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I'm vaguely embarrassed about that effort post, as it's kind of long and rambling and was mostly focused on things from a Ranged-specific focus. So here's another effort post, hopefully more concise and clear about the relationship of stats and abilities to damage. -- Short version: Elemental bonuses from stats and abilities are added together into a single bonus. Physical bonuses from Warfare are multiplied separately, making the bonus to physical damage greater than the equivalent elemental bonus. -- In the vanilla game, because of the somewhat non-intuitive way damage calculations work, you end up with an asymmetry between physical damage and elemental damage. On the attributes side, Strength and Finesse increase damage dealt from basic attacks and weapon skills by 5% per point (depending on the equipped weapon). Intelligence gives the same 5% damage increase per point for spells and scrolls, as well as for basic attacks and skills with staves and wands. Most abilities do the same, with more focus on specific weapons or damage types. However, underneath the hood, there is an asymmetry in the way damage is calculated that makes physical damage (and bows and crossbows especially) get a little more oomph than elemental damage. That's because not all 5% damage boosts are created equally. Most bonuses to damage are additive, meaning you add them together before applying the total bonus to your damage; however some of the bonuses to damage are multiplicative, meaning that some bonuses are not added together and are instead multiplied by each other. For elemental attacks, all the damage modifiers from elemental skills are additive. If you have 10 points of Intelligence and 10 points of Pyromancy, your fire spells do the same damage as if you had 15 points of Intelligence and 5 points of Pyromancy, and so forth. Your total damage bonus is +100%, and all the bonuses are added together. For physical attacks, however, Warfare works differently. Warfare gives a bonus to all physical damage, but Warfare's bonus is not added in with the standard modifier from stats and abilities, and instead is applied as a separate multiplier. When your stats and abilities are low, the difference is very minor. As you gain more stats and abilities, however, the difference becomes more and more pronounced - it's especially noticeable once your abilities reach (or exceed) the normal caps. Critical hits also work as a separate multiplier, but physical and elemental attacks (with the appropriate talent) can both benefit from this. However, weapons are likely to benefit more - two-handed swords (which gain additional crit damage from points in Two-Handed) and daggers (which auto-crit on a backstab, and with Scoundrel giving additional crit damage) gain more crit damage in normal play, but casters aren't likely to care about doing more damage with two-handed elemental staves and are likely to have limited interest in spending points in Scoundrel to sometimes boost their damage when dealing crits. Ranged (including spells) attacks from a height advantage also works as a separate multiplier, although the base bonus is very modest and requires an investment in Huntsman to increase the bonus further, which spellcasters aren't likely to have much interest in as most Huntsman skills are for a bow or crossbow. Lastly, there's an additional asymmetry in the form of ability points and boosts being fairly limited. You only get so many ability points, so spellcasters will never quite be able to optimize their damage the same way physical attackers can. Edit: poo poo, this one's long and rambling too. Oh well, just use the short version up top.
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Jan 29, 2021 18:01
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Sebille, Lohse, and the Prince. Keep the Prince with his current setup and Lohse as an Enchanter, but make Sebille into an archer-type Rogue instead of a backstabby Rogue.
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Jan 29, 2021 18:59
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Maple Leaf posted:Do we tell Fara that her child is dead? 1) No. 2) Not yet. Maybe later. 3) Yes. I think voting on party configuration should not be considered as final at this time. Voting on an individual basis is not ideal, because the party should be configured as a whole for balance. I think a little better approach might be to let people vote and see what what people you want in the party first, then use the votes as a starting point, but be open to asking for a vote on possible class configurations if what people choose doesn't mesh together well into a coherent team. You may also need to hold the vote open for a longer time to get enough feedback to avoid a lot of low-vote ties. One day isn't a lot of time. My first party was Beast (Rogue/Utility), Red Prince (Fighter/Summoner), Lhose (Enchanter [Air/Water]), and Sebille (Wizard [Fire/Earth]). for Maple Leaf's party, I guess... I'll vote for... Ifan (Ranger), Red Prince (Battlemage - INT), and Beast (Enchanter). That configuration covers most of the bases, two ranged characters, two close-range characters, two physical-damage specialists, two magic-damage specialists. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Jan 29, 2021 |
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Jan 29, 2021 20:27
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Cythereal posted:Sebille, Lohse, and Beast for party members. Do we tell Fara that her child is dead? No, she probably won''t believe us either. Do we play cards with the three on the wall? Nah, gambling is for suckers. Do we hear out what Gawin has to say, or do we stick with our crew? Listen to him I suppose
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Jan 29, 2021 20:59
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I'd like Ifan and Beast in the Party, alongside either the Prince or Lohse. I'm not a big fan of Sebille. Don't care much about the classes. For the quest things, Yes to all.
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Jan 29, 2021 22:10
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yes to all the bad decisions As for the party: werewolf assassin man - rogue dwarven pirate - something using earth spells slaver dude You know, for how much were supposed to sympathize with sorcerers, we're all kind of terrible people aren't we? Does this one operate like the last game where everyone gets exp even in camp and we can tag people in and out or does it incentivize sticking with the same three sidekicks?
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Jan 29, 2021 22:21
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I'd say Ifan, Lohse, and Sebille. Whatever on jobs. Yes to all the questions and stuff.
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Jan 29, 2021 23:52
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I think voting on party configuration should not be considered as final at this time. Voting on an individual basis is not ideal, because the party should be configured as a whole for balance. I think a little better approach might be to let people vote and see what what people you want in the party first, then use the votes as a starting point, but be open to asking for a vote on possible class configurations if what people choose doesn't mesh together well into a coherent team. The idea was to remind people that we could swap out after every update or two, so people can get a feel for the characters better and see which ones they want to see more of. And while configuring the team for balance is the better idea, as long as we're not three-one, I'm interested in trying whatever the thread comes up with - like Prince being a Warfare-based staff user, for example. FoolyCharged posted:Does this one operate like the last game where everyone gets exp even in camp and we can tag people in and out or does it incentivize sticking with the same three sidekicks? Party members get all the EXP they've missed out on as soon as they swap in, yes.
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Jan 30, 2021 01:53
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Tell the woman her kid is dead. There is no point in prolonging her grief with false hope. Play some cards. You've got a grinning skull for a face. Let those chumps try and get a tell off of that! Hear the shifty guy out. It costs nothing to hear what the buzz is in camp. As for our initial party, I vote Ifan (Ranger/Wayfarer), Sebille (Rogue), and The Red Prince (Wizard). The perfect clash of amoral party members to match our fleshless, analytical self. Plus, we'll probably have Sebille and Red Prince have a clash! Feel free to juggle party members for that one lizard quest, you know the one.
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Jan 30, 2021 07:26
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FoolyCharged posted:You know, for how much were supposed to sympathize with sorcerers, we're all kind of terrible people aren't we?
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Jan 30, 2021 10:57
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Lhose is also reasonably good.
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Jan 30, 2021 14:18
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Do we tell Fara that her child is dead? Yes, especially if we can find the body. Do we play cards with the three on the wall? No, unless we can survive the inevitable combat that will happen if they try to cheat us Do we hear out what Gawin has to say, or do we stick with our crew? Maybe, if only to show that you can split off a single character (Ifan?) from the rest of the party Do we take Ifan? If so, what should his class be (default is Wayfarer)? Yes, only because I didn't use him in my playthrough Do we take Lohse? If so, what should her class be (default is Enchanter)? Yes, Summoner Do we take Beast? If so, what should his class be (default is Battlemage)? No, not right now. His quest doesn't kick in until later in the game. Do we take Sebille? If so, what should her class be (default is Rogue)? Maybe, in the short term just for her interaction with Red Prince's questline. Long-term, no. And, since we have the whole crew, do we take Prince? If so, what should his class be (default is Fighter and the previous vote was for Battlemage, but there's still time to be flexible)? Yes, but this is the first one I'd jettison if we needed to make room for one.
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Jan 30, 2021 17:24
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By my count, we are: Telling Fara her kid is dead, Playing cards with the fine folks on the wall, Ditching our friends to go with Gawin, And we're going with Ifan as Wayfarer; Lohse as Enchanter; and Prince as Himself. It was actually a three way tie for second place between Ifan, Sebille, and Lohse, but Negative_Earth tipped it over. Prince had the most and Beast had the least.
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Jan 30, 2021 18:23
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Melufa posted:Sebille, Lohse, and the Prince. Keep the Prince with his current setup and Lohse as an Enchanter, but make Sebille into an archer-type Rogue instead of a backstabby Rogue. I like this setup and make this my vote. Edit: I appear to be late. Don't keep the tab with the update in it open for an hour before reading. 
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Jan 30, 2021 19:43
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 Alright! So, at the end of the previous update, we had a bunch of votes to execute. One of them was on our partners, and we voted to keep the characters that we have now: Prince, Lohse, and Ifan, and the general consensus was to stick with their default classes – except for Prince, who is a Battlemage with staffs, once we find the gear for him. The first thing to do in this update and in executing our vote order is to go back to Fara and tell her that Irma is dead. Better to rip the band-aid off, I guess.  Although, there’s a woman there with a mage’s staff that I don’t remember seeing before. I wonder what she’s doing.   : First I’ve heard of it. : Just like everyone else. But don’t worry. Nothin’ happens in this camp that Griff don’t find out about, sooner or later.Okay, so, someone stole a crate of supplies from Griff, the boss of the Fort Joy ghettos, and he’s apparently eager enough to get it back that he has his cronies sniffing out the place. That’s good to know. Anyway. Hey Fara.  : From what that gentleman over there has told me, and from what you’ve told me earlier, it’s likely that your daughter perished in a Voidwoken attack. : You’ve been talking to that snake Jeth, haven’t you? I don’t know where he gets these obscene lies. It’s sick! Totally sick. To torture a mother so…: You stay away from that man, do you hear me? Erma isn’t… what Jeth says is a lie. You hear me?That went about as well as anyone could expect, I think.  The next thing to do on our list is play cards with the folks on the wall of the fort. It’s just a game of cards – what could go wrong?  : Oi, don’t think I ain’t watchin’! That’s your fifth Blue Jester this round! : What of it?: Ah, cram it in yer gobbler.: If you don’t like the game, Topsy, you can fold.: Now, now. Just cause the pair o’ you are filthy, cheating liars don’t mean I can’t beat ya.: A little respect for Griff’s right hand, Topsy girl.: ‘Right hand’ my winker! Fella’s got more right hands than an octopus.: That’s it! I call Court. Pay up!Sounds like a fun game involving, uh, lots of blue jesters? And something about an octopus? : Lookie lookie here, mates! A fresh face. We love fresh face, don’t we? Oh-ho, yes, we do. : (Seeing how the games of the modern era have evolved could provide valuable insight into the cultures of these people.) Sure, I’ll play a hand or two. Why not?: Chuff to you, chief! Here are your cards. You’re up first. : I… fold? Is that what I say here? : I thought you said the first hand was free. : Nobody mentioned having to pay to stay at Fort Joy. Not that I would even if I could! : This isn’t the first time I’ve been party to this conversation and it didn’t end well for those thugs, either. I won’t hand over what belongs to me.: We’ll see about that, freshie.    : Combat Music 2 : Thumping The ThugsThe fight opens with Ralvo maneuvering through the whole gang; getting AoO’d by Lohse (not pictured) and Fane, which, because of his handmade axe’s cleave damage, strikes a bottle of alcohol on the table, causing it to ignite; and then, once he’s in position, he casts Ignition, which ignites every enemy and every flammable surface in a radius around the caster; and then he hits Prince with Crippling Blow. Speaking of elemental damage, forums poster Olesh gives us a bit more insight into how elemental damage is calculated in this game, and why physical damage gets unfairly prioritized. He gave us a tl;dr version: quote:Short version: Elemental bonuses from stats and abilities are added together into a single bonus. Physical bonuses from Warfare are multiplied separately, making the bonus to physical damage greater than the equivalent elemental bonus.    Prince, not taking too kindly to being set on fire and having his ankles broken, casts Fortify on himself, which increases his physical armour significantly and puts out his fire, but doesn’t heal him of Crippled. Then, he Battle Stomps towards the picnic table (which Knocks Down the table); and finally, he makes the battlefield even messier by breathing more fire around.   Slug, the least talkative of the group, throws two grenades: the first is a bottle of Chloroform at Prince, and the second is a Firestorm Grenade at the other three. Chloroform isn’t a consumable: it’s a Scoundrel technique. In the base game, it does damage to magic armour, but that’s not to say it does magic damage: if the target has no armour to destroy, then the target is instead put to sleep, but they take no damage to their HP. It was kind of an awkward way to get around a rogue doing magic damage, which Larian apparently thought was important. In the Divinity Unleashed mod, they changed it so that it does water damage instead. Which technically means it scales off Intelligence, but you probably aren’t using Chloroform for its damage numbers.    Ifan opens his turn by coating his arrowheads in fire for a little bit of extra kick, before putting two of them into Slug’s ankles, and then Encouraging his party for the stat boosts. Slug (and Prince) can still move, but his movement is dramatically lowered, so it’d be more prudent for me to go to him.   Bottle Top backs up a little bit (which is a weird move, because she needed to go through the fire for that) before leaping forward to Backlash Fane, then she hits him with a taste of his own medicine and uses Mosquito Swarm on him. Unfortunately, the second-most useful utility to Mosquito Swarm, the bleeding, doesn’t work on someone that has no blood. It would have been a more damning move against literally anyone else.   Lohse casts Rain to put out herself and her friends, but she points the raincloud behind herself so that the water will only touch herself and her friends, leaving Ralvo and Slug still on fire and leaving the battlefield untouched. This means that the water puddle spawns behind herself as well, meaning it won’t have any utility for things like electricity or ice, but whatever: I want the battlefield on fire. After that, she hits Slug with Hail Strike, which hits a target area (not an enemy, meaning it’s easy to friendly fire with this spell) with three ice missiles. This puts him out, but it also spawns ice directly beneath himself. He can hardly move to begin with, and now if he does, he risks slipping on his rear end.   Fane opens his turn with Mosquito Swarm on Slug for a bit of extra healing (and to look badass – he’s a necromancer summoning a cloud of mosquitos to do his bidding while he’s on fire. The bucket really completes the look) before Battering Ram towards him. Luckily, Bottle Top was close enough that she got hit by the charge as well.  Ralvo, apparently being inspired, lines up Ifan and Lohse and Battering Ram’s them right back. He ends his turn there, meaning he’s going to move a whole lot his next turn if he survives that long (which he will, spoilers).  Slug is Crippled and Bleeding, so he’s not doing great. And he demonstrates that by… attacking the chair, and using the cleave damage from his knife to hit Fane for significantly less damage than if he just hit him directly. And then he ends his turn.   Because he was Knocked Down, Ifan only has 3 AP, so he spends it chucking an oily boulder at Bottle Top. She takes the damage from the boulder, and the oil ignites on the fire, giving her additional fire damage immediately.  In response, she gets behind Prince and backstabs him. It does a fair amount of damage, but he’s also made of solid stone right now. At least the hit makes a nice ‘thunk!’ sound.  Lohse hits Bottle Top with a Staff of Magus spell, which electrifies the blood and the enormous water puddle she made a few turns ago. The only person that’s significantly affected by it is Ifan. She, too, is low on AP, so, that’s the end of her turn.    Fane finishes off Slug, which, thanks to his Executioner perk, grants him another 2 AP immediately, which I immediately spend on Blood Sucker to regain a hearty chunk of his HP. He still has enough AP to run right up to Ralvo and give him a what-for with his battle axe, but that would require running through the fire to do it, so, instead, I use his Electric Discharge scroll to zap him from a distance. The water and the blood are already electrified, so adding more electricity to the mix shouldn’t hurt my friends any more than they are.   For Ralvo’s turn, he backs up a bit, gets hit in the shin by Lohse’s staff, and then hits Ifan with Burning Blaze. Some enemies in Divinity: Original Sin 2 have spells that the player can’t ever unlock themselves. Burning Blaze was a technique that could be learned in Divinity: Original Sin 1, but in 2, it’s one of those NPC-only skills, along a handful of others. There’s a mod out there that allows the player characters to learn these skills as well, but I’m not running that mod for this LP. Anyway, Ralvo hits Ifan with a technique I can’t ever hit anyone with myself, and then he casts Ignition again. This kills the Ifan.  Prince hits both Bottle Top and Ralvo with Bouncing Shield, which kills Ralvo, and then he hits Bottle Top with his shiv-on-a-stick. That puts Bottle Top down to 8 HP, which she tries to make last by using Mosquito Swarm on Fane again, but when she attempts to reposition once more, she dies to the electrified blood and water, ending the fight.  The fire and the electricity has all of us down to our very last slivers of health. Everyone is crying for a healer, and that they’re fading from this mortal coil…  … but it’s nothing a good night’s rest doesn’t completely and fully heal. Besides the fire. I hear sleeping while you’re on fire actually makes the sleep quality better. I mentioned this earlier, but one of the Larian gift bag mods let you resurrect a party member from death on rest. I didn’t activate this mod because I feel it intrudes way too much on the resurrection scroll economy: if someone dies, the only way to bring them back is with a resurrect scroll (in DOS1, you could learn Resurrect yourself, but not in DOS2). Res scrolls are either rather rare, or they cost an arm and a leg to buy, so, if nothing else, you’re financially incentivized to not die. This is a great mod if you’re having a hard time, but not so much if you’re looking for a little challenge.   Also, in the Divinity Unleashed mod, when a character is resurrected, they’re left prone for one turn. The reason for this is because, in the base game, when a character is resurrected during combat, they are guaranteed to move last in a turn, and dying resets all your cooldowns. If you have Glass Cannon, your AP is maxed out each turn, and in exchange, statuses will affect you regardless of your armour rating. So, in theory, you could have two characters with Glass Cannon die; have a third resurrect one; when his new turn comes up at the end of the round, he resurrects the second; he uses his last three (or five, depending on if you turned on another Larian gift bag mod) AP to do whatever; then the second one kills the first; resurrects him; and does whatever with his remaining AP and repeat the cycle over and over, for as long as you have res scrolls. Essentially, having the characters remain prone for a turn removes a cheese strategy and makes it so dying has a significant impact. You know, as it should. Dying was already a bad time for a lot of reasons, but now, staying alive is absolutely imperative to keep the fight from snowballing. Keep in mind, while a character is prone, they’re still totally vulnerable to attacks.  Anyway, as per usual, we’re free to loot the bodies for their spoils. It’s mostly just money and crafting ingredients, although we do also get Slug’s hatchet, which, if nothing else, will fetch some more money.  More money is always good, because vendors like Rezik charge a pretty penny for their skillbooks. Rezik deals with Hydrosophist skills, and we have an Hydrosoph-er in our party that doesn’t know how to heal someone. Let’s fix that.  This is the trader’s screen. On the left is our inventory, and on the right is the trader’s. Rezik has five dollars to his name; a tomato; a piece of parchment; and four Hydrosophist skill books. We can flip between our team for who is doing the bartering and who is offering their goods for sale, but that’ll reset anything that we’re currently offering, so, for example, Prince can’t offer something and have Fane sell it. The reason for that is because of the little star with the number 10 underneath Rezik’s name. That’s his attitude towards us: the higher his attitude, the better his prices for buying and selling will be, on top of whatever points we have in Bartering. Every trader has different attitudes towards different people in your party. You can raise a trader’s attitude by doing sidequests that involve them, or giving them stuff in exchange for nothing (including money). Rezik offers Armour of Frost, Hail Strike, Rain, and Restoration. We don’t know the spells Armour of Frost or Restoration, so, I want those.  Armour of Frost: An icy sheen of armour envelops a character, granting additional Magic Armour and curing Burning, Poisoned, Stunned, Frozen (oddly enough), Suffocating and Petrified. Restoration: Heals HP over time, scaled by Intelligence and Hydrosophist. Also cures Poisoned, Bleeding, and Burning. I have only 273 coins to spend, and these two skill books combined cost 564. But you’ll also notice that a huge number of things in my inventory have a hand over them: that means I’ve marked them for wares. Underneath the scales at the top center of the screen is a button with a similar hand on it – if I click that, everything that I’ve marked for wares will be offered all at once.  The value of my wares all together is 602, meaning I’m overcompensating Rezik for the books. Removing one of my old weapons lowers the value to 571, meaning I’m essentially giving Rezik two free coins for the exchange.  Because I overcompensated Rezik, his attitude with me increased by 1 – a negligible difference, but hey, any deal is better than none. Traders all restock their wares after every real-time hour, or on level-up, whichever happens first.  I give both of the books to Lohse – but she only has enough Memory to know four skills at once, and everything, including her Electric Discharge spell but excluding innate, character-specific skills and any skills she gets from equipment, puts her up to five. Therefore, while she can learn both spells, she can’t use them until she either ‘forgets’ one of her spells, or she upgrades her Memory. This is why Memory is such a vital stat, especially early in the game. Everyone in our party is going to run into this problem a few times until they can get their Memory stat in gear. Keeping our party’s HP steady is more important than the armour, at least in my opinion, so, Lohse learns Restoration and has Armour of Frost in her back pocket, but she can’t use it until she gets smarter.  The next thing on our to-do list is to go speak with Gawin and tell him that we are indeed okay with tossing our merry band of ne’er-do-wells for whatever scheme he’s got cooking.  : Between you and me… I have a handful of clingers with me and I’m looking for an excuse to get rid of them. : What plan do you have in the making? : I’ve been here a long time. Longer than anyone else. People get taken sometimes; some folks say they get cured. I don’t know if I believe it, and I don’t want to wait and find out. I have a way out of here. It won’t be easy, and I need a partner. Just one. : Been here a long time? You only want one accomplice? This sounds too convenient – how do I know you’re not a mole for the Magisters? : I… suppose I can’t afford the risk of not believing you. I’m in.: Atta boy! Who wouldn’t?! Finally someone with a little sense around here. The plan’s simple – completely foolproof. I have a spell that I can use to teleport you right out of here. I can’t use it on myself… but with your help, we can both get out of here. : If you’re being as altruistic as you claim, this method could save more than just two people. : Some people – not me, of course – would think that you’re just looking for a busybody to do all the legwork for you.: What, you think I’m being… lazy?! No – this is sheer pragmatism. I already tried to retrieve the item, but I don’t have the, eh… necessary skills…Some mage you are, then.  : … Crocodilians? The creatures with enough jaw strength to chew through a femur roughly twice over? … How many crocodilians are we talking?: Not enough to trouble a fine specimen such as yourself!: …: Get that artefact, and you and I are as good as free. Go give those overgrown lizards what-for!Two of us aren’t wearing armour; two of us are common housecats; and one is a squirrel.  The crocodilian nest that Gawin wants us to loot is directly northwest of our current position. We can get there by going to the ship skeleton that Beast was looting, and then heading north. Well. Before we get to that, we should probably get to know our healer a little better.  : In the mood for a chat? The first option is her retelling what she told us when we first met, about giving a concert on Overlook Hill when her audience started ripping each other apart. : In all of the humans I’ve met in my time, your eyes are the most unusually dark among them. Have you always looked this way? : How very sweet of you to notice! I know, it’s weird. One of the many side effects of the visitor upstairs. : She drums on her forehead with two fingers, smiles grimly, and shrugs. : It’s a very unique look! It adds to your character.: She bats her eyelashes at you in an exaggerated flutter, then bursts out laughing and punches your arm.: ‘Character.’ I like that. I’m gonna use that. If I can say nothing else for my current companion, at least I can say it gave me a bit of character. : I… I don’t know. I’ve never known any other life or way of thinking. : You mentioned earlier that you were a musician, correct? It’s perhaps an obvious question to ask, but… do you know any good, modern songs? : I don’t often listen to a lot of music, nor do I often visit the places it’s often performed, so I don’t know any songs that your average person might now. I’ll leave it to you – what do you think I’d like?: Hmm. I’ve got it!: Lohse clears her throat and starts stomping a steady beat into the ground, kicking up dust that dances to the rhythm. Slowly, she claps an intricate pattern above the beat, hips swaying, head nodding. The beat builds into a riot of sound, her hands and feet moving in an inscrutable pattern. She takes a deep breath and starts humming above the rhythm, a sound like a train, like a flock of birds, like nothing else.Personally, it kind of takes me out of the immersion when someone references something that shouldn’t exist within the setting. What is a ‘train’ in Rivellon? : ‘Savage hearts in a sa-’ *COUGH!* – ‘ – in a savage la –’ *COUGH!* *HACK!* : The ‘visitor upstairs’ must not be a fan.: Apparently not. All the more reason to find out what it is and get it out. : Before we do… is it saying anything to you right now?: Nope! This one doesn’t talk to me. It talks through me. You’ll know it when you see it.Oh, good, that’s reassuring to hear a possessed woman say. Alright, so, now that we’re better acquainted with the party’s healer, let’s go kill ourselves some crocodiles.  Hanging a right at Septa the Ineffable and traveling north will get us to this crocodile nest in just a few short strides. The game auto-saves once you round the bend on the beach but well before you get close to the nest, just to let you know that you are, indeed, about to walk into an encounter that could gently caress you up.  We get 300 XP just for approaching the place.  There are two crocodiles right there, and they’re both absolutely massive. One is patrolling the entrance to the nest in a circular pattern and the other is sunbathing on a rock. Must be nice!  There are bloodstains all around the northern edge of the nest, and there are at least two oil barrels sitting on the fringes of the beach. The two crocodiles are level three, and we are level two – and anyone that’s played Dungeons & Dragons (which Divinity is based off of) will tell you that a single level is a world of difference. Okay, so, first off: you can make your team members move individually by clicking on their portrait on the left hand side of the screen and dragging them away from each other until they ‘unlink.’ If they’re linked up, they’ll move with whoever the player is currently focused on. Right next to the mouth of the nest are two elevated platforms, one to my left and one to my right. Having the high ground generally means greater range for archers and spells, and it generally also means having damage and accuracy bonuses, so we want to take advantage of these two platforms.  I have Ifan sneak up the left hand platform…  … and, thanks to his closer proximity and height advantage, he spots a third crocodile way in the back of the nest. But this one is slightly different – the first two crocodiles don’t have any magic armour….  Unfortunately, I put Ifan just a touch too close, and the crocodile patrolling the entrance to the nest spots him. He’s taken out of sneaking, and the crocodile that spotted him gets to open the fight.    : Combat Music 1: Crocs On The BeachIt opens with Steel Skin, which dramatically increases the user’s physical defense for one turn, and then Fossil Strike, which dumps a puddle of oil onto Ifan on top of doing some Earth damage. Now, because of how the game handles initiative, I know for a fact that Ifan is guaranteed to go next. While Initiative does determine turn order, the teams of combatants (i.e. me versus the bad guys) are always my-turn-your-turn. Say, for example, it’s a two-versus-two: I have one person with 100 Initiative and one person with 1 Initiative, and the enemy team both has 10 Initiative. Person A would go first, because his Initiative was highest, and then Enemy Person A would go next, but because combat is my-turn-your-turn, Person B would go before Enemy Person B despite having the lower Initiative. Anyway, all that’s to say that Ifan can just hold his turn while his teammates get into position. I can enter and leave the fight by selected and deselecting Ifan if I want to get a better idea of the conditions for the fight.  If a character enters the fight late, and they do it by performing an action, they essentially get that action for free. Prince just cast Fortify on Ifan to make him a bit tougher since he’s opening the fight a bit hurt, and it didn’t cost Prince any AP – although any spells or skills, such as Fortify, still go onto cooldown. Any latecomers to the fight are shuffled to the end of the current turn, and on the next, they’re organically placed into the rotation based on their Initiative.   Lohse moves onto the right raised platform and sneaks her way into the fight by casting Hail Strike on the closest crocodile. It does water-based magic damage, so Steel Skin provides absolutely no defense against it. It’s still Ifan’s turn, though, so…  That’s a very precarious place for our cat to be! Unfortunately, we don’t get to control its AI and we just have to hope it has the sense to run.   Anyway, Fane sneaks up to the closest crocodile and lands an All-In strike. Steel Skin absorbs most of it, but it’s better than nothing.   Ifan has four AP to play with now that he’s ready to take his turn. He dips his arrows into the oil, allowing them to do bonus Earth damage, and then he chucks an oily rock at the crocodile sunbathing off to the side to keep it from approaching. That leaves him with one AP left, which he holds.   That same crocodile also uses Steel Skin, and then it tries to approach, but the plan to slow it down so much that it couldn’t attack works, and it’s forced to pass. Gameplay tip: if you see the hourglass icon above an enemy, that means that they still have AP to spend, but they’re passing so that they can hold onto it. It’s important to know what your opponents are capable of when you make your own strategies!   The third crocodile, the one way in the back, waddles over to Fane and attacks him. Crocodile bites will cause Bleeding, which we only learn because Fane is immune to bleeding – so that’s good to know.   Prince spends two AP to approach the two closest crocodiles, then uses Battle Stomp to knock them both down and reduce their AP generation next turn.     The closest crocodile that’s been turned to steel is Chilled from the Hail Strike that Lohse hit it with earlier. She makes it rain on top of the croc, freezing its legs to the sand and completely immobilizing it (although it can still perform actions that don’t involve movement), and then she zaps it with Staff of Magus – which also causes the rain puddle to electrify, stunning Fane and the third croc as well. By way of apology, she Encourages everyone within her radius, which excludes Ifan.   Because he’s stunned, Fane only has two AP, and he uses them to cast Mosquito Swarm on the croc that isn’t made of steel. Generally, you want to try and focus your fire in fights if you can – it’s better to take them out one at a time than it is to spread your damage out. However, Mosquito Swarm would have done physical damage, and they would have all bounced off the other croc’s steel skin, so, it was better to use it on the target with less armour and get more done.  The steel croc, although its feet are frozen to the sand, can still reach Fane and takes a big ol’ bite out of him.   Ifan has five AP to work with this turn. He spends one getting closer to the edge of the platform – which is a risky move, but he needs to be able to shoot down from it – and he uses Pin Down on the first croc, who’s Steel Skin has now worn off. After that, he uses a poison arrow, which lays down a puddle of ooze wherever it lands, and he manages to poison all three targets: both of the crocs and Fane. Because Fane is undead, this will actually heal him instead of hinder him.   Displaying why it was a risky move for Ifan to reposition where he did, the second croc sidles towards him, walking straight through the electrified water to do so, and then bites his legs. Ifan is still Fortified, so he is also immune to Bleeding until it wears off.   Prince hits the two poisoned crocs with Bouncing Shield, and then breathes fire on the one that just bit Ifan. I could have breathed fire on the two crocs huddled up on Fane for more damage, and the ooze would have ignited for even more, but I would have caught Fane in the blast as well, so I settled with the singular target.  The one crocodile with magic armour takes a heap of damage from its statuses, but because of Knocked Down and Stunned stacking, it only has one AP to work with, which isn’t enough to do anything at all, so it’s forced to pass.   Lohse finishes off the first croc with Staff of Magus, and then hits the one focusing on Ifan with Electric Discharge, Stunning it as well.    Fane uses Bull Rush on the one croc still in front of him – and I misplayed here, because I placed Fane behind the croc, when he was perfectly fine standing in the ooze. Moving Fane back onto the water Stunned him again. Statuses can’t remove any AP you already have, so, he finishes his turn with another swing on the same croc.  The croc focusing on Ifan takes another bite out of him, putting him down to a sliver of health remaining, but because it’s Stunned, it doesn’t have the AP to finish him off.    Ifan chugs a potion, which puts him back to full health, and because he has the Frugal ability (every potion, arrow, grenade, and scroll has a 33% chance to be recycled on use) it doesn’t actually lower his potion count, but he can’t get away from the croc because it has Opportunist (like everyone does), and he’d be giving it a free shot if he does. So, he stays put and puts another arrow into the far croc before Encouraging everyone within his radius, which excludes Lohse.   The far croc takes a ton of damage from the Stunning, the Bleeding, and the Poison, and then tries to reposition itself to better attack Fane – but it perishes from the electric water before it gets much farther, leaving only the one crocodile remaining.    Prince currently doesn’t have any long-range spells or skills to attack this last croc with, and getting close would mean wading through the fire to get within striking distance. So, instead, he picks up the oil barrel that’s right next to him (which costs no AP); he throws it onto the croc (which costs one AP); and the barrel immediately explodes and hits the croc with fire damage twice, once for the explosion and once for the fire terrain that’s been ‘refreshed’ underneath the croc. After that, he throws one more Firestorm grenade and calls it a turn.  Hail Strike is off cooldown, but it costs 3 AP to use and it would put out the fire that the croc is in-and-on. So, she does the only other thing she can do: she uses Staff of Magus on it. Which promptly misses.  Fane only has two AP to work with, but Mosquito Swarm is off cooldown, so he has his bugs devour the croc and cause it to bleed.  At the start of the croc’s turn, it takes damage from being on fire; it takes damage from standing on fire; it takes damage from Stunned; and it takes damage from Bleeding. That puts it down to just three HP – and when it puts one foot in front of the other to try and escape, it perishes in the flames.  And that’s the fight! We brought down three crocodiles, each of them a level higher than us, and the only consumable we used was a single Firestorm grenade. Although, to be fair, we got lucky with that one potion. Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Feb 7, 2021 |
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Feb 7, 2021 22:04
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Once the fire extinguishes, I do my God-given right of looting a bunch of dead crocodiles for their loot. This is an RPG, after all; I should be able to farm them for EXP and gold if I so drat well pleased! Also, Gawin said that one of them swallowed an artefact that could teleport us off the island, and there’s not going to be another way for me to get it out of them. Dollars to donuts it’s in the one with magic armour.  Yep. All equipment in the game has the potential to come with a skill that you can use once it’s equipped. For example, whoever equips these gloves will get the skill Teleportation, which is an Aerothurge skill. It won’t cost Memory to equip and you don’t actually need any points in the skill’s school to use – Fane could equip these gloves and get Teleportation, just like that. Naturally, they’ll lose the skill if the item is ever unequipped, and, like scrolls, the skill will be stronger if you’re speccing into that school, but it’s not necessary to cast. Positioning and repositioning are integral parts of the strategy involved in Divinity: Original Sin 2, and so enemy teleport skills like Teleportation are drat-near essential. There are a lot of self-teleport skills in the game too (which Teleportation is not). Because of their necessity, and how a lot of builds involve speccing slightly into one school or another for one, the Divinity: Unleashed mod nerfed all of them by increasing their cooldown and AP cost while reducing their range – and they’re still strong as hell. Despite the crocs being level 3, these gloves are only level 2, meaning I can equip them right now with no penalties. I might as well give them to Lohse, our designated Aerothurgist, until she can learn Teleportation organically, and then give the gloves to someone else until I find something better.  The coast of the croc nest had a half-eaten corpse on one edge. Intestines don’t count towards the elf’s ability to gleam information from eating body parts, but the arm, head, and torso are all fair game for later.  Along the northern edge of the nest is what must be Gawin’s previous sucker.  Food can have different effects on you on consumption. They heal a small amount (which sucks for Fane), but the lemonade also grants +1 Wits for five turns and the raw mutton gives -1 Constitution and sets Diseased for two turns. You can cook the mutton, of course. These are all in the base game, but Divinity: Unleashed buffed them by healing slightly more HP and lowering their AP cost during battle. In the base game, an ability called Five Star Diner doubles their effects – in Divinity: Unleashed, it no longer doubles effects, but it refunds AP on consumption, essentially making it free healing and stat-ups, but if you eat more than two things per round, you puke it all up and skip your turn.  golden ticket. I see it behind my lids when I close my eyes. Apparently, Braccus has a vault filled with treasure somewhere on this island, and this guy was a treasure hunter that willingly got himself arrested so he could find it. Well, we’re the heroes in this story, and there’s no such thing as a ‘legend’ in these RPGs, so we’ll probably find the vault sooner rather than later.  And a dwarven skeleton. That’s three dead bodies on this beach, and who knows how many more the crocs have eaten. How many people did Gawin send to their deaths?   Lohse passes a check to discover a mound of sand that looks a bit unusual compared to all the other mounds of sand on the beach.    A golden spoon, worth twenty bucks; an Ignition skillbook, which is the skill that killed Fane in that fight on the wall; another twenty-five bucks; and a crafting bible filled with recipes. Not a bad haul, all told. I give Ignition to Prince right away, since he’s our Pyromancer and he’s got a bit of Memory to spare.  Ignition: Does minor fire damage to all enemies in a radius around the caster and sets them on fire. Also ignites all susceptible surfaces. There’s a tiny… island? Would you call it that? There’s a tiny that in the middle of this tiny cove that can only be reached by a teleportation spell. It’s got a basket and some beer on it.    Teleportation is actually an offensive skill. The person you teleport takes physical damage – and anyone or anything you drop them on also takes additional damage. This isn’t the case with any other teleport skill: it’s specifically the Aerothurge spell Teleportation that does this. Putting Teleportation on your avatar character is a risky move because your allies will lower their attitude with you if you intentionally harm them, but that doesn’t happen if they teleport you. If an ally’s attitude gets low enough, they’ll leave your party. And there’s nothing on this little this anyway. Two bottles of beer and a basket with nothing in it. Some dude swam out here and just vibed for a little bit. I can respect that.  One fast travel back to the Fort Joy Ghetto, and we report back to Gawin.  : Mission accomplished. I have the gloves.: Well, I certainly got lucky with you, didn’t I? The way out’s nice and secluded – it starts in a little hidden alcove on the beach. Give me your map; I’ll show you where to go. And hurry! Not a tick of the clock to spare! The yellow flag is a quest-related location and the red flag is Gawin himself, hustling over to the hidden alcove. The next step on his sidequest is where that flag is. We had better hurry – like he said, there isn’t any time to spare! Anyway, looking at this map reminds me that there’s something to investigate back at the beach.  If you remember, directly south from this statue is a dilapidated staircase. I said that we’d be able to explore it later, and now that we have Teleportation, we can.  Now we can explore this cliff a little bit for whatever goodies are sitting up here.  A crate with some lockpicks and some level 3 pants that grant 1 physical armour and 0.1+ movement. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s something! I give it to Prince so that his outfit isn’t so top-heavy.    There’s a tent with a treasure chest at the very edge of this broken bridge. Someone was planning something, but it looks like it fell through. The armour grants +1 to Huntsman, meaning it would be good for Ifan, and the hammer (or mace, according to the game) grants +50 HP and does 51-53 damage per swing, as opposed to our current 35-42. However, both of these items are level 3, meaning if we want to use them without penalties, we need to level up first. Speaking of: if you look at one of the battle screenshots, you can see a gold bar at the bottom of the screen, underneath the hotbar. That’s my experience: once it’s full, you level up. We’re maybe three-fifths towards our next level.  You might think that that’s all there is to see, but if you’re sharp-eyed enough, you’ll notice that the minimap says that there’s more area to explore. This mound of rubble to the east of the bridge is climbable.  At the top of this hill are two skeletons, one human and one lizard. A destroyed ballista is nearby. This looks like it was an outpost of some kind – the ballista is pointed towards the ocean, where we washed up on shore. Also, we get 600 EXP just for finding the place.  The human skeleton has nothing; the lizard has a crafting item and a lovely Ripped Shirt that, believe it or not, is too powerful for us to equip yet; a coin purse with three coins in it; and the real prize is a sword sticking straight out of the ground.  It’s level 4, which is way about our current pay grade, but it also grants +1 Strength and +1 Warfare when equipped. Stat ups on equipment is very useful, especially two stats that work so well together like this; if we used one-handed weapons, this would be a very useful weapon that we could hold for several levels. But we don’t. So it’s vendor trash. Back at the Ghetto, we’ve covered nearly the entire western wing of the place. Starting at the front door, we might as well go east and start going clockwise from there.  This looks like some kind of blacksmith. There are no weapons on display, though: there’s an anvil, but it’s mostly hammers, tongs, gears, nails… I doubt the Magisters would let the prisoners just walk around with weapons on full display. But then again, Gawin and Waltz both walk around with their staffs on full display. I wonder what the sliding scale of ‘acceptable weapon’ is to them. : Amidst a crowd of screws, bolts, and scraps of metal, the woman is manipulating a glove-like contraption fitted with five long, metal skewers. She doesn’t look up as you approach. : Oh, an engineer! I was hoping to run into someone like you! I’d like you to fashion a face-ripper for me. I can compensate you, of course. : A face-ripper. A circular, metal device that uses hooks to wire into the skin or scales of a person, and then, with a spin of the outer wheel, the cutting blades saw into the person’s flesh and remove their face from their skull. It has a number of smaller, sharper parts to it, but surely it’s not a difficult device to craft in the modern era. : You another friend of Kniles’? I told that Magister freak to git back to his little dungeon in the keep, and I’ll tell you the same. Now get the hell out of my face.Well, that was a rather indignant and unnecessary response. All I wanted was a device that removed a person’s face. It must be the island prison. Makes people jittery and prone to outbursts. Anyway, despite clearly not being friends with Nebora right now, she’s still willing to talk with us.  : I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about Dallis. : Was it her that made these damnable collars?: She nods once. : If you knew her well enough that you thought the ‘Hammer’ was an inappropriate nickname, then… what do you remember of her?: Oh, I don’t know. She was a sweet soul. Quiet. Loved her family. Always seemed strong, as I recall, but she didn’t come across as no fearless military leader back then. She was just a girl.: People do change, don’t they.Interesting; Dallis wasn’t always like this, but something happened, and now she’s a powerful woman at the head of the world’s military, crafting incredible collars that suppress the ability to wield Source on anyone that wears them. I wonder how she and Nebora met. Nebora, being the only blacksmith in the joint, doesn’t sell weapons or armour – that would be too obvious, and the Magisters would shut her down real quick. She sells elemental arrows; trap disarm kits; a whole slew of crafting items… and Summoner magic skillbooks. And a ring.  Anyone that wears this will get a +1 boost to Hydrosophist, meaning it would go real well on Lohse. The two Magic Armour is also a modestly big deal this early in the game. I don’t have a lot of wares to be bartering with, but I do have enough to afford the ring, and I can sell some old equipment (and that gold spoon from the crocodile nest) to soften the blow to my purse a bit.   There; now our healer is more healery. Continuing clockwise around the ghetto….  This must be the keep that Nebora mentioned. Just past this giant iron gate is a fortress where the Magisters probably live – and that Kniles character is in its dungeons somewhere.  This one Magister is named Boris. That… name sounds familiar. : As you approach the unsmiling Magister, Ifan catches your arm and speaks to you with some urgency. : Go ahead. Far be it from me to get in the way of your work, and I trust that you get things done.: Ifan strides up to the Magister, speaking in a calm and controlled voice. Though you can’t hear what he whispers, the Magister’s face turns whiter than snow as he hands a note to Ifan with shaking hands. : D-d-don’t… I’ll give you the information. Here. Just… just don’t, alright?: Ifan walks back to you, leaving the quivering wreck of a Magister behind. When he catches your eye, he winks.Sounded like a fun conversation! Let’s see what that note is about.  Ooh, a smuggled weapon? That sounds useful! : Ifan catches you looking over at him. He raises his eyebrows. : You have a certain penchant for getting things done. It’s admirable, in its own way. : Ah, it’s just practice. All in the way you set your jaw, lad. I’ll teach you some day. : I suppose I agree. Some soiled britches is better than a dead man, in the long run, and it’s not like we’d be very inconspicuous about it right here and now.: That’s about the size of it for me, alright. And now that we agree, shall we agree to keep moving?: After reading the scrap of paper he took from the Magister, Ifan marks a spot on your map and looks out to the far horizon.Seems like as good a time as any to get better acquainted with our hitman best friend.  : I’ve procured a bottle of a modern-day refreshment and I… am not thirsty. Would you like it?: Seeming surprised, Ifan gladly takes the drink from your hands and downs a hefty glug.: Ah, that hit the spot! : Thanks, but like I said, I’m not very thirsty.: More power to you, brother. Not many people live life to their own rules. When I’d be sharing rotgut with Roost and the boys back at camp, we always had a lookout. Called him ‘Happy Morning’ on account of how he’d be having one the next day… unlike us. : … This is perhaps asking a bit much from myself, but if we’re being honest, I’ve always wanted to start a family.: A worthy dream, friend. A very worthy dream.: Rhalic aflame, that brew went straight to my bladder. If you’ll excuse me…Giving Ifan a drink (or anybody an alcoholic drink) gives him the Drunk status. When you’re Drunk, you have -4 Intelligence, -5 Initiative, and -5% Accuracy, but in exchange, you get +5 Dodging (maybe a reference to the ‘Drunken Boxing’ martial arts style from ancient China?) and +2 Lucky Charm. Getting Drunk is overall a terrible decision for combat, but that +2 Lucky Charm means getting Drunk before opening a chest or looting a body could be real good for finding rare items or equipment. If you get Drunk while you’re already Drunk, you instead go to sleep.  : I’m glad that you survived the shipwreck. Going back down into that hold to rescue you and the others was one of my better decisions. : Mind if we have a bit of a chat?: He freezes and shoots you a wary glance, looking for all the world like a wild animal caught in the lantern-light of a racing carriage. : Back when we rescued that elf from those thugs, you mentioned a group called the Lone Wolves. What is a Lone Wolf in this context?: He shrugs, looking off to the side. : A group of people are calling themselves the ‘Lone Wolves?’ Isn’t that a bit… contradictory?: Guess I could bullshit you some deep explanation behind it. But, truth be told, Roost always did have an odd sense of humour. : I suppose humour is subjective.: He rolls his eyes and hoists his pack, setting off ahead of you.I am a very fun person. Back to talking to Ifan about himself, though….  : So… you seem comfortable with your weapon. How many contracts have you fulfilled?: Ifan begins counting on his fingers and muttering to himself. This goes on for quite some time. : Alright, then.: Indeed. That’s pretty much how I feel about it too. : It’s fair to say that the Magisters and their Divine Order aren’t exactly on our side. What do you think of them? : For a group calling themselves the Divine Order and for all the preaching they’re doing about helping us common Sourcerers, I have to say: sitting here on this island prison, wearing nothing but rags, I can’t help but feel they’ve lost their way.: Ha! Sharp eyes, lad. But they can’t keep the likes of us locked up too long, I’ll wager. Come on, let’s poke around and see if we can sniff out some blind spots in their surveillance…There’s one last topic to talk about.  : Back when we first agreed to travel together, you mentioned that you had a ‘little errand’ to run. Who is your current contract on?: Ifan shrugs off his backpack and reaches into its depths. After rummaging around, he holds out a tattered page to you, upon which you can see a broken wax seal in the shape of a wolf’s paw.: Have a read of my contract and find out…Right, the note that I read. His target is Bishop Alexander and he was told to say the phrase ‘Glechou dumar’ to Boris.  : I can’t help but feel this is a suicide mission.: Maybe.: He sniffs the wind, gazing out across the dilapidated buildings of Fort Joy as if looking for something. : Well, I’ve already promised that we’d travel together, and you haven’t done me wrong yet. If the opportunity comes up to kill Bishop Alexander, then… it’d be one less Magister to worry about.: Good to know. And likewise… with whatever errands of your own you have.Okay! So, our mission objectives are 1) escape Fort Joy, and 2) kill the highest ranking Magister there is. Easy stuff, easy stuff! We had this entire conversation in front of the gates to the island’s keep, and none of the Magister guards seemed to give a drat. Let’s continue traveling clockwise around the ghetto.  There’s just one last place to visit, and that’s what appears to be a sickbay of some kind. There’s just one woman in the tent, among a gross, unkempt pile of rags and tatters.  : Oh, I’ve read about this affliction! This must be what the modern era calls ‘the wet death.’ I’ve never seen such an acute form of it before now. : Get away! Get – *cough* back! At least wait ‘til I’ve croaked up my- my last if ya want to study me.Mona is actually a trader, and she sells Necromancy skillbooks. Buying that ring made things a little tight on the purse, though, so I don’t purchase anything from her just yet. Also, speaking with her gives you the Diseased status for ten whole turns. If you’re Diseased, your Constitution goes down by 3 and your damage is reduced by 35%. It’s a pretty serious status for your frontmen to get, and Fane, despite being undead, isn’t immune.  Looping around to the rear end of the ghetto, and we’re back where we started on this update! Sebille is still hunkered behind her barrel, watching someone inside the centerpiece that we’ve been circling around since the beginning. I should probably check out what’s in there next update. There are no major votes this time – but there is one thing I forgot to ask pertaining to our teammates. Which instruments should they all play? For reference, the available instruments are the bansuri, a flute made of bamboo originated in India; a tambura, a long-necked plucked string instrument, also originating in India, that’s not meant to play its own melodies, but instead harmonizes and supports the melodies of other instruments; an oud, a short-necked lute with eleven strings that originated in the middle-east; and a cello, a bowed-string instrument that originated in Italy. This is purely for flavour and doesn’t have a major impact on the gameplay, and we can assign instruments to Beast and Sebille as well, if we ever switch back to them. Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Feb 7, 2021 |
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Feb 7, 2021 22:05
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A different instrument for each character. Give the tamboura for Prince, the oud for Lohsa, and the bansuri for Ifan.
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Feb 7, 2021 22:39
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Fane can't play his own ribs like a xylophone? I've never been more disappointed.
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Feb 7, 2021 22:51
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The crocodile quest is kind of a mean trick for the unwary. The crocodiles are pretty dangerous, and a newbie going in with fresh characters who doesn't know what they're doing can get their rear end kicked. Gavin has a decent chance of being one of the first dudes you talk to due to how close he is to the entrance. I'm surprised you're not doing any stealing. It's a great way to get the initial capital for the first skill books and such (since being memorized means you no longer have anything with a stolen tag on you).
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Feb 7, 2021 23:19
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I never changed up any of the instruments- do they default to the same one (strings?) Also, I'm surprised the Crab lived given all of the fire/AoE around
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Feb 9, 2021 02:21
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At the end of the last update, I noted that we had made a giant circle around the perimeter of the inside of the ghetto, but we had pointedly never gone inside. Let’s see what’s in there.   : SCRAM, snake-face. This lizard, after being told to buzz off, meanders his way out of the camp’s kitchen, out of the west exit…  … And just a moment later, Sebille is off, stalking in the same direction. Well, might as well get myself acquainted with people. The guy standing in the kitchen looks important, particularly if that one lizard was willing to beg him for a ‘shipment.’ : Griff is slowly, methodically peeling the skin from a potato. As you approach, he looks up, setting the potato, but not the sharp little knife, down on the table. : Are you meant to be the one the others answer to here? : I’m just looking for a kinsman for some guidance, and I figured the best one to ask would be the one in charge.: He smirks and holds the little knife up to the light, watching it glint. : I’m hoping to escape Fort Joy. I’m certain it’s not a novel idea. : In that case, if the only way out is by rehabilitation, can you tell me anything about the ‘cure’ the Magisters have for Sourcerers? : (This conversation is going nowhere. Maybe I should try appealing to him.) Since you’re the one in charge, you’re likely the best friend a person could ask for in this jail. Is there anything I can do to get into your good graces?: He points the tip of his blade at the grisly sight of the elf hunched over, clutching his knees in the cage. : (I probably shouldn’t get accusatory about his underlings while I’m in the heart of his base.) Um… got anything to trade?: Sure. Have a look. Griff sells food, mostly uncooked meats, and drinks – and he sells a plant called drudanae. Drudanae is Rivellon’s relative equivalent to… I guess cocaine would be the closest match? I don’t know a lot about hard drugs. Turns out, Griff cooks more than just food in this kitchen. Also, he sells it for nearly five grand a pop. I have sixty-six coins to my name.  Griff mentioned that he ‘solves his own problems,’ and he was explicitly referring to this elf in this cage. I wonder what the story here is. : Leave ‘im be. Don’t make me say it again. : Listen, I can help you if you just – : This elf is in serious need of medical attention. Is there no better place to keep him? : What did he steal? : What gives you the right to hold a man in a cage, particularly when he’s in such a dire condition?: Listen up. Back off. : … Would you seriously consider killing a man over some missing fruit, Griff? Is his life worth a few apples?: Ain’t been here long, have you? *Ahem* No-one gets to have it all. No-one starves anyone else.: He twirls his knife between his fingers. : Let’s make a deal, then. If I find your crate of missing fruit, you will let this elf free. Is that fair?: All’s I want is my supplies. *Ahem* Happy to let this clown die in a gutter instead of my kitchen. Bring back my crate and you’ve got yourself a deal.Alright, we got ourselves another sidequest. Griff is all out of sorts because a crate of his citrus fruits have gone missing, and he’s holding a sick and injured elf prisoner until he gets it back. If we can find this fruit, he’ll let the elf go free. An easy transaction. Standing just next to me is a blond woman, herself next to a hatch in the ground.  : … Are you referring to the Arena of the One? The home of the cult of battle, as described in the fables? Can you tell me more? : Nothin’ I can tell you you can’t find out by slippin’ down that hatch. If you’ve got the spit in ya, that is.The Arena of the One is a whole thing that I intend to come back to sometime later. You only need to be about level two or three to participate and reasonably expect to win, but I’d like to put it off for a bit of time. That said, one of the Larian gift bag mods was to place a spot where you can respec your characters in the ‘lobby’ of the Arena of the One, so if you want to head down there and start rearranging your characters, that’s where you go to do it. Otherwise, the earliest you can start respeccing is not for a long time.  There’s another blonde woman standing on the top walkway, overlooking the entirety of the kitchen.  : And do you happen to like what you see? : (Wow, that one pamphlet on mortal mate-attracting was accurate!) I am known as Fane. May I ask for yours? : Have you been here a long time, Butter? : I don’t intend to let the Magisters take me anywhere, if I have my way. : From all that I’ve heard, my options are to die fighting for my life, or to die letting them ‘cure’ me of my Source. I’m completely serious about escaping. And you should come with me.: She laughs. The sound fills the air like the ringing of a bell. : Now, wouldn’t that be something… : Amadia herself would fail to stop me.: She leans forward and grazes your cheek with her lips.: Until then!Alright, we got ourselves a date! Once we break out of Fort Joy, we need to find Butter in a place called Arx. Should be quick and easy, I think! Also: Butter sells Wayfarer skills and goods, so it’s a good idea to keep her on your good side.  Another woman comes up to Butter and starts chatting her up. She sells Scoundrel skills and Finesse equipment, so she’s also a good person to have on your good side.  : *Psst.* Hey. You’re a little light in yer pack, ain’t ya mate? Who could blame you with the garbage they’ve got fer sale around here. : Is there some obscure method of obtaining goods like these within Fort Joy? : Before that: I’ve been tasked with finding Griff’s missing crate of supplies. You’re apparently one in-the-know about procuring special goods – have you heard anything about it? : And you don’t? : How can you be so certain? : It’s good to know that I’m not trying to free a criminal, at the least. Do you know who the real culprit is?: Sure do. Ask me, it’d have to be one of those sad sacks that’s always hangin’ around Griff, looking for favours.: She darts her tongue out of her mouth like a snake.: Some folks – and some reptiles – would do anything to get his attention.Hilde is all-but-directly accusing that blue-scaled lizard that Griff was talking to earlier of being the thief. I suppose I have my next witness to speak with. I exit the kitchen out of the west exit, just like the blue-scaled lizard had, and one of the first things that greets me is… a different lizard, talking about a person’s… quality of death? With someone else.  : Now, now, let’s not get nasty. Griet’s better off, I’m sure. : Keep her name outta your mouth, how ‘bout.: Easy now, old chap. It isn’t my fault she’s dead. Gods, the smell, though…: I’m gonna give you one more chance to shut that ugly mouth of yours.: Goodness, but this place has made you cranky! Perk up, ol’ chap. There’s plenty of singletons about.: Leave me be, Saam.: I only mean that if you think about it logically, she’s much better off.: Leave it, Saam. I won’t say it again.: Come, old chap, don’t be unreasonable. Better even to puke yourself to death than get purged, don’t you think? You should be happy for Griet!: What… did you say?: That’s what happened, isn’t it?: Bleedin’ snake…Wow, did this lizard grow up in a basement? : Please – excuse us.: You’re talkin’ to me, not him, Saam.: Oh, for the love of Lucian, Baladir! You’re acting like a madman! : (It’s looking like this Baladir person is finally reaching his limit.) I, um–: Go on, Saam.: Well it’s the truth, and you know it! She’s better off. So what if it was messy. I’d rather puke myself to death a thousand times than let the Reds get to me! If she were my wife… I’d be happy for her!Happy? That his wife is dead? That she died by puking herself to death? : A flat smile twitches across Baladir’s lips.: She never did like you.  Baladir just shanked Saam for a solid 25 HP, and apparently, that’s all he could take.  : I don’t suppose that coffin is for the man you just murdered? : If not him, then… for who?: The love of my life. Griet. She passed in the night – something in her stomach. Doctor couldn’t help her.: He tenderly runs a hand along the coffin’s side panel.: If she were here, she’d tell me this plank is crooked. Chastise me for using warped wood on her final bed. Then she’s laugh and kiss me just here.: The man holds a hand to his cheek for a moment. He turns from you, lines up another nail, and hammers it into the panel.I’m sorry for your loss. So… are you gonna loot that? No? Score.  One person in the thread mentioned that I’m not being enough of a thieving rear end in a top hat in this game. Which is true – you can pickpocket any person in this game, and you can steal from any container provided you aren’t seen when you do it. The most common method to pickpocketing someone or to stealing from something that doesn’t belong to you is to distract everyone within eyesight from the thing that you’re trying to do. For example, we can actually loot Griet’s coffin, but not while Baladir is staring at it. So, the solution to that is to have one of our party members speak with Baladir so that his model isn’t facing the coffin…  … And then change the focus from our speaker to our designated thief. I don’t have one in our case, so, Prince will have to do.  As long as he’s sneaking and he isn’t in the red cone of vision, he can rifle through any red-marked container with impunity.  All that said, the only thing inside the coffin is a human tooth and some money. Demonstration complete. I’ll see if I can’t pickpocket someone later.  Just a few paces west from Baladir and Saam’s corpse is a beautiful blooming flower called a Yarrow. That’s interesting – one of the Magisters from before was named Yarrow. She was sitting on the wall above the entrance to the ghetto and asked us to find someone named Migo. If nothing else, consuming the flower temporarily grants +1 Intelligence, so, I’ll hold onto that for now.  Heading straight south from Baladir is Sebille, camping out next to the skeleton of another wrecked ship. Given her keen interest in the lizard talking with Griff, it’s fair to assume that that’s where he’s wandered off to. If I remember right, someone set up a fairly cozy, if not particularly effective, little shanty in this corner of the map. Well… I should probably get a word in with this lizard before she and her needle do. : Just as you’re about to address the lizard, the Red Prince bars you with an outstretched arm. : Well, let it be known that I am a man of my word, and I did, in fact, promise that we would find a Dreamer. You have my permission to speak with him first. : Permission indeed…: He bids the Dreamer stand up and pay attention, which he does in a grovelling and awkward manner. The Dreamer than chews and swallows a handful of drudanae leaves before slipping into a trance-like state.: He falls asleep. To your surprise the Red Prince lies down and follows suit. After about a half an hour they wake up, and begin to discuss what they saw in their dreams. : I used to enjoy my fair share of afternoon naps back in my time. I hadn’t realized the lizards take it more seriously.: You receive a withering glance in response.: A deserved bit of sarcasm I suppose. But though this Stingtail fellow may be a less than stellar specimen in the firmament of Dreamers, the dreams themselves proved to be quite elucidating.: Turns out I’m being hunted by an enemy I didn’t know actually existed: the myth-shrouded House of Shadows. : Is a fancy chair worth the attempts on your life?: Of course it is! I was born with the promise of an empire, and that promise will be kept! But to keep it, I must find a second Dreamer. A greater one, a more experienced traveller of the dream world. Bahara is her name, and she resides in the swamplands east of the fort. So let us make our escape and venture there post-haste!Hey, man, I only promised I’d help you find a Dreamer. We found one. But I guess you can tag along for a while longer.  : Oh, do hold your prickly tongue!As you are yourself aware, I do not have one, and therefore I will do no such thing! Anyway, Hilde suspects Stingtail of being the citrus thief, and apparently dreaming with a Dreamer involves taking a ton of drugs (you know, as you do). She might have been on to something.  : What could you have been ‘so close’ to in the middle of your nap? : Before I do… you wouldn’t happen to know anything about a crate of missing supplies, would you? : Supplies? *Ahem* You mean the oranges, I suppose. : I had suspected there was more to this than just a crate of missing oranges, but what do oranges and drudanae have to do with each other?: The drudanae Griff cleverly smuggles into the prison, of course. Stuffed inside the oranges. You don’t think he’d really be so mad over a little missing fruit, do you? : Do you really need drudanae in order to dream?: Drudanae… it makes you master of all you see when you sleep. The dreamer is not the play-actor, but the playwright. It may be hard for you to understand. But my kind… we dream for the greater good. What we see can predict the truth, can even shape the truth. But we need drudanae to do it.So… it’s lucid dreaming, but without the practice? : Before I was caught, before I was brought here, I saw a vision. The Voidwoken: slain. Divinity: restored. But just as I was about to see how it happened, the Magisters beat down my door. This is my last chance to find out the secret. To find out how to save us all. : You talk about ‘salvation for the greater good,’ but there’s a man in a cage that’s going to die if I don’t get that drudanae back to Griff. We can’t start fixing the world if we can’t help the individuals that need help first. And I’m not leaving until I get it back.: Persuasion Success!: To save a life. Ah – that elven fellow in the cage, I suppose. I knew he’d been suspected, but… but it all seemed worth it if I could only dream again.: Never mind. Take the oranges. The drudanae, that is. I’ll find another way. Somehow.  There it is: the citrus that Griff had nearly killed a man for and had his thugs shake down the rest of the prison over.   : I know drudanae when I see it. Griff must be jonesing mightily for his next hit.: What sort of madman would cage a man over a missing hit of drudanae?: I guess you really can get anything in prison.So now we know that Griff wasn’t really a misunderstood chef at all, and all he wanted was another score of hard drugs. Do we return the drudanae to Griff and rescue the elf? Or do we confront him for using a hostage to get more drugs?  While you think about that, here’s a big ol’ pupper!   : And what’s your name, buddy? : No, I – oh! Your name is Buddy! Well, alright, then.: What’s got you down, Buddy? : Oh, you won’t know that unless you try, Buddy. : Is Emmie why you’re feeling so blue? : There, there. At least you aren’t alone for now. : *Whimper.* I love you. Say… let me show you something… Buddy runs across a small shallow of water and digs up this… rather ornate key. It’s longer than my torso and it has very pronounced, protruding teeth. : Do you have any idea where I might be able to use this key, Buddy?: Key? What key? Oh, the key! The Magister who took Emmie dropped it when he was walking away. Did someone say Emmie? *Whimper* Emmie… : Do you remember where you last saw her?: Not too far from here. But she was taken by a guy in a white robe, who smelled HORRIBLE. Like lots and lots and lots and lots and…  New quest: find Emmie and, if I can’t reunite her with Buddy, at least try and give Buddy some closure. All dogs deserve… if not a happy ending, then at least a not-sad one.  Further east along the beach is a woman tending to a half-naked man with extremely little HP by a bonfire.  Actually, we just so happened to pick up a little bit of extra booze from that little island thing down by the crocodile nest. Giving the good dwarven doctor some booze will give you 500 EXP, which is quite a lot for a lower level like us, so it’s not a bad idea to give her some. : Here. : This man appears to have taken a serious concussive blow to the skull. How did that happen? : Oh, the ones on the wall? I had a run-in with those thugs myself. Granted that I’m still here, with my head not caved in, you can guess how well that encounter went. : Lucky you came out of it at all! Plenty of folks around of here haven’t, and it’s me who ends up wrist-deep in the gore!Doctor Leste offers Polymorph skillbooks, so if you’re looking to get into that school of magic, she’s the one to make friends with. If you try talking to Dain, he’s fast asleep and dies in relative peace, but if you don’t give Leste the booze or you’re too slow to get it to her, he dies, uh, not in peace, and it has an effect on Leste’s demeanour. You know, if a videogame character’s behaviour and attitude is something that’s important to you. Heading even further east, the game autosaves for us, which is always a welcoming sign.  : Is that thing… eating corpses?: The creature heaves through lips gummed with human gore. It turns to you with great effort, pain apparent in every movement, and madness screams from its wide, bloodshot eyes. : You… you, you, you, you… quite lost. Quite lost, quite lost… careful or they’ll CROSS YOUR WIRES! Heehee! : There… uh, this one grew along the beaten path, just on the other side of the ghetto.: The creature gingerly takes the plant into his bloodied hands. He runs his fingertips over the white flowers. His panting breath slows. : Why did you want that flower so badly?: The creature clenches the plant tightly; his breath quickens. He seems liable to lunge at you at the drop of a pin.: You wouldn’t understand. A father’s pride. A father’s love.: The creature begins to weep. Fast, silent tears spill from his eyes as he clutches the little cluster of flowers to his heart.: For you. My ring. Part of me. Name of Migo. Thank you. Migo… the Magister woman on the wall was looking for someone named Migo. And her name was Yarrow. And Migo was saying something about the yarrow flower being ‘a father’s pride and love.’ Seems like a pretty open-and-shut connection between them, but before we report back to Yarrow, we can still talk to Migo. Which, considering his state, is kind of risky, but, you know, why not?  : Can I ask you a few questions? Your state of being is fascinating. : If you can remember your name, can you remember anything else? Where you came from, anyone important to you – anything at all? : It looks as though you’ve been… interfered with, and rather substantially, in both body and mind. Do you know what even happened to you? : Hammer… are you referring to THE Hammer? The right-hand woman of Bishop Alexander?: Clang. Clang. Horrible old sadist. Filled my brain with holes. The devil lives inside her. Believe you me.We’re learning a lot about Dallis The Hammer. She used to be a tender girl that didn’t know anything about repressing Source magic, and, very suddenly, now she’s a military genius; a master Source Hunter (or some other equivalent); and now she’s… experimenting with people, turning them into zombies. And she may, in fact, be possessed, if Migo isn’t just spouting nonsense, which he very well could be. I wonder if her devil has any relation to Lohse’s. Anyway, we should report this to Yarrow.   : Actually, it’s quite possible I’ve met the person you’re searching for. : I’ve seen him at the far south-eastern corner of the ghetto, where the beach meets the ocean. Although… you may want to approach him with some caution. He… wasn’t well. : He gave me this, and he mentioned that he had a daughter named Yarrow. Sometimes, depending on the options you take when speaking with people and when completing quest lines, you can be given a new tag to apply to your talking options. For instance, you’ve probably noticed that some responses have a qualifier before them, such as [SCHOLAR] or [UNDEAD] or [FANE]. Those are tags, and now that we’re bonafide heroes, sometimes, a [HERO] option will come up among our possibilities as well. There are other tags that we can find over the course of our quest. Naturally, there’s a [VILLAIN] tag as well, if we ever decide to be real assholes sometime.  : This can’t be. You said he was upon the beach, yes? I need to have a look myself. This… this simply can’t be.With that, Yarrow makes her way towards Migo’s last known location. She runs there in real-time, and her pathing isn’t great and can be obstructed be people or objects, so it can take her a hot minute to find her way there. You need to meet her and Migo together in order for the quest to resolve.  : Pop… is that… is that really you?: Little Yarrow girl! Grown up, flower-headed girl… : You’re a Magister. Didn’t you know what they would have done to your own father if you kept him here?: She looks at you with hatred etched deeply in the lines of her face. : Whoever did should be brought to justice, then. : Despite the circumstances, I’m glad that you found each other again. The man is clearly in a lot of pain, and seeing you has visibly shifted his demeanour for the better.: She looks at her father and manages a small smile. : I’ve seen a lot of different magics over the course of my life, but never anything like this. Whatever your father’s gone through is highly unusual.: It’s… strange. It almost reminds me of the creatures Dallis keeps at her side. Sometime you hear… a kind of muttering beneath their masks.: She reaches out to touch her father’s hand; he withdraws it quickly before remembering himself and reaching out to Yarrow again. : If that’s true, and the resemblance is there… then would you be willing to guess who’s responsible for this?: There were always rumours about The Hammer. Dallis, that is. What she was doing with the prisoners she hauled off to her fortress… why they never joined the rank-and-file thereafter… : Wait. Before you go. You’ve helped us a great deal today. Let me help you too. I have a little gold on me – and take this key. I’ll show you where you can use it. It opens a door leading into the fort that may help you get out of this wretched place.: It isn’t too late for you. Not yet.Yarrow is implying that, if we stay here, whatever happened to Migo will happen to us, too. All the more reason to get off this rock, and quickly. Also, with Yarrow’s key, we now have two different methods of escape off this island, including Gawin, whom we’ve left hanging back on the northern coast of the beach.  When you complete a quest, you’ll usually be greeted with this screen as your spoils for completing it. Any items in the lower screen is what you’re guaranteed to receive – in this case, it’s twenty-one gold and a poison arrow. Any items in the upper screen are rewards that we can choose to take, but usually only just one of whatever is available. I’m not particularly interested in the crossbow or the switchblade, and we’re hurting pretty badly for armour all around. The pants would be good for Fane and the helmet would be good for any of our wizards, which are Fane, Prince, and Lohse. Fane is still wearing that bucket on his head, which, while it is better than nothing, its dumping on his Initiative and I’d like to replace it sooner rather than later. However, what’s worse than the bucket is nothing, so the helmet would be best on Lohse or Prince. I decide to give it to Lohse. We should probably prioritize the health and safety of our healer.  It also turns into a badass bog witch with wicked, fiery dreadlocks. So that’s a bonus.  Just a stone’s throw from Migo is a chest, sitting sneakily off to the side and hoping it wouldn’t be noticed.  An Armour of Frost scroll, some money, and a pickaxe, which is actually a two-handed axe. The scroll would be good on anyone that isn’t Lohse, and the pickaxe is actually considerably stronger than our makeshift rock-tied-to-a-stick. We’re very close to a level up, and we have a proper warhammer we can equip once we hit level three, but, in the event that there’s a fight between then and now, we’ll have a… a pick to bone them with! Uh, anyway. : Pop… what did she do to you? Can you remember?: Worms, darling, worms in my head… wriggly-writhing, crawling about. Heehee! I’m not myself, Yarrow girl. I’m sorry, darling.: Don’t you dare apologise. This is not your fault.Literal worms in Migo’s head are making him behave this way. Putting worms in people’s heads is also a very Larian storytelling element, given how Baldur’s Gate 3 starts. (That’s not a spoiler, in case you were wondering. It’s in the opening cinematic)  We’ve wandered past this cave a few times by now. It’s just a little ways south from Doctor Leste, and this is where the elf Elodi told us to go after we rescued her from Griff’s thugs as the very first thing we did when we entered Fort Joy.  It’s a fairly large cave, with a small number of furnishings about, but it’s a dank, dark, dirty cave all the same. Immediately to our right when we enter the cave is a heavily armed lizard dude.   : A fully-armed lizard? You’re no Magister – you’re wearing the collar, same as us. How could you possibly have attained your armaments? : … Anything you’d be willing to trade coin for? : That’s for you to decide.Kalias is the Warfare dealer: he sells all manner of weaponry, including wands and staves, as well as armour for every class. He also sells Warfare skillbooks. Unfortunately, I’m… decidedly short on cash right now. I have a few things I could sell, but I’ll hold off until my next level-up, when his wares will change anyway.  A few steps deeper into the cave, and we find Elodi, watching over a pair of human kids running around. We’re in a quest involving her; now that we’ve helped her from Griff’s thugs, the quest ought to resolve once we speak with her.  : I’m more than happy to help; there’s enough going on in Fort Joy and we don’t need petty infighting to make things worse. And for the record, I’d prefer you judge me by my deeds, and not by my human-ness.: The elf appears momentarily puzzled by your comment, but then offers you a dignified little bow. : Who do you answer to in this cave? : If it’s not too painful a memory to recall, how did you find yourself trapped in Fort Joy with the rest of us? : Have you since learned of any way off the island?  : Wait – before you go. I am not here without your help. I do not forget this. For you – a prize. I save it for a special occasion, but… I can think of no finer occasion than this. Thank you. Not pictured: she actually gave us an entire severed head. She was saving some dude’s entire skull to eat sometime in the future. That’s pretty metal  The armour is meant for archers and rogues; the staff does Poison damage (meaning whoever wields it could shoot Fane with Staff of Magus and it’d heal him); the pitchfork is a two-handed spear, and spears scale off Finesse, not Strength; and a belt that just gives whoever wears it some extra armour, nothing fancy. I actually take the belt – Lohse’s staff synergizes well with her water magic and we’re trying to get Prince to do fire stuff, not poison, and although the armour would be better for Ifan, it’d be good for only Ifan. I still put the belt on him, but if we want to switch him out with anybody sometime in the future, we can unequip his belt and give it to someone else without having to futz with numbers. Belts, rings, and necklaces don’t appear on a character’s model, so he’s still dressed like a worthless bum. But now, he’s a bum with a belt.  The kids are making an awful lot of noise.  : I’m told that ‘it takes one to know one,’ right?: … Right? : Oh. I was mistaken, then. : Yes, you were! Not git, human! : Please, oh valiant and shimmering knight! Your blade is too pristine to muddy with my lowly ogre blood! : I’ll spare you this time, beast! But don’t cross me again! Ever! Hee! You’re really fun! Hey – ‘m gonna hide somewhere in the cave, and you come find me! : Well, okay. Set….: Go! Mody then runs off, towards Kalias. You can watch him go the whole way. I don’t need to close my eyes and count to ten or anything.  Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t provide much challenge.  : (I really should be doing more important things. Maybe just one more round.) Set….: Go! Oh. That’s considerably more challenging. Well, we’ll just have to find Mody the old fashioned way – by running around everywhere until we trip over him.  The centerpiece of the cave is this tent with a number of sleeping arrangements, a campfire, and some belongings strewn about. There are only three bedrolls, and with Elodi, there are three elves – although, if the elf in Griff’s cage is with them, where does he sleep?  One elf is permanently blind – if you squint real hard, you can see that she’s wearing a blindfold on her model. This is Saheila, the one Elodi said that the elves of Fort Joy answer to. Elodi said that Saheila ‘is young, but she sees’ – it’s clearly a metaphor for something else. Or maybe she takes the blindfold off when she wants to see something? : As you approach the young elf, Lohse suddenly grabs your arm. Her hand is damp; her face looks pale and grey.: Hey. Listen. I… I don’t know why, but… but I think I need to talk to this elf. : … Are you okay?: She jerks her hand away. Lohse is being very jumpy, and she’s breaking out into a cold sweat at the mere sight of Saheila. If you’ll recall, she’s, well, she’s currently possessed by some demon, and not every thought of hers are her own. But is that exactly why she wants to talk to Saheila? Does Lohse think that Saheila can help her with her possession issues? An elven mystic sightseer might have some valuable insight into how to exorcise whatever demon is inside of her. On the other hand, this might be the demon’s doing: it might be the demon that’s trying to speak with Saheila, not Lohse. An elven mystic sightseer might be a juicy, valuable target for a demon capable of possessing someone. What do you think? Should we allow Lohse to speak with Saheila?  While we think about that, let’s just comb the place for Mody some more….  : *Shrieks!* Wow, you’re REALLY smart! I bet… you know what? I bet my best friend would really, really, really like you. Come on! I’ll introduce you. Mody walks up to a crack in the wall, but unless you’re a dwarf, you’ll be too large to fit through it and follow Mody down.  Luckily, as soon as he leaves, Fane spots a suspicious mound of dirt just to his right that will likely take us to wherever Mody just vanished to. We don’t need a shovel when we have the noted-lizard Red Prince in our party. That’s it for this update. To recap, we have two choices to make: Do we return the drudanae to Griff in exchange for the elf’s life, or do we confront him? Do we allow Lohse to speak with Saheila? Also, do you want to swap anyone out? Now that Prince is done with Stingtail, Sebille might appreciate getting her chance to ‘speak’ with him herself. Let me know by tomorrow! Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 06:58
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Return the drudanae to Griff and get the elf freed first. No need to get even more thugs on us right away. Let Lohse speak with Saheila, maybe she just thought up of a good joke. Grab Sebille and let her have her way with Stingtail, switching out Red Prince.
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Feb 14, 2021 08:02
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Return it. If we can confront after we've freed the elf, do so, but not before. Let her speak. No opionion.
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Feb 14, 2021 08:44
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Return it. Odds are good he's going to double-cross us anyway, he seems the type, so we may as well keep our word. Let her speak, could be interesting. Swap in Sebille temporarily because more content is always good, but keep Prince in the party afterwards.
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Feb 14, 2021 08:50
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If you have a healing spell you should be able to heal that guy the doctor wanted to give the alcohol to, though I don't know if there's some special conditions for it. It has sometimes worked for me, and sometimes not. idhrendur posted:Return it. If we can confront after we've freed the elf, do so, but not before. Yeah, I think I'll vote for these as well.
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Feb 14, 2021 16:31
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Cyflan posted:If you have a healing spell you should be able to heal that guy the doctor wanted to give the alcohol to, though I don't know if there's some special conditions for it.
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Feb 14, 2021 16:58
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I'll be contrarian and say to confront Griff. Let her speak. Swap in Sebille for, I dunno, Ifan.
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Feb 14, 2021 20:19
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Confront griff, let the lizard mystic have his vision and then immediately tag in Sebille to ironically whack him before he can do anything with it. The game probably doesn't let you pull that off, but we can headcanon it. And let the possessed lady talk
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Feb 21, 2021 00:52
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 We made a handful of votes in the previous update, and one of them was to toss out Prince in exchange for Sebille. Now that Prince’s quest has progressed past Stingtail, that means he has no more need of the Dreamer, and Sebille can have her turn ‘interrogating’ him. I’m sure we all implicitly understood that ‘interrogate,’ in this context, means ‘murder cold-bloodedly.’  Before he kick him out for Sebille, though, he might as well get in his last bit of manual labour and dig up that dirt mound. We still don’t have a shovel with us.  Although, given this hatch’s size, I probably could have just… brushed off the top a bit. With that, I kick him out of the group. : Your loss.  After the devastating news, he wanders straight into the nearest wall and disappears with absolutely zero pomp or circumstance. We now have a Sebille-shaped hole in our party.  I don’t waste any time in heading right back to her and recruiting her into our merry band. : You’re not quite certain you’ll ever sleep soundly with Sebille in any sort of proximity, but at least she’s on your side – for the moment.As soon as Sebille joins our party, she accrues all of the experience points we’ve built up without her, keeping her at pace with the rest of the group and levelling her straight to level 2. We’re very, very close to our next level, as well. A few updates ago, I asked whether we should take Sebille, and if we did, what job she should have. The most common request was to keep her as a rogue, but to make her an archer-type rogue and not a stabby-type. Since archers and thieves both use the Finesse stat, this could be done, but she’s currently stocked up on stabby equipment right now, so she’ll rock the knives for the moment. With her level up, she gets two Attribute points, which I spend on Memory and Finesse; she gets one Combat Ability point, which I spend on Scoundrel, since she’s still using the knives; and she current has a point in Loremaster, Sneaking, and Thievery, but only the one in Thievery is a base point, so I increase that to two. But then I notice this….   Sebille came with the talent Guerrilla. In the base game, Guerrilla increased a person’s attack damage by 40% and reduced the cost to sneak during combat by 1 AP, down to 3 total. It was an absolutely garbage talent: sneaking cost 3 AP with Guerrilla, and sneaking is broken if anyone sees your hiding place within their cone of sight. You wouldn’t have any AP left to do anything even if you had the talent; the 40% increase wasn’t nearly a strong enough bonus to make up for the cost. However, the Divinity: Unleashed mod gave it one heck of a buff:  So Sebille gets better and better at sneaking for just having the talent, and she’s automatically set to sneak at the end of her every turn (or if she delays) for free, provided nobody is looking at her. This makes Guerrilla a much more attractive option: you get so much more and it strongly prioritizes proper positioning for a sneaky rogue to have. So, you know, all of that is nice. Let’s go speak with Stingtail again.  : As you’re about to approach the lizard, Sebille cups your chin between thumb and index finger, then guides your eyes to hers. : Well, that’s why we’re here. Go right on ahead.: To your surprise Sebille proceeds to throttle the unsuspecting lizard with one hand, as she drives the tip of her needle into his lower belly with the other. Then the questions commence. You hear him yelp about the Master, Lone Wolves and a man called Griff.: Then quite suddenly there’s blood everywhere as Stingtail falls to the ground, face first into his own intestines.: Sebille heaves a sigh of satisfaction, and as she wipes her needle clean, shoots you a cursory look.  : Chat’s over. : What you witnessed was an exercise in restraint. And jolly good fun to boot.Why is any of this a surprise to anyone?  : What in the name of the Seven did you do that for?: It’s simple. He scarred me, so I scarred him. Extensively.: She defies you with devilishly innocent eyes. : Can I blame you for cold-blooded murder? Why… yes, I can.: Although it seems to be a common pastime in this prison….: Justice tends to be. : Who’s next on your agenda to exact revenge on?: The search for the Master continues of course. Hungry work, the hunt – and you know what, I’m feeling a bit peckish. Stingtail mentioned a cook, as it happens: fellow named Griff. Two birds, one stone. How about it? Well, we are going to speak with Griff before the update is over. Killing two birds with one stone sounds like the play, I suppose. While we’re here, we might as well try and learn a bit more about Sebille. Maybe she’s, um, got all that murder out of her system.  : I’d like to speak a bit more about Stingtail, actually. : I get the impression that you won’t be. : Well, that’s certainly an odd reaction, given I’m trying to be a bit more accommodating towards you.: I… I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. I suppose I’m a bit skittish from time to time. Skittish, like a cat that’s seen too much unkindness. You see, there’s…: There’s… triplets in my mind. The woman I am. The woman I must be. The woman I long to be. Like all sisters, they do tend to be at odds with one another. : If you long to be someone else, then that means you’re dissatisfied with who you are, and you yearn to improve yourself. To be better than who you are now. There’s no shame in that.: To be better I must butcher. All new beginnings require sacrifice. You can see what I can do; what comes as easily as a morning’s yawn or a rush of blood in the presence of beauty. : I feel, as an undead, it would be hypocritical to judge someone for being something they must be.: Thank you. : Yes, about that. Back when we reunited, just over yonder. Would you have really done it? Would you have killed me?: In a final heartbeat.Well, at least she has confidence and conviction.  : Perhaps in my heart of hearts I had fantasized that you would have stayed your needle and that it was all a jape, yes.: The only thing that springs eternal is blood from gushing wounds.Then you would have been sorely disappointed! : And water from spring of course, and flowers from the ground, but you catch my drift. : Moving to a less aggressive topic (I hope), how were you caught by the Magisters? Did they sneak up on you as I had?: Hardly. I walked up to the quay, asked for the ship to Fort Joy and declared myself a Sourcerer. : (We seem to be locked onto this topic for good, so, might as well push it to its end.) On that note, what is our next move, now that we’ve… progressed onward from Stingtail? : And what answers are you hoping for?: Let’s save those for later, shall we? Not quite the thing I tend to share with… strangers. Suffice to say I need to speak with Griff. So let’s find him. Alright. So, Stingtail was the only Pyromancer trader in the prison. Now that he’s dead, there is no consistent method to attain Pyromancy skillbooks. And traders restock after every real-time hour or level-up, whichever happens first – and we’re only a few experience points away from a level.  This is all the Pyromancy that we’ll be getting access to for a hot minute. The skills Stingtail had on him are Haste, Ignition, Peace of Mind, and Searing Daggers. I’ll post more info on them as they become more relevant. Luckily, we’ve swapped out our party’s Pyromancer for the time, so it’s not like we’re missing out… although Haste and Peace of Mind are both wildly useful skills, so it’s nice that we at least have the skillbooks for now.  While I’m on the topic of skills and traders, I return to Hilde; she sells Scoundrel skillbooks and rogue armour and equipment. Sebille is practically naked, and she could really use a helmet or something.  Anything without a border around it means that it’s just plain equipment and it doesn’t offer anything special. The gloves, however, have a green border, meaning they’re uncommon loot (blue for rare, purple for epic, red (iirc) for legendary, and gold for divine – the higher the rarity, the better the bonuses, but not necessarily better numbers); and since they’re uncommon, they come with a bonus.  These gloves will boost the Initiative of whoever wears them by +2. Not a bad bonus at all!  Now that Sebille is dressed to impress, we can continue onwards with our adventure. Griff is just down this flight of stairs, but I don’t want to talk to him just yet – I want to put that off at least until our next level up, in the event that deliberations go south.  When we return to Doctor Leste, Dain has passed away from his injuries and lies in a lump on his bed. His body remains unlooted – surely the good doctor won’t mind. It’s not like Dain will miss it.   Dain was holding onto something called the Sparkler Card, and it’s the most powerful card in that card game that the thugs on the wall were playing. Maybe they killed Dain because he pulled this, and they were just sore losers. It’s no good to us now that we’ve already dealt with those brutes, but I’ll hold onto it anyway. And his money.  We have ourselves a small todo list in the cave.  And it starts with letting Lohse speak with Saheila. What could go wrong?  : Alright, Lohse, if it’s that important to you. : Lohse’s Despair: Just… try and be careful, alright?: She darts over to the elf without responding. They begin talking in earnest, more quietly than you can overhear. Lohse suddenly snatches up both the elf’s hands and leans close to her. Her voice rises.: You have to tell me.: The whites of Lohse’s eyes fade to grey, then black. The colour runs into her veins, criss-crossing her skin like lightning. She keeps hold of Saheila’s hands. : It rises in you even now, Lohse. Do not let it. You must be strong.: *Whispers* Be strong. Fight. Fight. : I’ve seen enough. It’s time we leave.: I… I… can’t… I can’t…: Lohse is fighting an enemy. She will win. She must win.: Ngh… shut up! Let go! Let go! LET GO! I don’t want to hurt her. Don’t make me…!: Lohse is rigid as a board, tense with the effort of holding Saheila’s hands in tight, painful bunches.: LEAVE ME ALONE! LEAVE ME! I don’t want to!: You are hurting me.: Lohse’s eyes are black. Saheila’s fingers are white under her grasp.: Let me go. *Wince* Please.: A sinister smile spreads across Lohse’s lips. She jerks the elf toward her.: [In a masculine voice] Chatty, chatty elf. Chatty elf with all the answers. I wonder what your blood tastes like.: Lohse. Please! : I bet the elf’s blood tastes like honey. Like nectar. Like joy itself. Let’s find out. : Combat Music 1: Versus LohseWe’re immediately thrust into combat, and our enemy is Lohse. According to Saheila, we need to beat her up, but we need to make sure we don’t kill her. Luckily, it’s seven-versus-one, so unless the demon possessing her gives her some wild poo poo, this will likely end in one turn.   Elodi spends her entire turn getting up close to Lohse, and then passing.      Sebille first uses Backlash on Lohse, which teleports her behind her target and does a backstab attack. Knives get extra damage when they strike an opponent from behind, and Backlash is a pseudo-teleport skill that requires a target, so it’s a very powerful technique for a rogue to have. After that, she stabs Lohse between the shoulder blades once; uses Adrenaline; then uses Flurry Strike, which is essentially the same as All In: spend three AP to strike three times at slightly reduced damage. In the base game, Adrenaline gives you two AP, but removes two AP from your next turn. Like I said before, this is an absurdly powerful skill and investing a point with everyone into Scoundrel so they can get Adrenaline is generally a pretty smart move. The Divinity: Unleashed mod attempted to nerf it by removing all of the user’s armour for two turns, but honestly, that’s probably still worth the trade and Adrenaline is still a strong as hell skill.    Lohse attempts to reposition but gets ganked by Sebille for her efforts; once she finally gets away, she casts Rain right on top of the cluster of units, and then uses Electric Discharge on Elodi, which electrifies the puddle and Stuns drat near everyone in the fight. This won’t be enough to keep us from one-turning her, but it does a fair amount of damage.   Saheila tries to put some extra distance between herself and Lohse, then casts Soothing Cold, which is an AOE spell that refreshes the magic armour of all units within range. She could have used it on more units, but she does what she feels is best. She is the seer, after all.  Because he’s stunned, Ifan only has two AP to play with, so he attempts to shoot Lohse in the ankles whilst shouting that she should ‘prepare herself,’ and then he promptly misses. That’s not a good look for our hero.   Kalias uses Sparkstriker, which allows his physical strikes to do bonus fire damage, and then he does what Ifan couldn’t and knocks out Lohse’s kneecaps with his giant zweihänder sword. That’s enough damage to knock the sense back into Lohse and end the fight.  Surprisingly, she’s in the mood to talk after that.  : I’m not looking at you any differently. I won’t ask to talk about it if you don’t want to talk about it.: Good. I don’t. : Are you good to keep going? I mean, even aside what just happened, you did take a pretty bad beating.: I’m fine. You’re fine. We’re fine. I just want to get out of here. Let’s go. Well, if she says so. Now that that’s over with, we can speak with Saheila without any more interruptions. Hopefully. : The young girl’s eyes are covered, but she turns toward you when you approach. She smiles as though she recognises you, though she couldn’t have seen your face. : How do you know that I’m even lost to begin with? : I’ve heard that talents like yours are as much a curse as they are a boon. : Well, with all respect, I’m not here to talk about my personal life, if you don’t mind. : Right. Anyway, I’m trying to find a way out of Fort Joy. I’m told you’re the leader of the elves here on the island – you wouldn’t happen to know of a way, would you?: Her eyebrows shoot up. : (There are only so many male elves on this island that I know of.) Can you tell me more about him?: My protector. My friend. An elf like me, with a spirit bright as new leaves. He tries to help me, to save me, and he suffers very much. : I’m familiar with this elf Amyro; he’s been captured by other prisoners on the island and I’ve worked out a deal to have him freed in exchange for a ransom. : Well, you know, we’re all in this together, and all that….: You bless me. You bless us all.: Before I move on, I have a few more questions that the leader of the elves could help me with. : The light of the cave is rather dim; why do you feel the need to cover your eyes? : Who in the world would do such a ghastly thing to another living being, and whatever for?: He is… a very blind man. He sees things, but not truth. Not love or joy. I feel very sorry for him. : How is it that you and Amyro found yourselves here in the island prison? : Your tone, your word choice, your inflections… it’s all very unusual. : Why have you chosen this dank cave as your living place? There are other places on the island; you don’t even have to remain inside the fort’s walls.: It is safer here. We make no trouble for Griff. He makes no trouble for us. Before we finish speaking with Saheila, the elven encampment has a chest underneath their tent, just off to the side. It’s marked red, meaning if we try to open it, we’ll be caught and chastised for trying to steal. So, of course, just don’t get caught, and you’ll be fine.  Not that there was a lot to steal, but, feed a cracker to a starving man, and all that. Now that we’ve cleared up Lohse’s business with Saheila, it’s time to head into that hatch that the Red Prince unearthed for us.  And as soon as we head down, we get ourselves another level up! Like I mentioned a few updates ago, you can get different points to allocate across different stats depending on which level you’re on. On our last level up, we got a civil point to spend on things like bartering, persuasion, thievery, and the like; on this level up, we get a point to spend on a Talent, which is very different and very useful. I allocate Fane’s two attribute points to Memory and Constitution and his one combat point into Warfare before I look at his available Talent options. Talents can drastically shape the flow of a fight: we’ve already seen it happen once before with Ifan in the fight against the crocodiles. Ifan chugged a potion, but because of his Frugal Talent, he managed to hold onto the potion and keep from spending it while still getting the benefits from the potion he drank. Talents are essentially cheats. I’m not going to list every single Talent because there’s a kajillion of them and not all of them are going to be particularly relevant to us, but I’ll at least list the ones I chose.  Comeback Kid essentially gives whoever gets it an extra life; if an attack would kill whoever has this talent, they instead are immediately put to 20% of their max HP. Dying is always going to be a concern, but for none moreso than the tank, I think: it’s specifically their job to take all the focus in the fight, and therefore, all the damage, so damage-mitigating Talents like Comeback Kid are going to be particularly useful for them. Also, now that Fane is level three, he can equip that warhammer that we picked up from the busted bridge a few updates ago. This new, ‘uncommon’ hammer does much higher damage, and it gives Fane an additional +50 HP.  Sebille gets her one Combat point spent on Polymorph instead of Scoundrel. Putting a point into Polymorph also gives you one additional attribute point to spend (putting Sebille up to three), and, in Divinity: Unleashed, every point in Polymorph increases her natural elemental resistance to every element by 4% per point. I then put her three attribute points into Memory, Finesse, and Wits. I also give her the Talent Parry Master. Dodging is a difficult stat to increase (outside of a few Aerothurge spells) and having a 10% chance to dodge literally everything is a pretty sweet deal for our rogue to have.  Ifan’s two attribute points are in Memory and Constitution; his Combat point goes into Huntsman; and his new Talent is Far Out Man, which is an excellent Talent for archers and magicians to have.  Likewise with Fane, now that Ifan is level three, he can equip that set of armour from the bridge. It makes his model look a little funny, but he was wearing rags before, and this armour gives him +1 Huntsman, so it’s a pretty significant step up from the tatters clinging to his body.  Finally, Lohse gets points in Memory and Intelligence; one point in Aerothurge; and a new and unique Talent. One of the Larian Gift Bags was a slew of new Talents to choose from, and Magic Cycles is one of them. The description for the talent is about as succinct as you could ask for; since the cycles alternate between water (and fire) and air (and earth), and Lohse is focusing on the water and air schools, that means that one of her schools of magic will always be superpowered, regardless of what turn she’s on. It’d require a bit of strategizing to synchronize her skills and cooldowns with whatever cycle she’s currently on, but if I can pull it off, she’ll be punching well above her weight class for essentially the rest of the game.  Anyway, Mody said something about having a friend down in this underground tunnel. There’s only one way forward, so….  Mody is standing to what appears to be a statue with a spear sticking out of its chest. Speaking of chests, there’s a treasure chest lying just a stone’s throw away from the statue. Don’t mind if I do!  The gloves are meant for mages, which Fane technically qualifies for. He’s been rocking the muddy mittens since the ship in the prologue, and Lohse has the teleportation gloves right now, so, he might as well update his look. I tend to give scrolls to whoever isn’t specializing in the scroll’s school – for instance, I do not give Hydrosophist scrolls to my healer, etc. Decaying Touch would go well on Sebille since she’s an up-close melee attacker; Decaying Touch is a touch-range spell, as the name implies; and she isn’t studying necromancy. : Wither! This is my new friend. He’s really smart. You’ll like him a lot. : Please, small child. Leave me to my ruminations…: But – he’s really nice – and tall! Maybe he can even help you with that thing…: Why… a grown friend? You’ve brought an adult here? Good… good gods! Can it be…?I get the impression that Wither and Mody have known each other for a while. Why didn’t Wither just… ask Mody to find an adult?  Hey, how are ya?  : What in blazes are you even talking about?: Never mind – it doesn’t matter! No, it doesn’t matter at all. Yours is the first living face I’ve seen in… in… what feels like an eternity. : What about Mody? He seems to think rather highly of you. Doesn’t he count? drat, dude. : Perhaps a forgone question, but, why are you trapped down here?: A wicked king, it was. Braccus Rex by name. The Order of the Source Hunters discovered a great horror upon this prison isle, and I was sent to stop it. Yet my failure was… absolute. I am not fit to bear the insignia of the Source Hunters any longer. Please, good sir. You must free me! Prise this spear from my chest, where it has been stuck fast the last thousand years. Seize the spear! End this degradation – I beg you! Alright, seems simple enough. This is actually a Strength check in disguise, but seeing as we’re level three and our Strength is only 13, it’s a pretty minor check. : *Grunt* I’ve… got it! : Curious that while your body is ‘mouldering,’ my own is demonstrably growing in strength.: Then you may be glad you have escaped the curse of Braccus Rex! After he interred me in this cell, he must have drawn my very soul away from me and stored it elsewhere in the fort. Thus he has bound me entirely to the mundane realm. : It so happens that I have a vested interest in any and all ways off of this island, so, very well. You have yourself a deal.: Marvellous, my friend – marvellous! You’ll first have to get inside the fort itself. There’s a secret switch on a statue of the Seven in the courtyard. Surely you know it?That’s the Fort Joy Square waypoint, where we found Lohse. : The switch will open a hatch, and you’ll be led into the prison’s main floor. I suspect that within Braccus’ Phylactery Room will you find the container which ensnares my soul. He has likely disguised it well, but search there for another hidden switch. : Have you considered that you are, quite literally, already dead? : How can you be so sure about where your soul is being kept?: I was fully briefed about this awful place before I came. My goal was to destroy the fiend who had been marshalling the world’s most unwholesome weapons and magic into an army he intended to use against the realm. : If you’ve been ‘fully briefed’ on this island, is there anything more you can tell me about its makeup?: (Although, who knows how useful that information will be, if he’s been trapped here for a thousand years…): Fort Joy is a dangerous place, my friend. Dangerous indeed. Braccus used this place to build an arsenal of terrible weaponry as yet unseen in our world. Here he and his researched crafted punishments and snares contrary to human dignity. Objects that could contain souls, wands that could purge the very essence from Sourcerers. My order would never have used such barbaric magic against our enemies.‘Wands that could purge the Source from Sourcerers.’ I think we’ve found our supposed ‘cure.’ If Withermoore is correct, the Magisters must have found Braccus’ arsenal and they’re using the wands to purge the Source straight out of our bodies.  Withermoore is also very, very tall. There’s nothing more to do here with Mody and Withermoore. We have our mission objective: infiltrate the fort; find Braccus’ phylactery room; and locate an object that contains Withermoore’s soul within it. We’ll probably have to go through the fort if we want to escape anyway, so, we might as well keep an eye out on the way. Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Mar 1, 2021 |
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Feb 22, 2021 08:31
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 Back at the elf camp in the cave, straight south from the cave’s opening is a passage that’s been barricaded off to keep people from exploring deeper in.    The first thing greeting us on the other side of the wall is a massive puddle of ooze. Fane really couldn’t care less, but having Lohse teleport everyone across seems pretty unnecessary, especially when there’s a barrel of water right there to wash the ooze away.   A little deeper is more poison and another puddle of water that doesn’t quite reach. Whatever’s deeper in this cave, it likes to throw around poison. Which means Fane is going to have a leg-up on the fight, but the rest of his team is going to struggle.  Oh, lovely. Looting this pile of giblets gives me a pair of trousers that are very slightly better than nothing. I opt to give it to Ifan so that his costume looks a bit more complete.  So, there’s one thing that you, as a player, should always keep in mind when it comes to combat in Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2. The game knows very well about its design when it comes to combat. When a fight starts, it only involves everyone not sneaking within a certain radius of the battle. If someone enters the battle late, they could, in theory, approach from any angle and perform any action for free, since they aren’t technically in the fight just yet. Fane noted that, with how the area is set up, it’s pretty clearly an ambush and we should expect to be jumped by enemies if we go any deeper. If I were to go in with my whole party, I’d be surrounded. What the game is trying to teach me to do is to go in with someone as bait; have them get jumped by my enemies; and then have the rest of my party get the drop on them once the battle has initiated. This feels like cheating, I know. It doesn’t feel right to open a fight without your entire party and have them join later, when the advantage is theirs. But both of the Divinity: Original Sin games are specifically designed with this design quirk in mind: it’s going to slap the poo poo out of you as a player, and it fully expects you to slap back.   First, I unlink my party from each other, so they must all move to their positions individually. Then, I have Lohse teleport Fane up to this ledge; there a set of vines off in the far corner that he could have climbed, but that would require him entering the center of the field first.   Then, I have all of them enter sneak mode, and I have everyone else sneak further down the rotten ship on the left hand side and slowly make their way towards the bow. They’re pretty deep into the area, and they’re all huddled together, but unless an enemy spawns right on top of them, they’re be behind and above any potential targets.   Then, I have Fane, still sneaking, climb down the vines (you can climb stuff while sneaking, which sounds wrong, but, just go with it), and then he positions himself directly in the center of the play field. This is normally a dangerous move, but the poison tells me that we’ll be fighting enemies that primarily deal with poison, which Fane heals off of, so it’s a calculated risk.  Then, once he’s in position, he removes his disguise – and he’s immediately assaulted by… three frogs. Three giant frogs, and one of them appears to have electricity coursing through its body, but three frogs all the same.  : Battle Music 1: The Cave FrogsThe first frog fires off a Poison Dart at Fane, which, predictably, heals him. The ooze he’s standing on is cursed, which applies Acid on top of Poisoned.  In the base game, Acid destroys physical armour per turn; in Divinity: Unleashed, because armour isn’t a separate health bar anymore, it does heavy physical damage instead and reduces physical armour by 60%. However, because of the poison and the poisoned surface, Fane still heals for more than the Acid can damage him. The rest of the party hasn’t been spotted by the frogs yet, so, in order to maximize their teamwork and damage output, Fane delays his turn, which moves his position in the turn order to the very end for this turn. When delaying, statuses that have already applied for this turn are not applied again – so, for instance, if you’re on fire, and you take the burning damage at the start of your turn, and you delay, and you’re still on fire when your delayed turn comes up, you will not take the fire damage a second time. However, any new statuses that are applied before your delayed turn – such as being Knocked Down or Frozen or whatever – are still applied. Delaying is a highly strategic option and can be a bit of a gamble; whether it works in your favour or not depends on a lot of factors. Since I’m on the topic: when multiple teammates delay, the order of their actions at the end of the turn is inversely determined by their Initiative: if, for example, Fane goes before Lohse in a turn, and they both delay, then Lohse will go before Fane at the end of the turn. You cannot delay more than once per turn, so, if that’s not the turn order you wanted, tough titties.   After Fane delays, one of the other frogs uses Poison Dart… and he’s aiming at Sir Lora! I’ll kill him!   The electrified frog uses Electric Discharge on Fane, which applies Shocked, and then it passes its turn. Now, it’s time for Fane to take his delayed turn.  Or is it?   Sebille attempts to get closer to the electrified frog so she can use Backlash on it, but her height advantage isn’t enough of an increase to her range to allow her to make that leap. As soon as she stepped onto the poison in order to climb down the ladder and get closer, she became poisoned herself, which dropped her sneaking, which put her into combat. So, that could have gone better.   Ifan’s not about to make the same mistake, though! While still under cover of sneaking, he uses Pin Down to hit the electrified frog in its legs and keep it from moving – and he promptly misses. Lohse do something    Lohse does something that cannot possibly fail: she teleports one of the poisonous frogs on top of the electrified one. They both take physical damage from one of them being thrown into the other, and when the poisonous frog hits the ground, it bleeds ooze, which touches the nearby torch, which ignites the ooze, doing some additional fire damage to it. There: now everyone is in the fight, and we actually managed to accomplish something in the meantime.   I wanted to have Fane use Battering Ram towards the two frogs off in the distance, but after Lohse teleported one onto the other, the electrified frog let out of a gush of electrified water, similar to the other one bleeding ooze. Fane would take a chunk of air damage if he were to charge straight through that puddle, so, instead, I opt for Mosquito Swarm, which keeps him safe; does some decent damage; and makes the electrified frog start bleeding. He then passes his turn, and he’ll have five AP saved for the next.   I want to try and maneuver Sebille into position, but there’s a big puddle of poison at her feet. Technically, Sebille hasn’t delayed her turn yet, so she still has that option available to her, and thanks to her buffed Guerrilla Talent, she goes right back to sneaking at the end of her turn, delayed or not.    Ifan dips his arrowheads into the poison puddle at Sebille’s feet – which, against the poisonous frogs, is a bad move, but the electrified frog has no poison resistance. He lets off one shot, doing a total of 73 damage, and he uses his last AP to Encourage everyone except Fane.   Lohse uses Regeneration on Sebille, which cures her poison, and then uses Hail Strike on the two frogs. I try to aim it such that I miss the frog that’s on fire because Hail Strike will put it out, but I aim a little too shallow, and I get them both. I do a bit extra damage to the electrified frog, but I also put out the poisonous frog’s fire. A bit of give and take.    Sebille finally takes her proper turn to spend one AP to get a little closer; another to use Backlash on the electrified frog (Backlash only costs one AP, which adds to it being a grossly powerful technique); and then her remaining two AP for another melee strike while she’s in a good position behind the frogs.     However, because Sebille’s initiative is so high, she gets to go first in the following turn, essentially giving her two turns back-to-back. She hits the electrified frog once more; uses Adrenaline to give herself another action; hits the frog a third time, which kills it; and, for her final attack, she uses Throwing Knives on the poisonous frog. Throwing Knives can backstab from a distance, but since we’re not facing the poisonous frog’s back (we’re facing its left side), we don’t get the bonus damage, unfortunately. And, of course, after her attack, she goes into Sneaking.    This frog in particular had a plan: he charged right next to Fane (and overshot his mark, taking an AoO) and then used Poison Wave. It probably knew that Fane would absorb the poison – so it got in position next to the torch. Poison Wave spawns a cloud of poison around the caster: the cloud touched the puddle of poison at Fane’s feet; and when the cloud touched the torch, it, the puddle, and Fane all exploded, resulting in Fane taking fire damage. However, because he heals off the poison cloud, all of that resulted in Fane taking a whole nine damage. A clever trick, but ultimately, it accomplished next to nothing.    Ifan’s arrows are still coated in poison, so, he first chucks a goddamn boulder at the farthest poisonous frog to hit it with earth damage, but the oil doesn’t quite reach up to it and it remains unhindered by its effects. Then, with nothing better to do, he plugs the frog next to Fane with an arrow – and the impact makes it bleed ooze, which touches the fire surrounding it, making it explode and take additional fire damage instead of healing off the poison in the arrowhead. This game’s combat is very deep.    Despite having a boulder just thrown at it, the far frog leaps off its perch (which grants it Haste, for some reason) and hucks two globs of salty mucus at Ifan, which do poison damage and spread more poison everywhere.   Lohse makes it rain, with the goal of washing away the poison at her and Ifan’s feet, and, with her target freshly soaked, fires off an Electric Discharge to make it stunned and undo whatever bonus it would have gotten from Haste. The frog next to Fane is still on fire, despite the rain. I’ll go more in-depth on Cursed surfaces some other time, but what’s important right now is that this fire is actually Necrofire: it can’t be put out by normal means and requires something alternative to be undone. So, Fane and the frog are both still on fire, despite the rain.    Fane uses Battering Ram to charge into the nearby frog, which finally undoes it, but because of his Necrofire, he causes the poison cloud still lingering to ignite, which does hefty fire damage to himself. Still, because of that kill, he’s refunded two AP with his Executioner Talent, and he whacks the final frog twice more.  This fight is a forgone conclusion at this point, and Sebille is surrounded by poison and fire and electrified surfaces anyway, so she passes.   The last frog, in an act of stubborn defiance, fires off one more salty glob at Lohse and Ifan, making the area messy with poison one final time.  Ifan finally gets off one good Pin Down….  … And Lohse fires off a Staff of Magus spell, finishing the frog off and ending the fight.  Our nameless cat survived through the fight unscathed, but Sir Lora entered the fight cornered, and his AI forces him to respawn near your player avatar if they get too separated. Larian knew that this meant Lora may find himself constantly running through a mess of hazards over and over again, and they gave him an enormous amount of Constitution, way more than anyone else in my party, and a fat load of magic armour to help his survivability – but as you can see in this screenshot, he’s still vulnerable to all of their effects and every status under the sun.  Thankfully, he’s also equally susceptible to healing and buffs. And since you’re technically healing Sir Lora and not Quercus, he takes regular healing from spells.    Given that the frogs were surrounded by dead bodies, it’s fair to assume that they’ve probably eaten their fair share of heroes as they came into the depths of this cave. Meaning they have a fair amount of goodies hidden in their stomachs. I put the gloves on Ifan and the pants on Lohse. There’s also a shoddy pair of boots in a crate next to the electrified frog that I put on Fane.  At the very, very end of the cave is the real prize: a massive treasure chest, just out of reach. There’s no way to reach it without a teleport spell – which, thankfully, we happen to have. Teleport works on objects as well as people and can also be used on dead bodies.    Okay, maybe it wasn’t the real prize. Still, this is a lesson that the game is trying to teach you: it can be very lucrative to explore every nook and cranny of whatever area you’re in for some goodies. And besides, sixty two coins isn’t a bad haul.  As I head back, I notice that there’s a little pocket of terrain that I can explore near the corner of the map, but there’s no way for me to reach it from where I am. Which, of course, means I should teleport again.    Looks like this is Mody’s little home-away-from-home. It’s not an awful setup for a child – he’s got a bed, a book, two storage containers, a ton of rope, and a great view of the place.  As I am, indeed, a Hero (I even have the tag to prove it!), I welcome myself to Mody’s belongings. Inside the chest is some money, a wooden doll, and two very dangerous objects for a child to be playing with. I’ll be confiscating the poison arrowhead and the Geomancer skillbook Contamination, but I’m not going to steal a kid’s lunch money and his action figure. He can keep those. It looks like he’s also an aspiring novelist:  I suppose, when you’re a child, you can conjure up almost any explanation for a traumatic event. Or maybe he’s intentionally embellishing the story for the sake of its entertainment – artist license, and all that. One teleport later, and I’m heading back to the elven camp. And when I approach the tent with Saheila, one of the other elves pulls me over for a chat.  : The frogs are gone. The children shall be safer. I see the good in you. I see all of you.Apparently clearing out the frogs was a request I could have gotten? This character didn’t say anything insightful the last time I spoke with her, but she clearly wanted the frogs cleared out. She gives me a chunk of EXP for doing a good deed, but not any loot for completing a quest, so maybe it wasn’t a quest at all?  Before I leave the cave, I stop with Kalias and look through his wares. Everything is still very expensive and it turns out, my collection of threadbare shoes and dirty shirts and rocks-tied-to-sticks don’t fetch a particularly impressive market value. Still, it’s enough for me to afford Battle Stomp, which is one of the cornerstones of a good Warfare build.  : Strike the ground and send out a shockwave that knocks down all targets in a cone in front of the caster. Also clears non-cursed surfaces and clouds.  Kalias is the only Warfare merchant that I’ll be speaking with for some time, so I give him a small chunk of money to increase his attitude with me for better prices when I inevitably come back to him. Anyway, it’s time we finally left this cave and do the only other thing we, as a thread, voted to do.  : Sebille gently places a hand on the small of your back. Her mouth reaches your ear with a whisper. : (If Sebille ends up killing Griff, that would make releasing Amyro all the easier, and the drudanae won’t have to cycle into the camp’s economy.) Be my guest.: Sebille steps forward and asks Griff the cook about the Lone Wolves: a dead little birdie told her he’s the man to talk to. A little back and forth ensues, money crosses hands and before you know it Sebille stands back beside you all smiles. : Frankly, I had expected this conversation to end the same way the last one did.: Did I disappoint you? Oh, but don’t worry: I may just have to push the next fella a little further. Zaleskar’s the name; a name for the taking – if it comes to that.Interesting; Ifan’s next person-of-interest is also Zaleskar. He’s carrying a smuggled weapon for Ifan to use. If both Sebille and Ifan are in our party when we find him, there may be a slight conflict of interest. Now that that’s done, we have an elf to haggle for.  : Several of your thugs killed a man for this card. I’m presuming it belongs to you.: He turns the card over and holds it up to the light, smirking. If we had brought this card to the sharks on the wall from before, they could not have possibly tried to use the game as their excuse for a shakedown – and they might have been cowed into doing something for us, if they thought we were close enough to Griff to have a card that belongs to him. Oh well. : Let’s not draw this out any more than it needs to.: Griff tears into one of the orange with both hands. Juice squirts through his hands as he desperately rips through the rind. : That blue lizard from before, Stingtail, had the contraband on him. He said he needed the drudanae to help him dream.: He’s, ah, dreaming forever now, if you understand me.: He raises an eyebrow.: Looks like someone did my job for me. Your guy’s free to go. He should be fine. Eventually. : It is done. And quickly. I thank you. Very, very much. : Us getting out can wait – look at the state of you! You need help, and you need it now.: Yes, yes.. I… become fine. And so much more when… when you agree to finish what I start. : What is it you want us to do?: It is for all our people. For… the world. Give me your map. *Cough* I show you the way out. A secret. Dangerous. But it leads to freedom.: I give you this amulet. You must pass it to the elves who still remain. Tell them Saheila is here. They will send help. Please. She is important.: I go to her. I wish you good luck and I thank you for us all.  The amulet Amyro gave us is pretty sweet: three buffs for one equipment slot is nothing to shake a stick at. Unfortunately, it requires that our neck is available for equipment to be worn, and that’s just not going to happen until we can get this bloody anti-Source collars off. When we freed Amyro, we were given a new sidequest and several updates to others that we’re already a part of. We should check up on him in the elven cave, just to make sure that he makes it there safely. : I am fine, Amyro, I am fine. I know they help us.: Yes, they do. It is as you say.: Sit, my friend. Come.: As you say. As you say.: She breaks into a huge, childlike grin as you approach. : Amyro asked that I return an object, an amulet, to your people so that they might send help to rescue you from this island.: Her face falls at the mention of her home. Her hands fly instinctively to her eyes, as if to wipe away tears, but she stops herself. : Where is it you hail from, if you don’t mind my asking? : We’re spiritually alike, in that regard. I miss my people, too. : A more pragmatic question, though: why couldn’t your people rescue you? I’m sure any sizeable navy could storm the island, and surely the elven people would spare no expense to rescue someone as important as you.: It is not to be. We stay in Fort Joy. They stay elsewhere. This is the way. This is the only way.: Then you should escape with us! I’ve learned of multiple methods out of the prison, if not the island entirely. I can give you my word that you’ll be safe with me. : And leave you here at the mercy of the Divine Order? I can take you to safety away from them, Saheila.: I see your heart. You want only to help. But if you want to help me, you must go. Alone.: She squeezes your hand.: I do not forget you. Remember me, too. Rescuing Amyro and ensuring that he makes it back to the camp safely sees his quest completed, and we’re given our choice of gear to choose from. Saheila’s kind of a big deal among the elves, and the selection from her personal armoury is nothing to sneeze at: everything she has to offer is uncommon. I take the pants because they’re meant for Strength-based builds (meaning their armour stats are geared more towards offense), and they offer +2 Initiative, which cancels out the bucket Fane’s still wearing. He’s really been hurting for some Initiative and this will help out tremendously. This update is pretty long in the tooth, but we need to speak to Amyro again for yet another sidequest. : This is very good. Saheila is all right. I still protect her. She does not die here. She does not die here… : It was the least I could do. : What’s next for you and Saheila now that you two are reunited? Do you have a plan to escape? : What makes Saheila so important? I understand she’s a farseer, but you’re almost treating her like she’s the next Tir-Cendelius. : The scholar within me wants to know if there’s any proof to claims like that. : If your testimony is all you have to go by, then… I suppose I’ll just have to believe you. I’m glad I was able to help you two.: All of luck to you. Do not forget what I give you. Take it to the elves who roam the mainland; they come here. They save her. They save all of us.Taking the amulet ‘to the mainland’ is a bit more specific than last time, which is good; it gives us a bit more direction on what to do next. Before I end this update, we were revealed two new methods to escape Fort Joy. One by Amyro and the other by Withermoore.   This mound of dirt would have been forever invisible without Amyro’s guidance, and, according to him, what lies underneath it can help us escape the island. We’ll need to find a shovel in order to unearth this secret – either that, or to re-enlist the Red Prince.  And according to Withermoore, this statue contains a secret that, when engaged, should reveal a passage into the fort’s prison; from there, we can find another way out.  : You hear a strange sound like rusted hinges creaking and air rushing through a tunnel. A hatch appears behind the shrine.  Indeed, just as Withermoore had promised, there’s a hatch right next to the statue. By his testimony, this will take us straight beneath the fort.  It’s time to escape the ghetto of Fort Joy. To recap, we have three escape routes available to us: The first is to rendezvous with Gawin the magician, the one who got us to kill those crocodiles for the teleporter gloves. He’s way at the north, where the red flag is. The second is the yellow flag in the bottom right hand corner: an escape route that Amyro had told us in exchange for freeing him. We’ll either need a shovel (which shouldn’t be too hard to find) or to recruit the Red Prince in order to access it. The third is to enter the hatch in the very center of the ghetto, which, according to Withermoore, will take us underneath the fort and straight into its prison block. What path should we take? Should we take Gawin’s path? Should we take Amyro’s path? Or should we take Withermoore’s path? Let me know by tomorrow!
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Feb 22, 2021 08:32
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One thing I appreciate about the Fort Joy segment at least is that there really is more than 3 ways to escape. However, I do understand the need to keep the voting coherent. Fort Joy's also somewhat neat for having multiple resolutions to minor quests. You can do things slightly differently if it's an ad-infinitum playthrough of it. Like with the dude who you gave the booze to before he dies, you can actually save him if you target him with a healing spell instead. Granted, it's not like he's actually important or anything, it's just a decent touch. I do feel the need to correct the record on Sparkstriker a bit since it's actually one of the defining tricks of the fire build. It does bonus damage on hitting yes, but it does so by releasing a spark which fires at a random other hostile target. Completely useless against a single target, so that lizard wasn't really accomplishing anything with it there. However the trick with it is that if you hit multiple targets (like, say, with Battering Ram/Ground Slam/etc), then you're firing off one for each person hit, which just kind of fire erratically into the crowd. It makes the build weird in that you do more damage to each target in an aoe situation than you do hitting a singular target period. I say Gawin's path.
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Feb 22, 2021 12:13
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Amyro seems trustworthy and more likely to have good info than a dude that's been dead 1000 years
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Feb 22, 2021 13:47
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Into the prison
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Feb 22, 2021 18:00
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This thread's lost me on game mechanics.  This was my issue with the game and why this was about where I stopped playing. I want to like it as an RPG, but mechanically it's so complex and obtuse that oof.
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Feb 22, 2021 22:07
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What's got you confused? I can try and explain things a little simpler in the next update, provided there's an encounter.
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Feb 22, 2021 22:16
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I feel like there's a million conditions and environmental effects and abilities everyone has and they all interact in a variety of different ways and there's positioning and starting combat with bait characters and there's elevation and teleportation and and and...
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Feb 22, 2021 22:18
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For me, I ended up just playing the game on easy mode. I had a blast exploring the world and the plot, and didn't have to worry about min/maxing my characters and doing combat optimally. I am enjoying watching someone who actually understands the game play it through more 'properly' though.
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Feb 22, 2021 22:26
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So how does the game resolve conflicting quests? Like, if you recruit Sebille first and she ganks the dreamer lizard, are you forever locked out of doing the Red Prince's questline? Edit: Oh, and take Withermoore's path. Schwartzcough fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Feb 23, 2021 |
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Feb 22, 2021 23:26
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What eventually made me bounce off the game is how slippery it can feel sometimes; like, it feels like it needs a hex grid imo. I just kept not quite hitting what I wanted to, or getting hit by things I thought would have missed me, and so on. It was a shame, because otherwise I found the game transfixing, and as such I'm quite excited for this LP because I get to experience all the things I really liked about the game without the frustrations. I love Sebille, btw. All the companions are just such lovely psychos in their own ways.
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Feb 23, 2021 00:22
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See, trusting a former Source Hunter who got briefed in the details of the island or an elf who wants nothing more than to save a seer who could be the salvation of all elfkind makes a hell of a lot of sense. So of course we're going to ignore all of that and team up with that aerothurge scumbag Gawin since we paid the blood price for learning how to teleport people. Surely he won't try to double-cross us on our deal? And if he does, we will find him and let Sebille's needle do a bit of pointed questioning, if you know what I mean. EDIT: Cythereal posted:I feel like there's a million conditions and environmental effects and abilities everyone has and they all interact in a variety of different ways and there's positioning and starting combat with bait characters and there's elevation and teleportation and and and... 
Olive Branch fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Feb 23, 2021 |
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Feb 23, 2021 03:14
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