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 Between 2015 and 2017, I did a Let's Play of the 1989 Interplay RPG, Dragon Wars. It was my first and only LP ever. I almost finished it, then got distracted and let it fall into archives, leaving it eternally one chapter away from being completed. Let's fix that. In this thread, I will be posting the 43rd and final update for the main play-through, along with some bonus content to follow. What is Dragon Wars? A computer RPG released by Interplay in 1989, it was intended to be The Bard's Tale IV but was re-purposed at the last minute as the rights to the name and setting were held by Electronic Arts. As a result, Dragon Wars takes place in its own setting called Dilmun, a small collection of islands in a land known as Oceana. Despite the last-minute changes, it is a fully fleshed-out game with a deep storyline and setting. The game was released for the Apple II, Amiga, and MS-DOS, among others. They're all functionally the same, just a few graphical differences. I'll be playing the DOS version. There's also a Famicom version, and as you might guess, it's totally different (and totally in Japanese, though there's a prototype English->Japanese->English version floating around). I might show it off when I've finished the PC version. Why are you playing this? It's one of my favorite games of all time! It really is a better game than any of the three Bard's Tale entries and stands up to many of the classic computer RPG's of the era. It's also one of the most open-ended and replayable games I've ever experienced, which makes it ideal for an LP in my opinion. Original thread can be found here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3702374 It's archived, but I had everything saved on my computer, so I'll be re-posting on LPIX for those of us without archives access: TABLE OF CONTENTS: - Part 1: Character Creation - Part 2: Purgatory - Part 3: More Purgatory - Part 4: Low Magic & Combat - Part 5: Literally going from Purgatory to Hell - Part 6: Tars Ruins - Part 7: Slave Camp - Part 8: Slave Estate - Part 9: Guard Bridge - Part 10: Mystic Wood - Part 11: Phoebus - Part 12: We're in the Army Now: Siege Camp - Part 13: We're in the Army Now Part II: Byzanople - Part 14: We're in the (Byzantian) Army Now: The Battle With Kingshome - Part 15: Byzanople Alternate Paths - Part 16: Temple of the Sun - Part 17: Phoeban Dungeon - Part 18: City of the Yellow Mud Toad - Part 19: Smuggler's Cove - Part 20: Necropolis - Part 21: Smuggler's Cove Revisited - Part 22: Sunken Ruins - Part 23: Freeport - Part 24: Dwarven Ruins - Part 25: Heavily Guarded Bridge (to Lansk) - Part 26: Lansk - Part 27: Lansk Undercity - Part 28: Old Dock - Part 29: Snake Pit - Part 30: Kingshome Dungeon - Part 31: Kingshome Not-Dungeon - Part 32: Lanac'toor's Lab - Part 33: Journey to the Magic College - Part 34: Magic College - Part 35: Dragon Valley Part I - Part 36: Dragon Valley Part II - Part 37: Royal Game Preserve - Part 38: Taking the Pilgrim Ferry to Nisir - Part 39: Nisir (Not Quite the Last Dungeon Yet) - Part 40: Depths of Nisir 1 - Part 41: Depths of Nisir 2 - Part 42: Depths of Nisir 3 - Part 43: The Final Battle Epilogue - Part 44: Purgatory Revisited - Part 45: Salt Mines - Part 46: The End rujasu fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Feb 1, 2020 |
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Sep 2, 2018 00:29
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For those of you who have already read the first 42 parts of the LP, here's part 43! https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=151927
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Sep 2, 2018 00:31
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Very glad you finished this. I just spent a few hours this last week getting caught up with the archived thread from years ago. Looking forward to seeing some of the goofy stuff you can do on a second pass, and any other weird things you know about.
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Sep 2, 2018 04:09
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"Yeah! See you in Hell, Namta--- wait, what?! We're going back to Purgatory!? Like, willingly and on-purpose? Where's our big fat pay and sexy princesses?! What the hell is this!!" Seriously, it's good to see Namtar get his at last. I was hoping this wasn't totally abandoned.
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Sep 2, 2018 23:33
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Part 44: New Game Plus - Return to Purgatory When you start up Dragon Wars, you have two options. Begin a new game, or load the current saved game. (Multiple save slots weren't supported, but you could just copy the game to multiple floppy disks or multiple directories on your hard drive if you wanted to have multiple games going at once.) If you begin a new game, you get this screen:  Now, we could blow away all of these characters and create new ones, or delete some and create others. But for now, let's keep the 7 we just beat the game with.  Actually, if we want to be technical here, we're using the save from right before we threw Namtar back in the Pit, because we can't save after beating the game. Although, I do like the idea that after we threw Namtar back in the Pit, he just immediately rose again and conquered Dilmun all over again as soon as we turned our backs. One good thing: Kali is still alive, which is helpful since we won't be visiting Necropolis any time soon.   Also, our maps are cleared out, all items & equipment in our inventory are gone, and all event scripts are reset. However, we do retain all of our attributes and spells. That's a BIG advantage. Among other things, we have Create Wall and Soften Stone which are necessary for completing the game.  So anyway, our goal now is to, you guessed it, escape from Purgatory once again! Last time around, we escaped by way of descending into Hell and then popping back up somewhere else. This time, let's try a more conventional way out. But first!  Paragraph 4 posted:You stand before the gate to Purgatory's great public arena. Bloodthirsty residents of the Dilmun interior come here to enjoy the spectacle of outlander scum such as yourselves fighting to the death on the floor of the arena. You may recall that the easiest way to get introductory weapons in Purgatory is to stop by the Arena. We get free weapons and leather armor, but we also have to tango with these guys:  You may recall us running away and letting them take our lunch money the last time around. The outcome will be slightly different this time.     Yeah, those spiky knee-pads and face masks don't do much against BEING SET ON FIRE.  Also, this is the "other" way to get Citizenship Papers in the game. Last time, we got them in Slave Camp, which made beating the gladiators rather unnnecessary. Either stack of papers will get us across the bridge. Two is redundant. Of course, we could also just set the bridge guards on fire instead of carrying around papers at this point, but still, roasting those gladiators is kinda satisfying. They kicked my teeth in a lot when I played this game as a kid.  Looks like none of the other gladiators really want to mess with us after that performance. Figures. All right, now that we have our papers, let's get outta he-  Huh. Apparently being bona fide Dilmun citizens is enough to get us across the bridge to the next island, but not enough to get us out of Purgatory to begin with. Well, that's okay. Let's try a different route.  Yep, Soften Stone works in Purgatory. Naturally, the whole notion of being trapped in a walled city falls apart when you have a spell that erases walls.  Of course, you may have thought of a more obvious route out:   Nuking the main gate guards doesn't give us any special loot or paragraph or anything. It's just another way out of the city. There are a few others. Remember, the barkeep where we found Ulrik does give us some hints for getting out of Purgatory:   These two hints go together. There's a fake wall in the northwest:  We can just walk through this wall, but there's a catch. Purgatory has two walls, and this route (or going through the main gate) only takes us through the inner wall.  The "hatch" in the southwest is another fake wall which takes us outside of the city entirely. That's the easiest way out, but if you can't find it, you might find a path to freedom near the harbor:   Here, we can use the "Swim" or "Climb" skill to get over the wall.  One problem. We're in the water. This is the only place where we can swim, but anyone in the party who doesn't have the Swim skill will take 1 damage per step. It is very difficult to heal through this, especially if it's early in the game and you don't have much magic.  However, if you just walk a few tiles to the east and don't mess around, you can get out with everyone alive, and you're at the recovery pool behind Slave Camp so you can heal up easily. Speaking of Slave Camp...  quote:16) Before you is a tumble-down collection of huts. A group of ill-clad unfortunates are gathered around a fire. They see you approach and rush to your side. "We saw you swim across the bay", says a toothless man who seems to lead the group. "Any enemy of Purgatory is a friend of ours. C'mon in and sit by the fire." If you swim out of Purgatory, the slaves trust you, no need to use Bueracracy to explain yourself. That's fun. Also, this isn't the only way to swim out of Purgatory. If we stay inside the walls and walk up to the morgue near the harbor:  quote:5) With distaste you discover the source of the foul odor. Before you is a low structure, not so much a building as an odd series of stone slabs leaning against one another. Some ancient stonemason identified this place with a legend carved into the rock: "Morgue". A more recent hand has added its own opinion: "The way out, chumps!". We can use the "Hiding" skill. Upon doing so, we are directed to paragraph 7... quote:7) You secure yourself in a bag full of only slightly stinking corpses and wait patiently. Someone sews the bag up as you lie motionless. After some moments, you hear a throaty voice call, "Oy, yew! Run yer sword throo them bogs, thar! You'membar wot hopp'nd last week! We don't wont any mar escayps now, do we?" You are bound and helpless! Haha, just kidding. Paragraph 7 is one of the fakes they put in the manual to throw off potential "cheaters." It's actually paragraph 69. quote:69) When no one is looking, you crawl into an open sack filled with disgustingly fresh corpses. You lay still as the sack is crudely sewed shut. The darkness of the tomb descends upon you as the bag is closed.  Same deal, except you don't actually use the Swim skill and nobody takes any damage. This is the easiest way out, if you have the Hiding skill and weren't deterred by the bogus Paragraph 7. And of course, there's the Apsu Waters which we used on our first playthrough. So there are a ton of different, interesting ways out of Purgatory. We aren't going to actually use any of them to get out, of course.  Nope, we're going to leave Purgatory by way of being sold into slavery! A brilliant plan! Hooray!  quote:58) After a long wait, you shuffle onto the block with a host of other unfortunates. You are in better shape than the poor wretches that surround you, and your group is instantly the subject of spirited bidding. You shudder as you are sold to a man with a fat neck for more gold than you are likely to see in a lifetime.  Huh. Why did we do this exactly? Next time: Let's Play Mining Salt For Master Mog! By the way, there's one spot in Purgatory where you can't use Soften Stone - the arena. They really do not want you getting back in there. Even if you leave Purgatory and come back, you can only kill the gladiators once. 
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Sep 4, 2018 03:12
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Thanks for throwing in the fake paragraph, that's a cool thing that has no real analogue in gaming today. Great update.
Chinook fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Sep 4, 2018 |
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Sep 4, 2018 03:40
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Chinook posted:Thanks for throwing in the fake paragraph, that's a cool thing that has no real analogue in gaming today. Great update. I think the closest it comes is "meta" games like Undertale or Doki Doki Literature Club recognizing when you've messed around with stuff outside the bounds of gameplay. I suppose there's nothing stopping modern developers from making their games with an external book of paragraphs to read as they play, technically. (Despite having cheated my brains out by reading through the entire book of paragraphs, I never did figure out how to use the morgue exit. so thanks for that.) On the subject of the previous update, I first played Dragon Wars via the Interplay 10-year Anthology, which included comments from the developers as you installed each included game. The guy from Dragon Wars (Alan Pavlish, I think) said one of their major goals was having a final boss who didn't disintegrate in one hit the way Mangar from Bard's Tale had done. I think they succeeded here.
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Sep 4, 2018 10:59
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Glad to see that this is back!
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Sep 4, 2018 12:26
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Thanks for the feedback! Salt Mines update is almost finished, going to do one final revision on it before posting so it should be up soon. The Mines are the only area we didn't cover in the first play-through. After that, I'm planning to revisit some old areas and show off some of the tricks we can pull off with multiple play-throughs. I'll also cover some of the other "fake" paragraphs not used in the game.
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Sep 5, 2018 17:04
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That final boss fight was pretty epic, I love the idea of having to drag a truculant immortal over to the local bottomless chasm and throwing him in with him fighting back the whole way
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Sep 5, 2018 19:05
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Part 45: All is Mog, Mog is All Last time, after becoming bona fide citizens of Dilmun and watching Purgatory bow to our will with the power of magical fire, we sold ourselves as slaves to Master Mog!  "I am your mother, I am your father, I am your God, I am your world. I am Mog - Mog is All. Abandon all hope of freedom. You are my property, to do with as I please, kupo." You may remember Mog from the Slave Estate in our first playthrough. We'll get to that. Right now, let's contend with this issue of our entire party being in chains. They also took everything in our inventory, not that we had anything useful to begin with.  Everyone is "equipped" with the Chains which are -15 AV. I don't know if they count as a weapon, armor, or what, but they make it drat near impossible to do any melee damage.  Walking out of our cell, some guards yell at us to get back to mining or whatever it is we're supposed to be doing, but it's just flavor text. We can walk around and mostly do what we want here.  This includes starting fights with the guards, of course.  Like I said, with our AV so low, we have pretty much no chance of doing any damage.  However, the chains do nothing to prevent us from using Inferno to make the guards extra-crispy. (Before you ask, no, Soften Stone does not work in the mines.) Also, we have to be a little bit careful with our MP, as we do not have any Dragon Stones. Anyway, let's look around for a way out of here...  Ah, there's the exit. No problem, we'll just roast the guards and...  drat. They are protected by a force far more powerful than Inferno - scripting. We get booted into this room:  quote:60) These cramped quarters serve as home for Mog's unfortunate slaves. Men sleep fitfully on the cold rock floor, encumbered by the stout chains that bind them one to another. An examination of your companions proves your chains will never be removed - some of the sleeping men are still chained to companions who have long since passed away.  Obviously, we're going to need to find water for this poor guy, which means we'll need to find both a source of water and a container for said water. So let's go check out the other rooms!   The enemies around here are so weak that we can just cast variable-cost spells for 1 MP to kill everything. Nothing here is a threat, which is good when you don't have any weapons or armor.  Ulrik: Don't look at me, that was all Louie. Louie: HEY!   Yay, we found our stuff!  Of course, we have to break our chains before we can get our stuff back. Next room...  For whatever reason, we're allowed to pick up this cup even with the chains on. So now we just need to find some water. Next room...  This looks promising.  We use the Battered Cup here, filling it up with water, take it back to the dying man, and read paragraph 61. quote:61) The dying man gratefully gulps water from your cup. "You are angels," he says. "I want to die, but not alone, and certainly not thirsty!" The man wipes his mouth with his wrist. His parched lips crack and smear his wrist with blood. "Not much longer," he says with a wan smile. "When I'm gone, I want you to have these." The dying man shows you his boots. The soles are entirely worn away, but the tops are still secured by stout leather laces. "The boots aren't much good, but the laces are strong - maybe you can do something with them." The old man is abruptly seized with a coughing fit. You know the end is near. "I hope you fare better then me," he croaks.  Well, he offered us his shoelaces, so we don't have to feel quite as bad about taking them off his corpse.  Clearly these shoelaces are going to be part of a contraption to get out of here. Let's see what else we can find.  I think you can see where this is going. All we need now is a rock.   There we go. Plus an MP recharge, in case we needed it. quote:49) After a few hours of cautious work, you're able to lash an appropriate rock to the broken pick handle with the laces you received from the dying man. The result is a serviceable if makeshift hammer. The hammer probably isn't worth much as a weapon, but it might hold up long enough to break the chains that bind you.  It's Hammer Time!  NOW let's get outta here.  Of course, the "boss" here is a complete joke.   quote:62) The last of the guards drops dead and silence claims the mines. A ladder leads up out of the salt mines. In the dim distance you can see sunlight for the first time in uncountable hours, days, or months. Freedom is at hand. But what awaits you at the top of the shaft? Actually it took me like 20 minutes in game time, but I did already know the solution to the puzzle. Oh, I should probably go back to the rubbish pile and pick up our stuff. If we go up the stairs without getting it, we can't return and it's lost forever.  Not that we had anything useful to begin with. No wonder they threw it in the trash heap. And yeah, it's just the crap that we had before we were sold into slavery. We don't even get our gold back. The crude hammer is destroyed when we use it, so the only "extra" loot we come out of the mines with is the 9 Dragon Stones and the Battered Cup. The Battered Cup is useless, we can just discard it. Dragon Stones aren't hard to come by. Bottom line, the Mines are mostly just a useless detour. However, it is somewhat interesting from a story perspective.   If you remember the Slave Estate update, Mog was the owner of the estate (making it the "luxurious palace" mentioned in paragraph 58), and he had been replaced by the Gaze Demon. Speaking of which...  That was fun. We don't get anything for killing him, just like we didn't get anything for using a mirror on him. It seems to me like you really should get some kind of reward for defeating the big boss of this area, but nope. I still really like the storytelling behind this quest, even if it is effectively just a pointless sidequest. Also, it's kind of funny how we could technically have killed Mog here before selling ourselves into slavery and reading paragraph 58 about Mog buying us. Speaking of paragraph 58, I have no idea whether Mog is the man or the demon when we meet him there.  Anyway, it's also possible to go back to Purgatory and sell ourselves into slavery again. If we do, we get paragraph 58 again, and we get dumped in the exact same mines again, except this time around, the game is in an unwinnable state because the dying man is still dead and his shoelaces are long gone. Hope you didn't save! Since Soften Stone doesn't work in this dungeon, we might as well use Create Wall to box ourselves in and make things especially hopeless.  For the love of God, Montresor!
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Sep 5, 2018 21:37
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rujasu posted:For the love of God, Montresor! Piers: Yes, Fortunato. For the love of God. ........Don't look at me like that, I read!
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Sep 6, 2018 03:33
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I'm going to be away for the weekend, so no updates for a bit, but I'm planning to show off some tricks and ways to break the game. Most of these I've known about for years, but one of them I just stumbled upon a few days ago in a random old forum thread.
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Sep 7, 2018 19:13
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An LP being finished means that I need to get on reading it. Thanks for coming back, rujasu!
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Sep 7, 2018 20:10
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OK, this post is mostly an excuse to bump the thread and keep it out of archives, so I can eventually post another update, but a couple of things: First, there's a newer, blinder LP of the game being done by Kangra, so check it out here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3873260 rujasu posted:I'm going to be away for the weekend, so no updates for a bit, but I'm planning to show off some tricks and ways to break the game. Most of these I've known about for years, but one of them I just stumbled upon a few days ago in a random old forum thread. Also, I totally forgot about this. In case anyone was biting their nails in anticipation of the new thing I found, it's nothing extremely revolutionary, just that Fistfighting is actually pretty decent. If you put like 5-10 points into it, it will do comparable damage to mid-game weapons and hit pretty reliably, so you can kick some butt in Purgatory before you even get any weapons. Obviously Dragon Teeth are better, but by then you have Inferno so who even cares about melee damage. I'll show that off at some point, along with some things that I think are more interesting.
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Dec 4, 2018 17:02
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Glad you bumped it. Thanks again for the return and wrap up from before 
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Dec 4, 2018 21:41
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For some reason this thread hasn't been locked after more than a year. Lucky me, I can necro it from the dead this time instead of making an awkward new thread! OK, so before I put this LP in archives, I plan to do one last update. It probably won't be a very long one, and it will take me a few days to get it ready, but here's a teaser screen: 
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Jan 29, 2020 03:07
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Oh yeah! Piers Paardersen, adventurer sub-extraordinaire, is about to dump a WHOLE lot of advancement points into Strength and Fistfighting, right?
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Jan 29, 2020 04:08
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Part 46 - The End? So, this LP is pretty much done and I've put off this bit for over a year now, but there is just a little bit I want to add to finish this thing. First off, one trick that I don't think I've mentioned before. First, we have to worship Irkalla and visit her realm.  We're not here to see her, however.  This is what we're here for. Just one step forward...  wait why did I do that   Oh right. That's why. The "bonus" is 5 extra skill points. Considering that the bonus of a level-up in this game is just 2 skill points and no other gains, 5 points is a big deal. It's essentially gaining 2.5 free levels without having to fight a single battle. But that's not the big story. You can do this once per playthrough. And if you know where to go, you can get here a few minutes after starting a new game. If you're re-starting with a character who already has Soften Stone, it takes about one minute. (In short: start a new game, go straight west through walls until you see the Irkalla statue, go right and grab a Mage Fire scroll from the shop, go back to the Irkalla statue, sacrifice the scroll, then dive into the Apsu Waters, go to her realm and jump off the cliff.) You can save, quit, start a new game, and do it all over again, and again, until, well, I'm sure you see where this is going: There are other things we can do once per play-through, such as wrestling Enkidu to get Druid Magic:  And while scrolls are single-use, we can get a new copy each playthrough, so we can get multiple characters with the same spells, even rare ones:  So with enough time, we can create a near-invincible army of super-mages who act first every battle, have tons of MP to cast 45-point Infernos hitting all enemies, and completely trivialize the game's combat. Also, it turns out Fistfighting is actually useful in this game! If you have 5 Fistfighting, you consistently deal about 20 damage per hit with your bare hands. This is better than most weapons in the game. Increasing it beyond 5 doesn't seem to do anything, nor does increasing Strength, so the best way to deal damage is still Sun Magic. So, what can we do with this? Well, getting to the Depths of Nisir just requires Golden Boots and a quick trip through the Magan...  ...and getting to Namtar just requires casting Soften Stone a few times.   Trouble? Nah. We could have stopped in Lansk for the Dragon Gem, but why do things the easy way when we can do them the Fun Way?   So what happens when we win the unwinnable fight?    I like that we get a little pat on the back for winning that ridiculous fight. If only the game realized how we're doing this with no weapons and almost no armor! That leaves Namtar, but we've already kicked his rear end. Beating him this way won't make the ending any different. Chrono Trigger was six years away at this point; most games in 1989 gave you two endings. One where you win, and another that says "Game Over." And is killing Namtar even the point of this game? He's not on the title screen: That's not a Namtar they're fighting, and the title of the game is not Namtar Wars. This is DRAGON WARS! (kicks Namtar down a well) All right then. First up, let's take a trip back in time for some context here. Once upon a time, we had to trudge through a place called Dragon Valley.  In Dragon Valley, we fought through seemingly endless encounters with groups of 20+ baby dragons at a time, until finally we met their mama. Paragraph 134 posted:In the very heart of the valley you find the sacred hive of the Dragon Queen. The Queen sits atop a mountain of eggs, some of which hatch young saurians even as you watch. The Dragon Queen is colossal - easily ten times the size of any beast you've confronted thus far. She fixes you with a fierce glare. And, well, this happened:  Yeah. The Dragon Queen isn't just tough - she is pretty much unstoppable. rujasu posted:You can really get yourself in trouble here, if you save right after reading paragraph 134, while the Queen is preparing to kill you. Even if you try to run from her, she will always go first and use her absurdly powerful breath attack. The good news is that it is possible to survive the battle with the Dragon Queen. I don't mean that we can "win" it, but it's possible for the damage roll to be a little lower, resulting in our being stun-wiped instead of getting an actual Game Over. Like the battle with Namtar's army, you're not supposed to win here. But in this case, you are REALLY not supposed to win:  She starts 150" away, she goes first every round no matter what (even after I cheated everyone up with a lot of Dexterity), and her breath attack hits everyone for around 12-22 damage every turn (which means it stuns for around 24-44). The only way to survive for more than a turn is to cheat everyone up to a ton of HP, but even that doesn't help all that much. Even after I did the cheat a bunch of times to prepare for the Namtarmy fight, all it meant for Dragon Queen is that I was able to last two turns instead of one. Now, if you cheated everyone up to about 100 HP, you might be able to survive two shots of the breath. This would give you time to heal, but the problem is that the healing spells don't really keep up. The strongest healing spell in the game is Cure All, it heals 1d8 points of damage for everyone in the party, which is a lot less than a single hit of the breath does. So every round, we'd probably need about five party members casting Cure All just to keep up with the damage. But we also need to advance to get within magic range. We can advance 10" per round, and we can't do anything else that turn so she gets a free hit with the breath. Just getting close enough to hit her with a spell would be a chore, and eventually we'll run out of MP. Even if we have Dragon's Eyes, she'll fry us while we're using them. Given enough time repeating the Irkalla trick, we could grind everyone up to 100 HP and 100 MP (except Kali because we're busy putting all of her skill points into Bandage), get everyone access to Druid Magic for Cure all, and maybe be able to advance far enough to get a shot in on the Queen. The Dragon Warriors will advance and get in our way, but we can take them out with one or two shots of Inferno, and if we can hold out long enough to advance eight times, we'll be at 70" and Valar can dump all of his MP into a big Rage of Mithras at her. Is there a point to this? Probably not. But again, this is Dragon Wars, and I think we should properly fight the dragon!  After about a dozen turns of attrition, and spending 40+ MP on one big Inferno to wipe out the Dragon Warriors (something that would not even be remotely possible playing this game normally), we get to see that "Dragon Brood Queen" does not even fit on the top of the screen properly. It just says "Dragon Brood Que." In Spanish, the word "que" means "what." That seems appropriate here. The game is just going "What?" at this point. What are you trying to do, and why are you trying to do it? You may also notice that we are still 130" out. Our longest-range spell hits from 70". But if it's possible to advance twice, well, it must be possible to advance six more times, right? ... (an eternity of multiple turns healing followed by one turn advancing, rinse, repeat ensues)  All right. Go for it Valar! One shot for all of the marbles! The Dragon War ends here!  This is what happens when you dump 44 MP into a single Rage of Mithras. We hit the Dragon Brood Queen for an absurd 164 damage, completely off the charts for this game, and she just looks at us like it was nothing. How much health does she even have? I can't imagine. Is it even a finite number? As you can see, Valar and Louie are out of MP. Kali is low as well. Most turns, half of the party is getting stunned, and I'm just hoping the faster characters live to heal the slower ones so everyone casts their heal spell. If we have a turn where only 2-3 heals go off, we're done for. And right now, we need Valar to use a Dragon's Eye (restores 30 MP) two turns in a row to fire off another 44-point Rage of Mithras. And that might not even put a dent in the Queen's health total. It's not looking great. But hey, we're putting up a fight. In a battle that is normally meant to be a single-turn wipe. And that's something. Might this actually be... possible?  Holy poo poo.  Seeing this textbox makes it all worth it for me. We weren't supposed to see this. It might not even have been tested! But more importantly, this game has finally lived up to its billing. We fought a Dragon War, and we won.  Yeah, I think I'll close the book here. If there's anything else in this game that could top that, I can't think of it. Thanks everyone who bothered to read this mess. I had a lot of fun doing it. It took me five years and I'll probably never do another one, but I feel like it was worth writing and hope you all thought it was worth reading.
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Feb 1, 2020 03:27
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Snorb posted:Oh yeah! Piers Paardersen, adventurer sub-extraordinaire, is about to dump a WHOLE lot of advancement points into Strength and Fistfighting, right? For the record, I tried giving Piers about 100 Strength and it didn't seem to have any meaningful effect on his damage output (with weapons or fists). Supposedly Strength gives bonus damage, but it must be a small, fixed amount if it does anything at all.
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Feb 1, 2020 03:32
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That was impressive. Well done and a good end.
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Feb 1, 2020 04:26
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That was a very good ending; you really did save the best for last. Now, please, send every bit across multiple threads to the archives. This deserves to be preserved. Also, I can't resist saying that que is also "what" in French, though it's pronounced like "the" rather than "hay". The Italian version is spelled che and is pronounced as in Spanish. I like language anecdotes.
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Feb 1, 2020 05:06
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Thanks! I had to do the Irkalla cheat a ton of times to make that ending happen, so I'm glad you liked it. And yes, I have put in an archive request.
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Feb 1, 2020 18:30
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That was a nice capstone for a good LP, thanks. I love how most of the really old school RPGs have ways you can totally break them.
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Feb 1, 2020 20:38
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