section of Siege Camp. Clever way to avoid making an extra map for this event. Before the showdown, Madrick casts Cloak Arcane to give us an AC boost. Again, this isn't really needed, but we might as well be prepared for the big fight, which is literally right around the corner...     That's thirty-seven enemies. Including new enemy types with new art of a guy with blood dripping off of his axe. This is one of those times when you know you're in for a serious fight. Fortunately, we have good reasons to keep a cool head about this. (Yeah, I crack myself up.) Our strategy for Round 1: Piers and Kali cast Fire Blast on the Mercenaries. Since they're in melee range, they can hit us, we want to get rid of them as fast as possible. Madrick casts Big Chill. Since he has low Dexterity, his turn will come up after the Guards advance into 30' range, and he'll get to damage a whopping 30 enemies with Chill. Dolph will cast Mithras' Bless to increase our party DV, the others will just attack. The round starts with the enemy units advancing, and Dolph casting Mithras' Bless. We will probably never cast it again for the rest of the game, so here's a screenshot:  They have no ranged units, which is fantastic. Only the Mercenaries can touch us for the first couple of turns, and...  ..they never do more than 1 damage. I'm not sure if that's because we have so much armor on our front-liners, or because Mercenaries just suck, but it's fortunate. They take a couple more shots before we start rolling out the damage spells:     So there goes the first batch of 15. That leaves 22, and Madrick already put in some damage on those Guards. Round 2: Piers uses a Dragon Stone, Kali casts Fire Blast, Madrick casts another Big Chill. Everyone else dodges.  Just like the Guards did, the Royal Guards walk right into range for us.    We roll reasonable damage and take out 11, so the other 11 are left. Round 3: Piers casts Fire Blast on the Royal Guards, Madrick casts Elvar's Fire on the Royal Guards to clean up what's left, everyone else attacks the Guards.  Madrick never even has a chance to cast that Elvar's, saving some MP.   Round 4: We melee the remaining guards.    They go down in one round, leaving us with the two Kingshomer Captains.  We'll let them advance into range, and then it's time for Valar & Dolph to do their thing. These Captains take a ton of damage, so we're going to use powered-up Sun Stroke to take care of them.     They also hit for a good amount:   Have I mentioned that ranged weapons suck in this game?  Because ranged weapons suck in this game.  Sun Stroke doesn't suck though. And that's all of them! Look at all of that experience and gold. No level gains though. What else do we get?    We get... the Prince's eternal gratitude. That's nice, I guess. And we can now leave Byzanople. This is one of the cooler and more interesting sidequests to play, but we don't actually get anything for it, other than the loot we find in the dungeon. Still, just getting Big Chill is great for us. Still, we don't get much for winning the war. What if we don't win the war? Next Update: The many ways to NOT win the war against Kingshome!
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Apr 17, 2015 04:34
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Update 15: Alternate-Universe Byzanoples In our last update, we turned traitor on the Kingshome Army, joined the army of Prince Jordan, and defeated the Kingshomers. What if we didn't do that? Let's rewind time back to our first entry into Byzanople. Remember, if we go up the middle, we go through the tunnel to the dungeon. If we go left, we get shot at. What happens if we go right?  There are two things back here. The first of which is a very tough fight with a Hydra.    It's a pretty pointless fight. All you get for it is a few experience points. It would have made more sense if the Hydra was guarding something, but we can just walk right beside it to find:   As usual, use Strength with Piers or Ulrik to move the block.   This tunnel isn't any different from the other one. Get to the wall, use Strength, end up in roughly the same place. I don't really understand why there are two different tunnels. From here, we can navigate to Princess Myrolla. Let's try actually fighting her this time. The 10 Royal Guards at 10' are a bit of a problem because they can all attack right away. They can also tank a ton of damage. However, like the Mercenaries, they don't deal much damage to us (though they sometimes stun for a bunch), so after some time we can take them out.  Hey look, new artwork!  Myrolla doesn't try to advance. Instead, she'll stand 40' away and cast Ice Chill. This would be a problem if she ever dealt more than 2 damage with the spell. We take her out fairly easily.  quote:It asks for a peaceful end to the war now going on, but scrawled all over the parchment are profane words and harsh statements that could only have come from the King as a reply. Oops. This isn't a game over or anything like that. You just get a message telling you how you hosed up. In fact, if we want, we can actually go back into the dungeon, fight our way to Jordan's secret room, and we're presented once again with Paragraph 108. That's this one: Paragraph 108 posted:You are led to a secret throne room beneath the city of Byzanople. There Prince Jordan and several advisors huddle around a map in a council of war. Jordan is stunned when he sees his sister has brought you into the heart of his defenses. Jordan's private guards tense as they lock eyes with you. Of course, this paragraph makes no sense here. Jordan's sister didn't lead us to him, we just killed her. Despite our murder of Jordan's sister and his failure to notice, we get the usual offer to join Byzanople, and from here we can put things back on the rails, go fight Kingshome, be heroes, and nobody will ever find Myrolla's body or notice her absence. But let's go full evil here and refuse Jordan's offer.  We say no again.  Like the Royal Guards, Throneroom Guards take a lot of damage, so these fights are a huge MP sink.  Prince Jordan doesn't get any special art, just the generic Adventurer sprite. He doesn't hit for a ton of damage or anything, though he does take a few turns to kill. We murder another hero and get another lecture.  quote:The bodies of the only hope for peaceful unity lay before your blood-stained weapons. Namtar may die someday but he will only be replaced with someone just as wicked without a strong leader to unite the realm. So yeah, the game makes quite a point of letting you know that this is a bad idea. But again, nothing much happens. Note that if we lose the fight with Jordan or try to run away, there are consequences:  Don't save your game here. As far as I know, this is unwinnable. But since we beat Jordan, we can just go up the stairs into Byzanople. Normally, this is where we'd get led down the secret path to the battle with the army. Instead, we're just dropped in besieged Byzanople, where we get to fight a ton of battles with the Byzanople defense force:  Win a few of these battles, and we can make our way to the city gates:  Sure enough, we can walk up to the gates, use Lockpick, and read Paragraph 71: Paragraph 71 posted:Much to the garrison's dismay, the gates of Byzanople prove little obstacle for you. The Kingshomer army streams through the open gate and makes short work of the outnumbered city garrison. Byzanople has fallen.  So, opening the Byzanople gates lands us in the Kingshome dungeon. It's actually a place worth exploring, but there's an easier way to get there without selling out Byzanople. If we don't want to open the gates, we can instead take the secret passage. Instead of fighting the big battle, we can just climb over the wall into Siege Camp, go AWOL, and play the rest of the game with the Byzanople quest unfinished. Let's rewind once more. Remember how we got shot with arrows when we tried to take the left route? Each step we take, everyone takes one damage. Try to walk the path without healing, and this will happen:  However, we can just use the Bandage skill after every few steps. Annoying, but this prevents the arrows from being any threat to us. We can't open the gates from the outside, but there's a locked door which leads to a secret passage around the western wall.  Paragraph 21 posted:You pick your way through the ruins and come upon a spy post maintained by the defenders of Byzanople. Several soldiers are gathered here. They are gaunt from months of isolation - you surmise that if the city does not fall by assaultit will soon succumb from hunger. The soldiers are led by a woman warrior dressed in white and red. As yet, you remain unobserved.  If we attack them:  Nothing else happens. We don't get a combat or anything, just a textbox saying we killed them and we're idiots. If we hail them: Paragraph 36 posted:You alert the warriors to your presence. The soldiers are startled when you speak, and when they turn you see they are pale with fright. They realize you could have killed them before they knew you were there. The soldiers regard you nervously as the woman in red and white approaches. "You're the infiltrators the Kingshomers sent from their camp," she says. "I see you are surprised - my city might be losing this war, but we're not without our resources." The woman shakes your hand as she introduces herself. "My name is Princess Myrilla," she says. "If you meant us harm you would have attacked us from behind. You don't look like Kingshomers; I choose to trust you." Myrilla barks some orders to her men in a language you don't understand. Turning back to you, she continues, "Follow me. My brother will want to speak with you." Myrilla leads you through a secret passage into the heart of Byzanople. It's odd this girl has so abruptly taken you into her confidence. You decide to play along...if she can't make you a better offer than the Kingshomers, this is certainly an easier way into the city than storming the gate. That's Princess Myrilla. She's the sister of Princess Myrolla and Prince Jordan. We follow her and get the usual meeting with Jordan (Paragraph 108). Also, it's possible to open the gates after agreeing to join Jordan's army. In fact, it's easier, because we don't have to fight the Byzanople defense force: they think we're on their side, so we just casually walk up to the gate and open it, betraying Byzanople and getting a free trip to Kingshome. It's amazing to me just how many different ways the Byzanople quest allows us to be awful. And much like the Slave Camp, taking the "bad" route has no lasting consequences. This will not be the last opportunity for us to gently caress things up horribly, by the way. When these situations come up, I'll be taking the good paths but showing off the bad ones as well.
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Apr 19, 2015 08:06
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Now that we've liberated Byzanople, we're free to make our way back to the teleportation nexus on King's Island. So... Vote for our next order of business! - Temple of the Sun (Phoebus) - Lansk (via Heavily Guarded Bridge) - Lansk (via Magan Underworld) - Lansk (via ship) - Quag (Mud Toad) - Kingshome - Do other stuff on King's Island
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Apr 19, 2015 08:15
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Temple of the Sun!
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Apr 19, 2015 20:17
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It doesn't seem like you get rewards either way, aside from the secret treasure room. I suppose the experience is its own reward?
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Apr 21, 2015 05:23
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Glazius posted:It doesn't seem like you get rewards either way, aside from the secret treasure room. I suppose the experience is its own reward? You can get to the treasure vault with Big Chill, Magic Chain, etc. regardless. It's a little easier to get to if you agree to join Jordan, otherwise you'll have to fight a battle or two first. But you can still agree to join Jordan, get the treasure, then turn around and open the Byzanople gates, in which case you get through the entire Byzanople section with no fights and get tossed in the Kingshome dungeon, and we want to get tossed in the dungeon at some point to get some good items. It's quite a bit of experience, but experience really just doesn't matter much at this point. We have the skills we need to get through the game and we have decent armor. If you haven't noticed, major fights in this game mostly consist of, "have your magic users fire off their strongest spells, destroy everything, use Dragon Stones to recharge, repeat as needed." Getting 2 extra skill points isn't really important now.
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Apr 21, 2015 06:38
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Temple of the Sun
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Apr 22, 2015 01:00
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Update 16: Back From the Army, Temple of the Sun After taking a quick detour to turn the tide of a war, it's time to head back to Phoebus! We leave Byzanople and go through the abandoned Siege Camp (the black marketeer is still there, the healer and soldiers are gone). We travel to the eastern part of King's Island, just outside Kingshome, to get to the transportation nexus. There are a few giant groups of Goblins around here, and we'll have to fight through one of them to get there:  This fight is actually a huge pain in the rear end. The Goblins in the front are easy, but the Guard Goblins are really tough, and there are a lot of them. They also advance 30' at a time, so they'll be attacking us in no time! Our first order of business, as it usually is with these large-scale battles, is to cast Big Chill.  This kills the two packs of Goblins up front and takes a considerable chunk out of the first batch of Guard Goblins. For Round 2, Piers and Kali take them out with Fire Blast.   From here, we let the remaining group walk into 30' and have everyone use up their remaining MP on taking them out. We'll be visiting a recharge pool soon.  Yep, we even use Death Curse here! Kali had a few MP left, and Death Curse is slightly more reliable than stabbing them with the Firesword.  The Lance Sword does pretty good cleanup work.  Two of these were actually a delayed level-up. We could have leveled them up just by running from the fight. For some reason, the game doesn't process levelups at the end of the Kingshomer battle. I don't know if the level-up process is pre-empted by the messages we get for winning, or if we actually get an unannounced experience bonus for saving Byzanople. Anyway, on to the Nexus!   Killing a couple of Wild Dogs here levels up our original four. Upon leaving Mystic Wood, we could just walk into Phoebus, but we want to re-energize first, so we go over the Guard Bridge back to Forlorn. Going in this direction, we get this message:  If we say say Yes, we still have to present our Citizenship Papers or fight the guard. I actually threw out the Citizen Papers to free up inventory space, since the fight is so easy at this point. We kick the bridge guard's spleen (not pictured), walk through Slave Camp (not pictured), recharge by wading into the pool (not pictured), then make our way back over the bridge, re-kicking the spleens of the guard and goblins (also not pictured). Now, Phoebus! I love this thing, whatever it is.  Remember: whenever anything in this game is clean or well-kept, something bad is going on. Actually, something bad is always going on, but you get the idea.  This is a somewhat tough fight if we come here earlier, but at this point it's pretty easy.  The Long Mace is a good weapon. Louie gets to do something useful now!  And with that, let's make our way into the temple!  Paragraph 66 posted:This is Phoebus' incredible Temple of the Sun, renown all across the world of Oceana. The sun's warm rays shine into an open atrium, bathing the broad leaves of a variety of exotic heliotropic plants. Acolytes of the temple are busy about on mysterious tasks. The floor is inscribed with a gold design depicting the motion of Oceana and her sister planets. From some unseen chamber you hear the soothing sound of running water. It's really a great introduction to Mystalvision. As funny as it is, this next battle is no joke.  10 Stosstrupen in melee range is the game's way of saying, "gently caress you." They can very easily stun your entire party in two turns. And if you get through them, you get to deal with this gem:  We'll learn more about Inferno later, but obviously it's a tough spell to tangle with. It hits our whole party, does good damage, and has better range than Sun Stroke. It's possible to win this fight, but it's really difficult and not really worth the effort. Best thing to do is conserve our MP, and let the Stosstrupen rough us up.  The following screen appears for about one second on my system. You almost have to take a screenshot to be able to read it!  This "sleep spell" is the reason it's not worth fighting the battle. There's no actual sleep spell in the game, this is just the game's way of making sure the Mystalvision battle is unwinnable. Even if you do beat him, he just casts this unstoppable sleep spell on us. Of course, this sleep spell is never ever seen again for the rest of the game. The game doesn't usually resort to this kind of bullshit, but here it is.  OK, no problem, time to use the Lockpick skill...  ...Oh.  Well, gently caress. Why did we think it was a good idea to take on the all-powerful master wizard exactly?
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Apr 25, 2015 05:11
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 23:37 |
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That's one of my favorite sequences of the game - sure, they could have done the now traditional "Knock you out in a cutscene", but setting up a battle like that just to shove you into a prison really made it worth it.
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Apr 25, 2015 14:42
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