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 The Banner Saga Is a trilogy of viking-themed fantasy tactical RPGs developed by Stoic Studios. Stoic itself has no small number of Bioware (Mass Effect, KotOR, etc.) castaways. I know at least one of them has/had an account on here, so I'm hoping they pop in here and there to offer commentary. The first game was released in 2014 after an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign. The second was not Kickstartered and came out a couple years later. And the finale, The Banner Saga 3, came out at the end of July--another Kickstarter. I've played the trilogy to completion. It is heartbreakingly beautiful and I love it. The best parts of The Banner Saga are the artwork, story, characters, and music. It looks like an old Disney movie with hand-drawn art. The world is well-crafted, and while it's fantasy vikingland the internal rules of the setting make sense. Stick that great artwork with some awesome humor, memorable and sympathetic characters, and a great soundtrack, and you have yourself the makings of a classic. Manage to do all of that and have savefiles that import from BS1-->BS2-->BS3 with choices and consequences that actually matter, and it's even more impressive. It's a really beautiful game. With one significant flaw: The combat kind of sucks. If you're pickier than I am, "kind of" can justifiably be expressed as "really". Final Fantasy Tactics, this ain't. We'll get into how combat works once the LP starts, but it's...not particularly intuitive, and while the later games in the series make it a bit better, it's tough to polish such a flawed system. It's unquestionably the worst part of the series, the only blemish on what's otherwise a masterpiece. For me, it's not enough to make the series anything less than spectacular. But I know for others, the combat was such a turn-off that they just couldn't finish. Thus, I'm hoping that this LP gives everyone the best parts of the series without having to directly deal with the combat. This'll be a screenshot LP. I might link to videos here and there from someone else's, if I can find key moments on YouTube or something. But for the most part, you should get to see the beautiful artwork of this game and not watch videos where most of the time would be spent in not-all-that-interesting combat. Will update at least 2 times per week. Perhaps more once my obligations as The Other Commish of the Baseball Mogul Super League thread come to a close this season (about 3 weeks from now). We're going to play the entire series. Some ground rules: 1.) NO SPOILERS. None. No hints at what'll come. Keep your mouth shut if you already know. 2.) There's already been an LP of The Banner Saga (just the first game) on here years ago; it's actually how I discovered the series. I will be making the opposite decision from what that LP did in the two most important moments. 3.) We can put other decisions to a vote. If it's something where a decision is only flavor text, I'll go ahead and move things forward myself, though. Not everything is gonna be voted on, in other words. 4.) We'll be playing the Saga on hard. I want to unlock a few achievements while I'm at it, and it's one of the few ways to keep combat interesting for me. (By The Banner Saga 2 and 3 I'm expecting to've broken the difficulty over my knee regardless). 5.) No going back and changing things. If we don't like the outcome of a voted-on decision, too bad. We keep going and live with the consequences. If I manage to gently caress up combat badly enough that someone dies or people start to starve because I need to rest from injuries, also too bad. The only time I'll go back and replay something is if I get a hard game over as an outcome (there are VERY few must-win battles in this game; the final boss is the only one I'm remotely worried about falling against because it's extreme bullshit and I hate it.) 6.) Artwork, commentary, whatever else is always welcome--provided it's after a decision point. I'm fine if someone wants to come in and say "had we taken this other decision, here's what would've happened!" I'm not[ fine if someone comes by and says "here's what the 3 decisions we're voting on lead to." 7.) To a limited extent, we can vote on what party members we use in battle. I say "to a limited extent" because given that I'm playing the campaign on Hard, and that the final boss is EXTREME bullshit, there are certain characters I'll insist on keeping around as they're key to my strategy. So, uh...do try not to get them killed please! I don't know The Banner Saga 2 and 3 nearly as well as 1. I'm fully expecting some out-of-combat deaths as a result. TABLE OF CONTENTS Saga 1 Prologue P-1: Prologue Chapter 1: Only the Sun Has Stopped 1-1: A Giant Problem Chapter 2: Cut with Keen-Edged Sword 2-1: We're From a Small Town in the Middle of the Woods 2-2: I Have to Axe You a Question 2-3: The Road Not Taken Chapter 3: Little Did They Sleep 3-1: You're the Worst Goddamned Warleader 3-2: You're Still the Worst Goddamned Warleader Chapter 4: Lest They Not Come Home 4-1: The Long Road to Einartoft 4-2 (and also early chapter 5): Lending a Helping Hand Chapter 5: Weary the Weight of the Sun 5-1: Umbrage: -1 ARM, +5 STR Chapter 6: Of Our Bones, the Hills 6-1: Yngvar 6-2: Sigrholm Chapter 7: The Slayer and the Slain 7-1: To the End 7-2: The Slayer and the Slain  Saga 2 Chapter 8: From Their Homes, All Must Flee 8-1: I'm on a Boat 8-2: You Can't Use Overwatch on Geography Chapter 9: Cast the Bone Into the Air 9-1: Quoth the Raven, "Shut Up." Chapter 10: To Speak in All Tongues 10-1: Alette Took a Really Long Time to Decide, OK? 10-2: Myths Become Real 10-3: Lundar Chapter 11: Where a Foe May Lurk 11-1: Black Blood of the Earth, Part 1 11-2: Black Blood of the Earth, Part 2 Chapter 12: The Destined Day Shall Come 12-1: Our Steps to the Night Chapter 13: The Fetters Shall Burst 13-1: Prelude to a Bloodbath 13-2: The Death March Chapter 14: Brothers Fight and Kinship Stain 14-1: King of the Ashes Chapter 15: In Fear Quake All 15-1: In Fear Quake All  Saga 3 Chapter 16: The True Hero Comes Reluctantly 16-1: The True Hero Comes Reluctantly 16-2: An Unstable Peace Chapter 17: Raising High Their Shining Light 17-1: Into Darkness Chapter 18: Alas, the Sea is Still Deep and Wide 18-1: Ruin Beyond the Wall 18-2: The Center Cannot Hold 18-3: The Contest Chapter 19: The Hounds Are a-Hungered 19-1: Destroyer 19-2: The Unkindness of Ravens Chapter 20: We Live as We Will Live 20-1: The Dredge 20-2: The Skogr Banner Chapter 21: With a Mighty Grief that was Ours and Theirs 21-1: The Inner Earth 21-2: End of the Line 21-3: Juno and Eyvind 21-4: The Last Stand of Arberrang Chapter 22: Only We Few Remember It Now 22-1: The End 22-2: Fate, Chosen ERRATA Alternate Endings Coda 1: The Alfrun Ending Coda 2: The Stupid Ending Coda 3: The Destruction Ending Coda 4: The Eyvind Ending Survival Mode Survival Mode, Part I Survival Mode, Part II Coda 5: Ekkill and Onef Coda 6: Siding with Rugga FairGame fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Nov 24, 2018 |
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Sep 2, 2018 19:36
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Reserved for characters, places, etc. CHARACTERS, IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE e: editing this out as it's just one giant spoiler depending on where people are if they're not up to date on the thread. And it's kind of a pain in the rear end to keep up to date anyway. FairGame fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Oct 14, 2018 |
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Sep 2, 2018 19:37
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CHAPTER ONE: ONLY THE SUN HAS STOPPED The game really means this. This isn't like Mass Effect where at best you receive an email from some dude you saved a game ago. Choice you make have meaningful and lasting consequences. To make matters more complex, most of the consequences don't manifest themselves until well after you made the decision. No save-scumming available for you. As for the POV switches, we'll get to that when the time comes. (The time will come next update). Fortunately, unlike Game of Thrones, there's not a POV that you will ever particularly hate. Some POVs are worse off in the world than others, but all POVs have interesting characters.  I...I think this splash screen got changed from when I played it. There used to be a line saying "only one thing has stopped: the sun." No matter, we'll get there in a moment. Also, for the purposes of this game: man = human giant = varl, a cross between humans and yox (fantasy oxen, essentially). They're big, humanoid, and have big ox-like horns.  Our narrator for the prologue is UBIN, the dude in purple. He's a varl tax collector.   And there's your "the sun has stopped." In the world of The Banner Saga, nightfall hasn't existed for about a week. It's extremely not normal, but everyone is kinda just going about their business.  : We have been warned by stranded travelers about brigands on the path through Ridgehorn, our road home. Our captain seems unconcerned. Perhaps he is as eager as I to be done here. We will rest here this day and inquire further when we speak to the governor. The tax collectors approach Strand, when suddenly...  A human runs up and shouts something at Ubin. He sounds concerned. Ubin stares up at the town hall...  Inside the town hall, brigands are murdering people. That poor guy bottom center just got cut open.  The brigand leader yells something unpleasant at who is presumably the governor. Things are looking pretty bad for the governor, until...  Ubin and his buddies bash open the doors to the hall, surprising the poo poo out of the brigands. This is more of a fight than they'd counted on.  We now enter our first combat. This is a tutorial, and the game forces you to make certain moves. As such, it's impossible to lose. Even if the game weren't forcing you, it'd be pretty drat hard to lose. It's 4 brigands vs. 2 varl (Ubin's just chillin' out leaning against the pillar. He doesn't take part in combat.)  The tutorial will give us the basics of combat. But I'll do that here myself instead. Every unit has 5 statistics (seen in the "enemy raider" box in red in the lower left, as well as the unlabeled blue box in the far left. The unlabeled blue box describes the statistics of this generic varl shieldbanger (shieldbanger being the generic class of varl; the class has sub-kits that we'll recruit from later on.) Armor (the shield icon): Think of this as damage threshold, a la New Vegas. It's a strict reduction on how much damage you take. If an enemy is going to hit you for 5, and you have 4 armor, the enemy only hits you for 1 instead, 5 - 4 = 1. If you have MORE armor than the enemy has attack, the enemy starts incurring a malus to hit at 10% per difference. So if you have 10 armor and a 6 strength enemy tries to hit you, he's going to take a -40% malus to hit. And if he does hit, he'll only do 1 damage anyway. In general, heavy hitters tend to have low armor--glass cannons. Tanks tend to have high armor and little strength. There are some skills that bypass armor entirely and directly do strength damage. That's very helpful. Strength (the fist icon): This is your HP as well as your damage. If it drops to zero, you fall in battle. Not "die," mind you. You just fall and take an injury--meaning you have a temporarily lower strength in subsequent battles until you sleep it off. If a character doesn't have one of the aforementioned "do strength damage anyway" abilities, a character who takes a hit to his strength early on is effectively maimed and pretty useless. Willpower (the star icon): This is a modifier you can use for your attacks (you can attack armor or strength, by the way). The amount of modifier can be applied via your exertion stat, which we'll get to in a moment. Willpower also powers your abilities. If you have no willpower, all you can do is attack armor or attack strength. Or you can rest and gain back a willpower point. In general, though, if you're spending time resting, you're in deep poo poo because that's a turn where you could've been doing something useful. Exertion (the chain icon): This is how many willpower points you can use to modify an attack. If ordinarily you can do 5 points of strength damage on an attack, and you want to kill an enemy with 6 points, you can use a point of willpower to modify the attack to do 5+1. Exertion is a set stat. Most every character in the game has either 2 or 3 exertion as their cap. It's hugely important. Movement is also governed by exertion. You can move 1 extra tile per exertion point, provided you have the willpower to actually exert. Armor Break (the broken shield icon): This is a flat amount of damage you will do to enemy armor. Can be modified by exertion. Units in this game vary between 2 and 4 armor break as their cap. You need a few guys who are good at breaking armor so that your heavy hitters can start loving up the enemy. The other major thing in combat: you and the enemy take turns, 1 unit for 1 unit. Meaning that if you have 5 units and the enemy has 10, each of your characters takes 2 turns to the enemy's 1. As characters fall, the turn imbalance gets changed. Because of this, and because of the aforementioned "a low strength enemy is effectively maimed," it often makes a lot of sense to just maim a shitload of enemies but not kill them until you're ready to end the fight completely. If the enemy has only 2 or 3 fully healthy characters because you killed everything else, they can pretty quickly bring down a front-liner. It's kind of silly. It's also a reason that you can dominate this game with a party of 2-3. We won't be doing that except in a couple battles where party size is mandated. The "you take turns" portion is ended when one side falls to last man standing. At this point you enter what's known as "PILLAGE!" mode. And everyone gets to move as a team. So if you have 5 standing fighters, all of them move and THEN the enemy gets 1 turn before you get 5 straight turns. In general, it's not really important. If you reach last man standing, you're going to win. If you ARE last man standing, you're going to lose. (Probably.)  Anyway, the tutorial shows off the varl warrior "warhawk" kit. That's what "Gunnulf" (see the lower left) here is. Warhawks tend to have insanely high strength and lovely armor. They're glass cannons. Weirdly, this iteration of Gunnulf looks different--both in clothes and in stats--than the one we're about to get outside of tutorial. Anyway, his default skill is "tempest," which hits up to 2 enemies adjacent to him. His passive skill is "heavy impact" which causes any enemy adjacent to an enemy taking strength damage get an additional +1 damage. So in this case, he'll tempest through 2 guys to do 6 damage, and then since each is adjacent ot the other, they'll cause their counterpart to take an additional +1 damage. Warhawks get a shitload of kills. There are VERY few skills in the whole series that can do strength damage to multiple units simultaneously.  Our shieldbanger ends the fight by running through the bandit leader.  The game immediately switches to a cutscene with the governor of Strand.  : Like a rabid wolf, that one. How did it come to this? We fool ourselves believing that peace will last. My grandfather built all this from a poor fishing village, you know. He watched the gods die. Watched the chaos that followed. Watched man and varl slaughter each other, even before the dredge arose. All we've done is traded one struggle for another. Now that there are no more dredge to war against, we war against ourselves.: This chieftain meant to kill me, and he's not the first. A dozen families in the city would gladly take my chair. This one had been waylaying merchants both north and south of the city, strangling trade. Quite well, I would add, though he denied it to his last. This sort of wolf doesn't stop biting because the head is cut off, it just grows a new head.He wanders over to the door of the Great Hall, looking down at his city.  : I am in a bad way, my friend. Help me finish this fight and I will gladly send you on your way with double our king's tithe. Take any men you need. They're loyal; I promise you that. They will meet you down in the proving grounds. Technically that was the prologue. Now we're officially in chapter 1. No POV switch, though. We continue as Ubin, immediately after the fight in the Great Hall.  We'll see screens like this quite a bit. The early game spoils us with a lot of animated cutscenes. For the most part we get a lot of talking heads. PRETTY talking heads, but talking heads nonetheless.   : Eirik, steward of Strand. I manage the governor's business. Ubin, isn't it? We have the ability to make dialogue choices. In some cases, they're enormously meaningful. In most cases it's just flavor text. You might learn more about a subject or change someone's disposition for the better (or worse). I'll make the conversation choices when it's not meaningful. : It is.: The governor tells me you'll be giving us a hand.: What did you have in mind?: Skalfings that you didn't hack up in the great hall scattered after you took out their chieftain. The governor just wants to make sure they stay down. Was hoping you'd join me at the marketplace by the docks. If there's anyone left to worry about, I know who can tell us. We're taken back out to Strand. Most town screens are like this--a nice hand-drawn picture of the town, with a few areas we can travel directly do. We're still sort of in a tutorial right now, though--all that's available is the market. So we head over.  : Let me handle this.You meander through rows of open-face houses and eroded stalls. Colored cavases flap on a briny current. One man in particular blanches as you approach. : Hadd, I'm not in the mood today.I, uh...I didn't get a picture of the merchant. Let's just go with this.  : For...for what?: Talking to an idiot. The Skalfing's chieftain bled out about an horu ago, Hadd. So when you tell me what rat anus the rest of them crawled back into, nobody's going to try to kill you this time.: I don't talk to...they don't talk to me! : Eirik, need some help here?: Hadd, I had a change of heart. I hope you do give us a hard time.Hadd sweats visibly, fumbling with some dirty trinkets on his table. : Wait, just...buy one of these. If everybody thinks I'm getting worked over every week how am I supposed to know much? Just a little food money, yeah?You toss a sliver of silver on the table. Both men look at you with surprise. Hadd gestures meekly to a variety of junk from his stall. : Only thing I'd like is the name of a place.: Nobleman, up by east wall! But that was months ago, last I know.Hadd skulks away with a wave of Eirik's hand, gathering things from his hovel. Disappearing for a while until this blows over, you figure. Your bodyguard steps forward.   : Are we done here?: Gunnulf were you wearing green back at the great hall?: No. Just bought 'em while you were walking around, why?: You look like a frog.: Better than an eggplant.Gunnulf goes off to look at more stalls.  : Eirik, that man of your seemed unreliable at best.: A blind dog wouldn't trust Hadd, but he used to be Skalfing. If they're licking their wounds, they've probably gone to old haunts, not new ones.: Nobleman is a mead hall?: Best I can tell, the name's ironic. Listen, I know a guy who would love to put a few of these skals in the ground. I'm going to find him. I'll meet you there.: Shouldn't we have an approach of some sort?: What a luxury. C'mon, you've already mopped up worse today.: Just make sure the governor remembers his promise. Double the usual tithe.: I'll remind him.There's not really anything we can do here. We're on rails until we head to the Nobleman.   : That's the spirit! OK, here we go!Valgard boots the front door open so hard it won't close again without repair. As you enter the hall Eirik is already at the head of a table, his axe drawn. Wide-eyed drunken Skalfings scramble to find their own weapons, turning tables and mead steins in the process. Now we're in our first combat that we actually could lose. We won't, though my playing sloppy ends up leading to injuries.  You can position your characters (and in subsequent fights, your initial turn order) at the start of most battles. In this battle we've got Valgard, Gunnulf, Eirik, and that generic shieldbanger. We've seen the 2 varl in action already. The 2 human units are new, though. Valgard is a raider class, raidmaster kit. That means he gets "shield wall" as his passive--when standing next to an allied unit, that unit AND Valgard get +1 armor. This mean that if 2 raiders are next to one another, they each get +2 armor--1 from themselves, 1 from the ally. If for some reason you have a 2x2 block of raiders, everyone gets +4. You won't get a 2x2 block of raiders ever. He also gets the "stone wall" ability, in which he gets a temporary +3 armor resist. The AI doesn't see this, meaning he can run out and tank the poo poo out of a bunch of attacks while your less-protected allies get into position. It's not as useful as it sounds. There's a character we'll get to shortly that has this skill as well and it's a lot more useful on him since he has access to items that'll force the enemy to attack him. Eirik is a landsman class, whose passive ability is the ability to move through allied units. Helpful for dodging into and out of trouble. His active ability, "rally" allows him to trade his own willpower to an ally at a 2:1 ratio. Very helpful, though not until higher levels when you can go 6:3 and really move meaningful amounts of willpower. We're up against a shitload of raider-backbiters (they run through an enemy, dealing armor damage, and then do strength damage. Very dangerous) and generic raiders who don't have an ability. We'll take 2 turns for each of their moves.  I group everyone up. The plan is to deal with the near raiders while the other nerds waste their turns just getting into melee range. It doesn't work particularly well.  Eirik stands back-to-back with Valgard, each getting a +1 armor bonus. But...who cares?  Gunnulf makes the first kill of the fight, splattering a swordsman. But also putting himself too close into harm's way.  This is why the "run through" ability is so dangerous. I thought I had Gunnulf protected by Eirik/Valgard/shieldbanger, but instead the guy just dashed through Valgard AND Gunnulf, shredding Gunnulf's armor and taking down his high strength. Bad move, me.  Things compound themselves as a healty backbiter does significant damage to Gunnulf. He won't be one-shotting anyone anymore.  At this point I figure Gunnulf's gonna go down, so I might as well try and feed some kills to Eirik.  A tempest kills one of the raiders, giving Gunnulf his second kill and making him eligible for promotion.  The enemy AI is coded to prioritize kills over pretty much anything. Gunnulf makes too tempting a target, and he goes down. He'll now need 6 days of rest before he's back in good fighting shape.  My shieldbanger goes down, too. I promise I'm better than this, but I also figured I didn't care too much about taking an injury to a temporary character.  Eirik dashes forward and avenges the shieldbanger, making himself promotion-eligible.  Despite taking two injuries, this fight was never really all that threatening. Eirik finishes things off, hogging kills.  We earn 10 renown for our efforts. Renown is your resource pool that's used for level ups and for trading.  : There they are. Gods be damned, I've got to go wash off this blood.Eirik is looking out the hall's windows onto the bay. A fleet of longships approach with sails of bold reds and blues. : One banner I know well. Vognir. Next for varl kingship, last we spoke. The other flag? Looks important.: Yeah, important guests. See what I deal with all day long? : Ah, things make a little more sense. You hoped i'd have a stake in saying "everything's fine here" when the royal guests arrived.: Not me. The governor. Now I have to make sure there are no rotting bodies or pools of entrails still in the great hall before they come by. Can I ask one more favor?: What is it?: If you happened to stall our guests down on the docks, I wouldn't object.: Maybe I will.Eirik and Valgard hustle from the mead house. To his credit, Eirik toses the barkeep a spar of silver for the mess. You give an apologetic shrug, and go to greet the new arrivals down at the docks.  Next time: We meet the important guests. FairGame fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Nov 22, 2018 |
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Sep 2, 2018 22:43
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Enchanted Hat posted:You take that back! Agree to disagree. In general, what this ultimately means is just "try to avoid an annoying injury while the enemy sandbags at the end of combat." It's a lot like the end of a chess game when you know you're gonna win, but have to figure out how not to gently caress up the checkmate and lose pieces in a sloppy ending. As such, while I find the end of combat an interesting challenge, I'd just as soon not reach it because I dominated the early combat thanks to maim-not-kill strategies.
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Sep 3, 2018 00:18
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The combat is one of the best parts of this series because it makes you think differently than nearly every other tactical RPG. It lets you use new strategies, like intentionally keeping weak enemies alive in order to waste opponents' turns and targeting enemies based on their position in the turn queue. This game would be way less interesting if it just had standard Final Fantasy Tactics mechanics.
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PART II: A Giant Problem Editor's Note: Hey, I haven't done an LP in forever and I gather I hosed up some of the batch processing here. Images will get better once I'm clear of the initial upload (which is probably 1 update from now). Thanks for your patience. This is a long series of games; we'll all get there together. When we last left off, Ubin had helped the governor of Strand keep the peace in his town, only to learn it was largely because important guests were due in town any minute. Today, we'll meet the guests.   This is Vognir. He's kendr to the varl--the closest thing to "next in line for kingship" that the giants have. : Vognir. : Gods, Ubin, you're looking ancient!: Comes with being old. And, if there is Vognir there must be Hakon.A 3rd varl enters the conversation, but he's kind of obscured in the conversation screenshots behind Ubin's shoulder. We'll be seeing a lot of Hakon, so don't worry too much about it.  : Must there?:: Still bleeding tributes from the poor and stupid, old yox? At what age do you lose a sense of shame?: Jorundr demands it. I'll take that over lingering to death in Grofheim. Speaking of, I had no sense you were so far from home.: Just returned from Arberrang, in fact.: And glad for it.Hakon motions to the other ships in the bay, sails still fluttering. Golden wolf head emblazoned on red. The king of men, then, or someone on his behalf. : The king's whelp.: The king's son, Ludin. Don't you know, scrivener? We visit his capital, he visits ours? It's how you make alliances these days.: It's a miserable waste of time.: Yes, Hakon has it. I'd almost forgotten. It's a good thing you're around, Hakon.: Then you're going to Grofheim? I have the distinct feeling I've finished my business in Strand and was heading there myself. We should caravan.: We should. Give it a day. In better circumstances I'd drink a week away but, ah...let's just be done. Find me tomorrow at the gates.: What he's trying to say is the prince is a delight to behold.: Where is Mogr? Hakon, have him find a place to put up the warriors. I'm heading up to meet the governor.A host of giants depart in his wake. You recognize a few, others are strangers to you. : Guess I'm off to find Mogr. See you in the morning, scrivener.: I'll be along.The young prince of men ambles from his ship. He brushes off his tunic, scanning the beach with low eyelids. Ludin looks for all the world the sort of boy who grew up pulling the legs from spiders. The road back to Grofheim should be more interesting than most years, you think. Now would probably be a good time to explain a bit. The governor touched on a bit during his speech last update, but there are 3 major races in this game: Men: Humans. Easy enough. Varl: Giants. Half man, half yox. Note that this isn't some Piers Anthony creepy Xanth poo poo where a yox banged a human and made a giant. Varl in this game were literally created by the gods. Gods decided "hey let's make a half man half yox" and presto, varl. Meaning there are no women varl, nor can varl reproduce. Literally every single varl was created by the gods. And with the gods dead per the first update, well...that's not great news for the varl. They're exceedingly long-lived (none of them has yet died of old age; it's a plot point) at least. Men and varl warred for a good long time, though--what the varl lacked in number, they made up for in strength. At some point the gods got pissed off at the two sides constantly fighting with one another and created... Dredge: Stone men who came from underground. The dredge attacked man and giant alike, and only through an alliance (and some other poo poo we'll get to later) were the dredge defeated. There have been two great wars betweeen dredge and humans/varl. At the end of the second great war, the dredge were driven underground and have not been seen in meaningful numbers since then. Man and varl apparently have tried to maintain their alliance despite no longer having a common enemy. Enter this diplomatic mission with Vognir and Ludin, both second in line for the throne of their respective race. Worth noting that while human succession is hereditary--Ludin is the son of the king, varl succession is basically just "the king picks a badass warrior and names him kendr, that badass warrior names his own kendr, and so on." After all, since they can't procreate you can't have hereditary anything. Varl are cool as hell and really got a raw deal. There's a 4th race, the horseborn (centaurs, basically; created the same way as varl but apparently WITH the ability to procreate) but they hosed off to the far south centuries ago. They got pissed off looking at regular horses, and murdered them all in a fit of pique. Then, ashamed, they fled south. We will not be seeing any horseborn in this game, but for good measure I figured best to cover them.  On the other hand, if you're going to join Vognir's caravan tomorrow it might not hurt to share a drink with Hakon, or introduce you to the prince they spoke so highly of.  We'll get screens like this a great deal. Click on a portrait to initiate a conversation with a hero. For the most part it's just world and character-building and not on the game's critical path. But given that you should only play this game if you're into world and character-building, it'd be a shame not to. I'll obviously be talking with people at all times. We'll start with Hakon.  : Scrivener!You find Hakon in a mead house surrounded by other varl. Strand is no stranger to varl but rarely sees this many. Hakon waves you over. : Went straight for a flagon?: Vognir's the one who agreed to pass up a drink. I wasn't invited to the governor's hall anyway.: You already missed the massacre. Every year I make the rounds collecting taxes. Every year it's the human settlements that give me trouble.: No surprise. What this time?: When I got here the great hall was already full of bodies. We added a few more.: Hah, humans. I guess if I only lived as long as a yox fart I might be desperate to make something of myself, too.: It's not too late to start trying, Hakon.Hakon lets slip a low chuckle. Any varl could recount his deeds, known as he is for cutting a swathe through dredge at Vognir's side in the second great war, and regularly since then. : Down here I'm a glorified bodyguard. You might have a point. Just another reason to get back to Grofheim.: Soon enough, I imagine.You drink until the mead house becomes overbearing, then step back into the cool air outside.  We'll go see Ludin next. : Is this the right place?You find the prince at an inn. Guards blanket the building, including a sharp-eyed varl who must be working for Ludin. A woman in red eventually waves you over and stands nearby, arms crossed. : Greetings, Prince Ludin. : Yes. You're with Vognir? I don't remember you.: Not exactly. I've known Vognir a long time. I'll be joining you back to Grofheim, with my guards.Ludin looks up for the first time. The woman doesn't react. : Why?: I work for the king, carrying tithes to the capital. We crossed by chance.: Oh, a tax collector. Fine company. What do you want? All of these lead to different dialogue, but you can only choose 1. I'll go with option 3 since it seems the most in-character for the world's most literate varl. : I have a habit of recording history. I thought we might talk about your visit.: A varl historian? Aha. Dont' you already know? Your king and mine have both been practically trumpeting throughout the cities.: I've been on the road a while, I'm afraid.Ludin takes a deep sigh. Whether tired on ungracious you aren't certain. Maybe both.  : A formality, mostly. Vognir came to our capital in Arberrang and now we go to the varl's capital in Grofheim, to cement this grand alliance for the "next age" of men and varl.: You sound unconvinced.: There's no need for it. And it's damned cold up here.You get the sense he's struggling not to complain outright. You take the opportunity to excuse yourself. With nothing else to do, we'll retire for the night.  ...your guards take the treasure wagon down to the gates. Vognir is already here. A while later Ludin and his men appear, groggy and disheveled.  You follow Mogr and join the others. Usually the smaller doors set into the gates would be enough to enter or leave the city, but the twon guards have been told to push them open entirely. They mutter things under their breath that are best not heard. Perhaps the governor expected you to draw a crowd, but there's nothing of the sort. Just frustrated, tired people. It summarizes strand well as a whole, you think.  And finally, we're on the road. There's not going to be much difficulty in Ubin's caravan, given that he's traveling with a varl and human army combined and that they're well-resourced. Still, best to go over all of this. That module at the top reports the status of our caravan. The red 36? That's RENOWN, the resource we will use to level up, buy supplies, and maybe buy items in shops. Items are kinda random and level ups are almost always better than an item. There are a couple items in this game that if they show up I'll be buying immediately, though, as they're so good that they can carry you into BS2 and even BS3 and I'd rather have that than a level 5 Gunnulf or whatever. The yellow 67? That's DAYS OF SUPPLIES, an all-purpose counter for food/water/medicine/whatever else you need to be out on the road per day and not die of starvation/dehydration/exposure/whatever. It scales to how many people you have in your caravan. We don't have 67 supplies. We have enough supplies for 85 fighters and 366 varl to survive for 67 days. When supplies get low, morale tanks. When supplies hit zero, you have people die every day until you manage to resupply. There is an achievement for not having anyone starve to death in this game. I have not gotten this achievement. I will likely not be getting it this playthrough either. The brown 1? That's day of the jouney. Not really much to report there. There's an achievement for reaching the final destination of the game in 120 days. I will 100% not be getting it this playthrough. Or ever. The smiling green face? That's MORALE, and it has a different face/color combo for each of the morale levels. Remember how health in Oregon Trail was Good/Fair/Poor/Very Poor? It's like that. Great morale gives you bonuses to willpower. Good morale gives you smaller bonuses. Fair gives you nothing. Poor and very poor morale give you equivalent maluses to willpower relative to good. Continued travel without rest with sap morale, as will starvation. As will loving up certain events. Doing well in certain events can boost morale. There is an achievement for reaching the final destination without ever going into bad morale. Given what I just said about the starvation achievement, rest assured we will not be getting that achievement either. Then there are the 3 person-types composing the caravan. CLANSMEN are human non-combatants. Civilians, if you will. They do nothing useful other than eat your food. They get more useful in later games. FIGHTERS are human combatants. The 85 here are Ludin's retinue. They will take part in large-scale war battles, which we can worry about when we get to one. Also, if your fighter count dips below certain levels, bad things tend to happen to you (the most obvious of which happens at the very end of the game.) VARL are, well...varl. All are combatants by definition. They behave the same way as fighters. Despite being strong as an ox, the game counts a fighter and a varl at 1:1 when it comes to determining war strength. And that's about it! We'll worry about all this stuff later on.  We'll toast to Vognir. You raise your drink, toasting the alliance between man and varl. The others join in. Ludin's expression is like a stone wall, but the others laugh at your exaggerations. Eventually you sit down beside Vognir. "Thanks for the speech," he slurs.  : Looks like you didn't have to miss out, after all.: Thanks to Mogr. I thought the damned governor would never shut up. Did he give you the history of his entire family?: He tried. Then he asked me to clean up his mess. For your benefit, turns out!: I'd have given the job to you too. Gods, there's no joy in politics.: Speaking of, what happens after this business with Ludin?: Hopefully the boy goes back to Arberrang. On his own. And I...can take out some frustration on dredge or something.: Starting to sound like Hakon. You don't like the life of a diplomat?: Haha! Don't you miss the fight, Ubin?You down your mead instead of replying. Vognir slouches and shakes his head. : There's no great joy in killing dredge. But this...pretty sure this nonsense is some scheme between the two kings to force some kind of lineage. Used to be, warriors would follow you for what you'd done.: Isn't that why they follow you now?: Is it? Or is it because I'm the next in line? These lines are getting muddy, old varl.: They've always been muddy, Vognir.Vognir stares into the campfire, lost in thought. You leave him to it.  This is the camp screen in the background, but we're still sort of in a tutorial. We'll get to explore a bit later on.  : Ah, it's Ludin. Always a pleasure. You look well rested.Vognir releases a caged yawn, and receives a hard-eyed stare in return. : How long to Grofheim?: Haah. We're only two days out of Strand, you know. Come, I'll show you on a map. The game's map is interactive. You can click any named area and learn a bit about it. Which is impressive since we'll only ever see like 15-25% of the game world directly. They really did a neat job building up the world and its lore.  Like Dalalond, for example. Allegedly this is where the horseborn are. We'll never see it in any of the games. But it's on the map and you can learn a bit about this lush but empty area.  : We head north, then east, past the forts. Grofheim's far from Strand. Going to be a long march.: You should have drank last night, Ludin.: Why not take the ships to Skrymirstead? What's the point of marching?: The Silverstone bay is called that for a reason. It stays covered in ice all year. It would tear up the longships.: Too bad, though. We could have shown you all the wonders of Skrymirstead.: A half-sunken city crawling with dredge, prince. Dredge and glaciers. You like glaciers?Ludin exhales through the nose, a poor disguise for his contempt. He turns and bats aside the tent flaps as he goes, barking at his company in the distance. : Don't poke the anthill, Vognir. He seems no happier to be here than you.: Spend a few more days with the boy, old friend. You'll be looking for a tall cliff to hop off, too. Ludin's got a shorter wick than Hakon.: Thanks, Vognir. Let's get moving. Another half-day to Vedrfell if we're lucky. With that, we're taken back to the Camp screen where you can manage your heroes, rest (no thanks), or do training battles (also no thanks). We have 4 heroes at present--Gunnulf, Hakon, Mogr, and Ludin. We'll be seeing a lot of all of them; they're all very good units. When Varl get injured they take injuries of 6 days (-6 strength). Gunnulf's counter is down to 5 because we technically spent a day in Strand after he got beat up a bit.  His injury notwithstanding, Gunnulf is a good unit. We'll promote him. He needs 2 kills to promote (the 2/2 at the bottom) so no worries there. Varl warhawks will almost always have more kills than you have renown with which to promote them; the ability to attack multiple units in a single turn is unparalleled. We'll worry about "item rank" once we actually get some items. Apparently I didn't screenshot it, but I gave Gunnulf 2 points (you get 2 points at level up) in armor so that he gets maimed slightly less easily going forward.  As we approach Vedrfell, Ubin narrates some more. Vedrfell. Even the name means bad weather, where frozen wind sweeps in from the bay. They tend livestock, but most are just men driven from Strand, with nowhere else to go. Why else would anyone stay? We won't stop long.  : By Hadrborg, that's a lot of varl for some missing cattle. : What?: Couple days back, sent word to Strand about the cattle. Didn't expect an army!He looks pleased with himself, until it sinks in that you aren't here on his behalf. : Where have your cattle gone?: Wouldn't know. My boys seen men up the hills carrying them away. Don't know many men who can hoist a whole cow by himself.: Skalfings out here, maybe? Could they have varl working for them?: Not from what the governor told me. I'm going to tak ea look around and set up camp.The peasant spits, his eyes anxiously darting about as the caravan sets up tents. ...Were this a different game, we'd go on a cattle rustling sidequest. But that's not The Banner Saga. The Banner Saga is a story where everyone has bad poo poo happening to them, and most of it is small-potatoes enough that it'd be absurd to get involved. I thought I'd be spending time in Vedrfell hunting down some bandits as a benevolent giant. But no, that's not at all where things are going. : We'll be here no more than a day. There's silver for any food you've got.: For hundreds of varl? Are you serious?: Whatever you're willing to sell.: You thinking of squatting? Not enough room for a couple hunters here, forget hundreds of...: Shut up. Hear that? Where's Ludin?It's faint. Sounds like fighting and...something else. Hakon takes off at a run.  We're immediately taken to a battle screen against 3 Dredge. Ludin will learn how to make waypoints--good for avoiding hazards. Also in the background, Vognir's down.  Ludin, as a spearmaster, can attack from 2 panels away--which means diagonally. Very useful! But not here, where the tutorial forces a 10 strength character to attack a 15 armor dredge. Ordinarily it's an attack that'd have a 50% chance of doing 1 damage. Pretty useless. But it's hard-coded to deflect here. Essentially a waste of a turn.  The dredge responds by one-shotting Ludin. Now both second-in-lines are down.  Hakon, Gunnulf, and Mogr arrive on the scene too late.  Hakon has the ability "sundering impact" which isn't nearly as useful as Gunnulf's "tempest," but it has its uses. It modifies the "heavy impact" skill most varl warriors have so that adjacent enemies take extra damage. But more imporantly, it does a guaranteed 1 armor, 2 strength MINIMUM damage on attack, wholly independent of your strength vs. the enemy's armor. Guaranteed strength damage is very useful, especially early on. So that's what he does here.  Gunnulf is gonna be pretty useless here. Note that he has only 10 of 15 strength in this screenshot. That's his 5 day injury rearing its head.  Mogr is a shieldmaster. He's never gonna be big on dealing damage, but he can break armor like a champ and tank reasonably well. His special skill is "return the favor," which modifies his passive. His passive does 1 armor damage to any adjacent enemy that hits him. It's still not great to get hit. Even with return the favor enabled and that 1 armor damage becoming 2/3/4. Best to not get hit.  Anyway, a bunch of poo poo happens until I maim all the dredge to the point that I'm willing to kill one and gently caress with turn order. Killing something puts 1 star in THE HORN at the top of the screen. It's a good way to spread willpower around late in a battle.  Anyway, I fed 2 kills to Hakon and 1 to Mogr. I want Hakon to be level 2 by the next time I have to use him in battle, since he ALSO has lovely armor by default and I can't have both him AND Gunnulf running around getting maimed at the first opportunity.  : You trying to get yourself killed, Ludin? What are you doing?(remember what I said about in-combat deaths usually just resulting in injuries rather than death?) : I was trying...finding a...trying to get a shot in between the plates.: You never seen a dredge before, boy? What kind of idiot...break their armor first!(To be fair to Ludin, he probably hasn't seen a dredge before.) : Where did they come from?: We didn't even see them...they were just...there.Hakon goes to where Vognir lies face down. The future varl king lies motionless, aside from a spreading pool of blood. : Vognir's dead.And on that cheery note (Vognir didn't fall in combat, he was already fallen by the time we got there), we reach the end of the chapter. FairGame fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Nov 22, 2018 |
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Sep 5, 2018 01:02
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Enchanted Hat posted:Ludin's a stupid jerk, I vote we try to get him killed ASAP. Ludin’s not so bad. He’s not really whining any more than Vognir did. Just...he’s royalty instead of a cool giant. Also I’ll get the mismatched headshot sizes fixed next update. I really appreciate everyone’s patience here.
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Sep 6, 2018 00:05
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UPDATE 3: WE'RE FROM A SMALL TOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WOODS In our last update, Vognir, second-in-line to the varl kingship, was unceremoniously killed by some random dredge offscreen. This is going to set off a significant problem when it comes to succession, and we'll need to figure out a way to... Nah, just kidding. POV change time!   Every time there's a POV switch, it'll show you on the map. So we're going from the west coast of the main continent, where Ubin, Ludin, and the varl are. Allll the way to the east coast. And north quite a ways, too.  Here, instead of varl getting harassed by dredge, there's 2 humans--a bearded dude and a red haired girl who seems extremely put off by this.  : Where did that thing come from? : Shh. Stay close.: I think it saw us! We're immediately taken into combat. This is sort of a special fight--ordinarily when one side is down to 1 person, you're in PILLAGE! mode and the opposing team gets to move as a unit before the solo combatant gets a turn. But not here. Here it'll get 2 moves for every 1 of each of my heroes, as seen in the turn order in the lower left. But, I mean, it's called "starving dredge" and was carrying a deer. I'm pretty sure we can take it.  Our two heroes for this fight are Rook (the man) and Alette (the woman). They're father and daughter. Both are extremely strong units. Rook has the same passive ability as Eirik which allows him to move in and out of allied units rather than getting blocked off. His active ability, "Mark Prey" allows him to do armor damage to anything that's in melee range, and once he's made that attack, any other allied units that can reach the marked prey will do a strength attack. So it's great for getting a shitload of strength attacks all in 1 turn. In practice because of turn order, it's not that helpful. But if you ever need to take down a boss, it's pretty handy. Rook is also notable for being the only unit in the game that can attack at range OR close up. He fights with an axe at melee distance, but he'll plant the axe in the ground and whip out his bow at ranged. Alette is strictly a ranged fighter, meaning she cannot attack anything immediately adjacent. That's true of all archers, and important when it comes to using (and avoiding, in the case of enemy units) their passive ability. The archer passive is "puncture" and it's ludicrously dangerous. For every 2 armor points the target is missing, the archer attacks as if s/he had +1 strength. Puncture is only applicable if you haven't moved yet. I guess the logic here is that you're using the time to move to line up a nice shot between cracked armor. Anyway, tanks like Mogr *hate* archers. They spent combat having their armor get chipped away, but if Mogr ordinarly has 17 armor and 10 strength, and he gets chipped down to 10 armor/10 strength, a 9 strength archer is gonna ruin his day. She'd attack as if she had 4 more points of strength, so that's a guaranteed 3 damage. Tack on exertion and suddenly Mogr can tank melee like a champ but will get ruined by an archer. Long story short, enemy archers are almost always top priority. If you can't kill them, get in their face so they have to move (and thus lose the puncture passive) to attack you. Alette's active ability is "Thread the Needle" which will do armor and strength damage to anything in a 5 tile line projecting out from her, allied or enemy. It's rarely useful.  There's not much to this combat. It'd be virtually impossible to lose it. As you can see here, the dredge is at 4/9 armor. Alette has 7 strength. Without puncture, she'd do 7 - 4 = 3 strength damage. But because the dredge is missing 5 armor, she gets 5/2 strength points added to her attack, rounded down. The green on the strength attack icon indicates it's a puncture attack.  This was actually pretty wasteful of me. If Rook does a "Mark Prey" attack and the enemy dies, both Rook and ALL attacking allies get credit for the kill. Given how important promotions are going to be, I really should've set up the kill that way so that both Alette and Rook could've gotten credit. Oh well.  : Was that a dredge?Alette looks calm, but you can tell her heart's about to race from her chest. : It was. Let me see...are you hurt?: No, I'm...I'll be fine.When the dredge attacked your cart and the yox bolted, it spilled most of your supplies. You can see more dark figures moving through trees when you glance that direction. : All that food. That's the last we're going to get before winter. Do we...what do we do?: Don't run. Let me think.You get a choice here to run, or to load up supplies as quickly as possible. We choose the latter. Rook is going to need ALL THE SUPPLIES even though right now it's not that important (we'll discuss that later on.) : I can see them, in the trees...are you sure about this?: No. We have to try, be quick! We're granted 15 supplies for making this good decision. Again, note that it'll last us 18 days--right now the caravan is just Rook and Alette. That's going to change in a second.  Whereas Ubin's caravan is moving left to right, Rook is moving right to left as they approach the town of Skogr.  : I never expected to see the dredge with my own eyes. What happened in the north? Already, we see more between the trees as we approach our home, and Alette grips my hand tight. We must find Iver. : Iver!The enormous varl in question towers over the men in the training field. He squints as you approach.   : Already back, huntmaster? Thought you'd be tomorrow.: Dredge. Everywhere!: Dredge? How did they get through Greyhorn?: Must have broken through the fort.The fighters nearby have stopped sparring. They gather around you. : Dammit! They'll be here soon if they're not already.You hear screams. From the outskirts, people are running toward the great hall. Iver turns to one of the older boys in his group of fighters. : Egil, take Alette to the great hall. Tell the chieftain what's happening. The rest of you gather up as many people as you can! : Come on, Alette!: No, wait. I, I want to help... This is a moderately important choice, as it'll impact who's in the next fight. Egil and Alette are both hero units and can fight. But because of how the game works, there's strength in small numbers and I'd much rather have Iver and Rook get most of the turns than share them with Egil and Alette. So I send them packing. : Go with Egil, Alette.Alette looks like she might protest, but scowls and runs off to safety. : Gods, Rook. Don't start telling them I know what I'm doing.: I know it's a stretch, but they bought it. What's the plan?: Just hold off any dredge we see until everyone's inside, then we figure it out.More shouts draw your attention to some houses atop a nearby hill! Editor's Note: This is where I started the new screenshot process. I hope they look good! Let me know if not!  We're SO CLOSE to being able to actually play and not be stuck in tutorial mode. But not yet. We only have the option to check out houses. Sure enough, dredge are gathering in number. Fear threatens to bubble over into panic. "How long do we need to keep this up?" you ask. Iver shakes his head unknowingly. That's a bad sign.  aaaaand I hosed something up. Oh well. When The Banner Saga first came out, it gave a special character, Tryggvi, to you in this battle and all subsequent ones. He's a spearmaster, is fairly interesting, and has identical stats to Ludin. He's unlocked for free on the PS4 version, but I forgot I needed to enable him here. Oh well; I'm pretty sure he can't die in Banner Saga 1 so when we get to 2 he'll just kinda magically appear. This does mean that this battle is going to be a little difficult, though, since Trygvvi and Iver can team up to do some bullshit and now I can't do that.  Iver's class is "Strongarm," a varient of the shieldmaster class that Mogr (from the Ubin caravan) has. His stat caps are incredibly good. And he'll be our heavy hitter for a while. Whereas the Ubin caravan is brimming with high strength varl, this POV is pretty much a one-varl show. His passive is the same as Mogr's: he does armor chip damage when he gets attacked in melee. His active is "battering ram," in which he can whack a dude with his shield and knock them back up to 4 tiles, including moving them through other units. Great for knocking back the clumsy 2x2 varl-sized dredge to the point that they can't get past their own people to close to within melee. It's situationally useful, but when it's useful it's REALLY useful. Because we told Alette to stay out of combat, her bracelet comes with us without Alette. For a rank 1 item, it's extremely good, giving 3 stat points. You have to be the character level OR higher than the item level to wear it. Not a problem in this instance. Though I wonder how a bracelet that's made to fit on Alette's slender wrist is being worn by Iver. Maybe he's wearing it as a ring.  We talked about Rook already. He's extremely well-rounded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBZmHUZB-_4: BGM, "Cut with Keen-Edged Sword"   We're going to dance around these dudes. 1 2x2 big guy, and 3 grunts. No problem.  So long as Rook isn't getting hit by the big guy, we're fine. But the big guy has to maneuver all the way around Iver, and meanwhile Rook can move back and forth on either side of Iver because of his passive. And because Rook and Iver are getting 2 turns to every 1 turn from the big guy, we can slowly chip away his armor. This would be easier if we'd had Trygvvi, but no worries.  Literally the entire fight is Rook playing keep away from the big guy, breaking armor while Iver does significant strength damage. Eventually I decide everyone is maimed enough to begin killing.  Iver ended the fight with like 0 armor, but whatever. Split the kills 2/2 and now both characters can level up.  : Got it.You're lucky to escape the notice of more dredge on the way back. You can see them rummaging through homes, tearing the buildings apart. If you're going to look for more survivors you make a note to do it quickly.  : You find anyone?: A few, sent them inside. Gods, this is bad. I'm out of practice, Rook.: Look. As long as I've known you, you've always wormed your way out of talking about dredge. This would be the time to start talking.: I can tell you they rarely stop for rest. The sooner we leave, the better. They'll follow us until we're tripping over tired women and children. Then they'll attack. Even after we're wiped out they'll keep coming, trampling corpses in their wake. There's no end to them.: How did anyone survive the great wars?: Ask the menders. I wasn't there.: But I know you've fought your fair share.: Yeah. I've killed enough slag for one lifetime.: That's why you're going to save us now.: Don't lay that on me. Come on, let's get inside. You can go to the town market, but there's not really anything here worth buying. Item drops and market item stocks are random in this game. At least the item costs seem to've been patched so that it's 2 renown/item level rather than 5, which is what it was at launch. Somehow the Banner Saga 2 economy made its way into this game. It's still not like that on PS4. Odd. Anyway, we could buy some supplies, but I'm not going to. And none of these items really do anything worth mentioning, either.  Iver levels up to 2. I stick both points in strength.  Rook levels up to 2. I stick both points in armor break.  We head into the town hall.  : Rook! Thank the gods you made it!The great hall is an utter din, filled as it is with dozens of terrified families. : Don't stop worrying yet.: I haven't. What in the depths is going on? Dredge milling around, ransacking houses?The chieftain's wife finds you, pushing through the crowd.   : They must know we're here, why haven't they attacked?Editor's Note: Yes, Oddleif is a man's name. It's addressed. : Don't know. I wouldn't expect it to last.: I've made some decisions. But tell me straight, what would you both do in my place?: I'd have left by now. They're already outside the doors.: Not so easily done. Rook?: I trust Iver on this.The chieftain sighs a deep and heavy breath, slumping. He looks years older.  : I imagined us fighting back and "saving the town," but...nonsense. Iver's right, of course. We can't just wait to be slaughtered.: Where do we go? If dredge are coming down from the north...: Frostvellr, to the west. It's close and it has walls. I intend to be free of Skogr in one push, nobody left behind.: I wouldn't. If they follow us, we're done.: What do you suggest?: Let me create a distraction, then go. I'll catch up on the road to Frostvellr.  Let's put this to a vote. In order to condense some of the branching dialogue, vote like this:1.) What should take priority? FOOD, CIVILIANS, OR LEADERSHIP 2.) Should we let Alette fight alongside us? FairGame fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Nov 22, 2018 |
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Sep 6, 2018 23:36
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Zanzibar Ham posted:Actually I can guess why it's not good, since for it to work optimally damage-wise she'd have to put herself close to the enemy, and with an opening for them to reach her after. That’s part of it. But mostly it’s “remember how I explained how her passive ability, puncture, works? And how if you move, you lose its benefit?” It’s very rare that enemies are lined up BEFORE she moves, at which point you’ve lost a lot of her damage potential. Plus as you say, it’s never great to have an archer close to being in harm’s way.
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Sep 7, 2018 03:34
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Voting closed. Will focus on civilians and try to keep Alette out.
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Sep 7, 2018 22:03
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Crane Fist posted:A spoiler, unintentionally Hey man, mind editing that out?
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Sep 7, 2018 22:56
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UPDATE 4: I HAVE TO AXE YOU A QUESTION Y'all voted that we'd try to protect civilians, and try and leave Alette out of it. We tell the Chieftain we'll go along with Iver's plan to create a distraction and lead the dredge away from town.  : I didn't ask for advice just to ignore it. Promise you're not throwing away your lives on this.: That wasn't part of my plan. Iver?: Nope. : Then I'm coming with you.That catches you by surprise. The chieftain rubs his chin, but doesn't argue. From the training she's given Alette, you've no doubt she can handle a bow. : Fine. I'll get the townspeople ready. Make your move, Iver. We'll leave when you're clear. Iver wants to bring in Egil ("Gil"), the boy he was training when we first arrived in town. Alette wants to come along too, but we won't let her. : Don't leave me alone...It's difficult, but you drag yourself to the door of the great hall, resolute that you're making the best decision for her. You step into the town courtyard, where you can already see dredge in every direction. Iver starts banging his shield and swearing at them. "We kill a few," he shouts, "And the rest will follow!" You steel yourself for a tough fight.  We have 2 new units for this battle, both level 1. Egil's a carbon copy of Valgard, that dude from the tutorial fight. He's tanky as gently caress, but can't do much else. If we had a full roster, his ability to tank would be better, but since we're only going with 4 characters he'll need to recast his "stone wall" ability more often and will run out of willpower before the fight is over. ...plus enemies won't always focus on him anyway. Oddeif, on the other hand, rules. She's another archer, like Alette, and gets the "puncture" passive. Her active is extremely weird. It's called "Rain of Arrows," and she can use it to trap any tile in her firing range. If an enemy walks onto that tile, it takes strength damage as if she'd fired a stationary shot at it. It also immediately ends its turn. The enemy AI is coded not to notice where you've set your traps, or if Egil's stone wall is up. So if you can get good at predicting the enemy AI, you can cause it to waste turns attacking a wall, or walking into traps. It's somewhat difficult to do, though. The AI is coded to prioritize in the following way, as near as I can tell: Kill something > > > > > Strength damage > > > Armor damage > Reposition So you can have Egil right in something's face, but if the enemy thinks it can kill something it'll go for that target instead. The ideal situation is getting the enemy to think it can kill Egil, in which case it'll waste its turn attacking his stonewall. Oddleif's a bit easier because archers make squishy targets and she can frequently use her skill to trap things that are interested in hurting HER. It's a useful skill, but you really need items that gently caress with enemy aggro to make it work properly.  We will eventually be maxing out Egil's armor. And then I guess his armor break. I prefer to keep him low strength, though, since it makes enemies think him an easier target. All his stats SUCK. His stat CAPS are superb. Probably the best human fighter in the series. Just...good luck keeping him alive long enough to get there.  Oddleif also has pretty rubbish stats right now, but since she won't be in harm's way it's fine.  We're up against 2 stoneguards and 3 grunts, but they're thankfully split up. We'll focus on the lower 2 first and wait for the others to come to us.  The enemy stoneguard (the big guy) was gonna get an early turn so I moved Egil into his way. He's the only viable target, so he wastes his turn.  The grunt does the same. When Egil works, he works REALLY well.  Rook (armor break) and Oddleif (strength damage) combine to maim the grunt coming from the far side. He's also nicely taking up space that his big guy friend will need to traverse.  Because I don't have Tryggvi to combine with Iver for strength damage, I need to get Egil involved in actual combat. He begins breaking the armor of the stoneguard.  Iver gets in on the action as well. He's standing next to Egil, which means both he and Egil get +1 armor--enough that the 12 strength stoneguard isnt' terribly threatening.  I miscalculate a bit and cause Rook and Egil to get maimed, but Rook can hide behind Iver whenever necessary, and Egil can just put up his shield wall. They're the 2 guys in this battle that can take strength damage and have it not be a problem.  The rest of the fight just becomes me maiming the poo poo out of enemies until they're at 1 strength and then picking and choosing who gets the kill. For giggles, I use Mark Prey against the hapless stoneguard at the end, ensuring EVERYONE gets credit for the kill.  ...an hour later, Oddleif is the first to spot them. "There!" she points to the road. As you rejoin them, you can tell there was trouble, some people wounded. Others missing. Alette rushes to you, throwing her arms around your waist. You smile and hug her tightly. "Dad...please don't do that again," she says. "Brave girl, this one," adds one of the women from Skogr. "Chieftain would've died without her." She points to the back of the caravan. You find Oddleif beside her husband, who is laid out in a cart. "Old fool," she says. "Got himself a prize for trying to fight back." She shows you his deep gut wound. "But he's alive. Nothing for it but to get to Frostvellr." You continue on in silence, Alette's hand in your own. We gain a ton of renown for this. Chieftain is alive (barely), Rook and Iver's plan worked, and Alette apparently did something heroic offscreen. All told, good choices, y'all!   We select to rally the caravan. : Fight for every step! Remember those who didn't make it and push onwards!The clansmen see your effort and follow suit, pushing themselves harder. ...we gain some more renown. It was a good speech.  At the dawn (or what would be dawn, if not for the sun never setting) of the 6th day, we arrive at a godstone. You'll find these littered all over the world of The Banner Saga, monuments to the gods, constructed while they yet lived. : Far enough for today, I think.After a day of misery, men and women drop their meager possessions beneath the godstone of Hridvaldyr. : What are we doing? We just left our homes because suddenly there were dredge.: Chieftain did what I suggsted and look what he got for it.: Look at these people. Someone has to hold them together.: That's you, Rook.: But you're the dredge killer around here.: Yeah, a varl. They want to listen to someone who looks like them.: What about Oddleif?: Let her, if that's easier for you.: What if we run into more dredge?: You mean when. I'll be honest with you, these men can't take on dredge by themselves. I expect we'll lose two for every slag we take down.: So we run?: Only if you want to lose women and children. We're going to have to fight, and there are going to be deaths.: Gods be damned. Why is this happening?: Think of how I feel. I'm stuck nursing a bunch of weaklings. : You do care, I can tell.: Feh, men are a plague on the world worse than any dredge, as far as I can tell.: Chats like this are why we get along so well, Iver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exkbBiDcO60: BGM, "Only the Sun Has Stopped" The godstone looms overhead, the massive eyes of Hridvaldyr looking the same direction as you. The weathered stone doesn't see many visitors. Not much reason to travel so far east. When hunters come through they sometimes stop to give offerings, out of habit more than anything else now that the gods are dead. Hridvaldyr was the god of hunters and of wild beasts, occasionally seen roaming the land as both man and wolf. He was always depicted in effigy with his terrible spear. You wonder what he'd think about his woods being full of dredge now. A young girl from the caravan approaches you. "I made this for you," she says, handing you a crude necklace carved from a branch she must have found nearby. "Thank you for saving my mama," she says, before running back to her tent. Back at your tent, you rouse Alette, who clings to your arm until she's completely awake. Bad dreams. Eventually the camp is broken down and it's time to move on to Frostvellr. It feels like an end more than a start.  We're granted the Bjarken Rune. It is a level 2 item that gives its bearer a 15% chance to completely dodge a strength attack. Powerful when it triggers, since it'll dodge a 10 strength attack as readily as a 1 strength attack. But a 15% chance isn't worth pinning one's hopes on. We'll use it only until we have something better. Most godstones in this game grant items. Maybe they all do, actually. The gods are dead, but their magic is still in the world. Subtly so, but it's present.  We hit the road again. Note that the default morale for Rook's caravan is just normal. Unlike the varl and human royalty caravan, we're not swimming in fighters or supplies. We're a bunch of refugees with little food and security. It's not great.    You get random events while you're on the road. You won't get every event in every game, though this one I think is a fixed encounter. We need more supplies and fighters, and local folks seem like they're worth taking a chance on. Not all encounters are so pleasant. We're granted 12 fighters, 5 renown, and 18 supplies for bringing them into the fold.  Another random event.  This is a viking game! There's gonna be drinking and fighting and we should be ok with it! Skal! ...we gain 5 renown.  We hit a small village where we can rest, though we don't need to because we did so well in the escape from Skogr.  More importantly, it gives us a chance to talk to Egil.  You find Egil just outside the camp, practicing his sword swings. : How's the arm, Egil? I saw you taking some hard hits out there. : Oh. Yeah, I'm great. Er, not great, considering everything that's...I'm fine. My arm is fine. It's a strong shield. It's Rook, right? I know we haven't talked much. Before now. But if you want, just call me Gil.: OK, Gil.: I wanted to let you know that I meant what I said before. About making sure nothing happens to Alette.: You're protective of Alette, huh?: Well, she's...I don't want her to get hurt.You can see his cheeks turn bright red. : Don't worry, she can take care of herself, too.: I know, I didn't mean...: Easy, Gil. I know what you meant. Iver seems to think you're pretty good.: Did he say that? That's good. I'm trying. Never had to fight anything like dredge before, but...I don't have much else to do. And how many people get to train with a varl? Just seems like...I could be a help to someone. That's what I want to be.: I've never seen a shield like that before.: Yeah, I doubt there's many. My father made this. It's solid metal, really heavy. But I've been practicing with it since I was a kid. I used to spend a lot of time just getting used to lifting it.He raises it up to show you. : I'm pretty good with it now. It's the only thing of my father's I have left. Then when my mother died...she gave it to me...before she died.: I'm heading back to camp. Stay strong.: I will. Oh, and if you need something, let me know. I can do anything you need. Between you and Iver, we're going to be ok, I can tell. We get extraordinarily lucky and find this ring here. It's an incredibly powerful artifact that I'd be willing to pay 25 renown for, but thanks to the rebalance patch I only have to pay 2 renown per item level. Strength resist is the best effect in the game, in my opinion. It flat removes 2 strength damage from anything that'd hurt you for strength damage. Unlike armor, it can't go away, either. A LOT of effects in this game do 1 damage to you in bursts. If you're bleeding, you lose 1 strength point per tile you move. But if you move 4 tiles, that's not 4 damage. It's 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 damage. Which, thanks to strength resist, makes 0 damage. The enemy AI also doesn't know you can resist strength, so if you give this item to your tanks they'll effectively behave like Egil when he has his stone wall up. Level 5 is the cap in this game and we won't be there for a while. But you can import items from BS1 into BS2, and we'll have some level 5s in this game before it's all said and done. This item loving rules and I'm elated to find one.  Oddleif got most of the kills while we escaped Skogr, and I give her a point in exertion and a point in armor break. She's never gonna be a heavy hitter, but if she can break 4 armor per turn that's pretty useful and can let Iver and Rook start to do some damage.  There's not much else to do in town, so we head out again, bound for Frostvellr.  But before we get too far from town, this happens.  : What's going on?  : These bastards don't speak for us! They've been trying to divide the village since you got here.  : True. You can keep whoever wants to stay and die.  : The rest of us will go with the reasonable people of Skogr.: I'll have you both gutted before I let half the village desert!Behind the angry villager, a mob of thugs have appeared, all furrowed brows and nervous stares. : You both know what will happen to the rest of us if the fields are abandoned! Nobody leaves!: There won't be anything to tend once the dredge arrive.: Dredge, my rear end! I don't know what the scam is this time, Hogun, but you got two choices. Get back to work, or I'm finally putting you in the ground.: Mogun, what do you say? Thought it was unfair that he only asked me.Mogun draws his axe slowly, followed by Hogun. Despite their confidence, the brothers are significantly outnumbered.  Vote time!The axe brothers, Hogun (no scar) and Mogun (scar) are very likely to get themselves killed trying to get their town to flee the dredge. On the other hand, who are we to interfere in another village's politics? Do we HELP THE BROTHERS or do we SIDE WITH THE TOWN LEADER? FairGame fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Sep 18, 2018 |
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Sep 8, 2018 00:45
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Alright, that's not getting overturned anytime soon. And I discovered that the ps4 and pc versions of this game are balance-wise rather different. The axe bros are...good? Wasn't expecting that. Update tomorrow.
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Sep 8, 2018 03:48
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double nine posted:that village leader sounds like a total dumbass. Help the brothers. The last fight of this game loving SUCKS and I hate it so much. It’s not remotely fair. But we will worry about that when we get there. Getting that Namejs Ring helps a bit, at least. FairGame fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Sep 9, 2018 |
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Sep 9, 2018 02:40
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Clansmen ARE useless in the first game. They’re just mouths to feed and do nothing of value for you. The only reason to protect them is because you are very invested. Which I am. You cannot make the game unwinnable. You probably CAN make the final battle unwinnable on hard, as certain units are much better in that fight than others, and it’s possible to get those units killed. But as the last post said, just flip it to easy.
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Sep 9, 2018 12:06
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UPDATE 5: THE ROAD NOT TAKEN By unanimous vote, we decide to intervene on behalf of the brothers.  Oh dear. Where'd Alette go?   Hogun and Mogun are identical twins and have virtually identical stats. Mogun (the scarred one) is more attack-oriented, and Hogun is more defense-oriented. But it's barely a difference. Especially because of their class. Both of them are "thrashers," a sub-class/kit of the raider class. Meaning they get the shield wall passive (+1 armor to adjacent units.) Their active ability is "bloody flail," which seems to've been significantly improved in this version of the game. It's an interesting ability. At melee range, you randomly do either strength or armor damage, 4 times. The final hit will do +1 damage based on however many allied adjacent units you have. The damage when I last played was just 1 for each hit, so your bloody flail would do 4 points cumulative of armor or strength. Not very useful, though if you get lucky and hit 3 or 4 of the points in strength, you can weaken a heavily-armored target off the bat. Also nice in case Hogun or Mogun get maimed--the damage you do is independent of your own strength, so a 1 strength Hogun can still do potentially 4 points of damage to something. It seems like rather than the FINAL hit being boosted, though, that ALL hits are now boosted by adjacency, because Hogun and Mogun ripped off some hilariously strong bloody flails in this battle. It also means enemy thrashers are a lot more dangerous than I thought, though I already had a habit of killing them early because nothing is more frustrating than getting bloody flailed for 4 strength points early in a fight.  Again, not sure if I got lucky here or if they patched down the difficulty of this fight. It was always winnable, but I'd usually get someone wounded. Now, though...there are 0 archers on the board. Iver is gonna run roughshod over these clowns.  As always, my first move is to stick Egil out to draw fire. An enemy thrasher uses bloody flail on him, and his "stone wall," which cancels up to 3 damage per hit, just completely trivializes the attack.  The most dangerous enemy unit on the board is the "backbiter," who spawned away from the rest of the dudes. There were some of those in the opening fight way back in the first update. But Oddleif makes too tempting a target for the AI to ignore and the backbiter spends most of the fight trying to attack her and instead running headlong into her rain of arrow traps.  Mogun is next to both Egil and Iver, so his bloody flail does some pretty strong damage here. The battle is well in hand at this point.  Iver runs a backbiter through and becomes promotion eligible.  We finish off the fight with Rook using mark prey so that 3 units can get credit for a kill.  This was the correct choice, inasmuch as this game has "correct" choices. Had we sided with the villagers we'd have gotten a whole lot of nothing. Instead, we get 2 hero units (who apparently don't suck anymore), a bunch of clansmen, a handful of fighters, some supplies, and a ton of renown.  Alette's fine, by the way. She just didn't want to be part of the fighting.  : Alette, I have something for you.Oddleif has gathered up the long banner from the caravan, and smiles warmly as she passes it to Alette. : What's this about?: I was hoping you'd sew up the banner with everything that has happened since we left Skogr. Come find me another time, Rook, and we'll talk.Before you can comment, she departs.  MUSIC!Just listen and ignore the intensely silly video : Dad, are you...the chieftain now?: It looks that way.: Oh. Then that means...You're both quiet for a moment, while Alette unfurls the banner. : Oddleif has been teaching me how to sew.: She speaks pretty highly of you.: Can we read the part about mom?You nod. On the banner has been sewn the story of the families who have lived in Skogr throughout the years, just as is done on every banner in every town. : I wish she were here. But I'm kind of glad she isn't.The section of banner about your family is short, but Alette has been sewing in colorful designs. : Why do you say that?: So she doesn't have to deal with...all of this. Dredge. Leaving home. And...why did you have to kill those men? In the village? I mean...if it's ok to ask... : They would have killed others. : But how do you know which ones are bad?Editor's Note: This is one of the best questions in the whole series. You...don't. : Because...the dredge are terrifying. Every time we have to fight them I just want to run. But...I don't want to kill a person. Please. Are you mad at me?: I'm glad you don't want to.Alette smiles at this, then her face sinks again. : I guess I would do it, if I really had to. But, do we have to?: I know what you mean.: Yeah, I know. Dad...I think you're doing a good job.She hugs you. You spend the rest of your time together, sewing new verses into the banner. For better or worse, the story of Skogr is your burden now. There is an achievement, "innocent," for finishing the Saga without Alette harming a non-dredge unit. We...probably won't get it. It's possible, though!  Oddleif said to go see her, so let's go do that.  : How are you doing, Odd?: I'm alright. Oh, but I realized after I handed you the banner I probably gave the wrong impression. My husband's still in and out of consciousness. It doesn't look good. It's harder than I thought it would be. Just...not knowing. People tell me I'm a "strong woman.": It's funny, my father named me Oddleif before I was even born. He wanted a boy so badly. "Strong woman." What does that even mean? These options matter a bit insofar as Oddleif's opinion of Rook. : People look up to you.: Don't take this the wrong way but I don't want to be known for handling my feelings. If I feel nothing about my husband dying people think I'm strong. If I cry because my insides feel like they're on fire I'm weak. Why does that feel so backwards? I'm sorry, Rook, it's been hard.You're not sure what to say. In the many years you've known the chieftain's wife this is probably the most you've ever talked. : You asked me to come find you?: Yes. It's about the banner. I thought about it a long time. He asked me to give it to you, you know. In case something happened. : Why me?: He always depended on you, Rook. It should be mine. I could carry it. But I thought about why he named you. I get it. They won't follow a woman. Families would leave. Our banner would be divided. : You're probably right.: I know I'm right on this one. It's not just about our small town. What happens the first time we need something from another clan? How will that go? And the first time someone thinks they can take advantage of us? I think this is what has to happen. : I rely on you.: I'll be there when I can. Just don't expect any miracles. Listen, I know I dragged this out. The truth is, my husband and I could never have a child. I don't want our banner to end here. It'll be safe with you and Alette. I know you're going to take care of her.She puts her hand on your shoulder as she heads back to the camp.  Well poo poo. If Oddleif is wise enough to see that she can't lead effectively because of patriarchal bullshit, and strong enough to step aside, I can make sure the rest of the Skogr crew is just as strong. Egil gets these 2 points in armor break. You'd think it'd go in armor, but with stone wall I want him to have low armor so that he's an appealing target for enemy AI that thinks they can do strength damage.  Rook levels to 3 and puts his points in exertion. Now I can break 6 armor my first couple of turns.  Almost immediately upon getting back on the road, this pops up. We see them off with extra supplies. There's really no reason not to, and Rook isn't really in charge enough to keep them here if I wanted to.  We lose 8 fighters (permanently; the implication is that they don't find family and end up getting killed themselves) but gain 10 renown in the bargain. That's well worth it.  That drunk guy is causing trouble again, and this time it can't be laughed off quite so easily. We choose to punish him physically. You're considering your options when Oddleif appears out of nowhere and doubles him over with a gut shot. "Endanger everyone again and you'll get more than a cracked rib!" she shouts, leaving in a huff. The others go back to their business, satisfied with the outcome. Caravan morale goes up slightly, and Oddleif really should be the loving leader.  He...didn't learn his lesson. Moron. We let our clansmen deliver justice. A swift and brutal beating befalls Rafnsvartr, one that leaves him begging for mercy. The next time he is offered mead, the man shies away in fear. As for the rest of the caravan, everyone seems pretty satisfied. I guess "beating up the town drunk" is the best option here, as it improves morale slightly.  We approach Frostvellr, where our chieftain said we'd be safe thanks to the strong walls of the town.  Indeed, those walls look pretty impressive. But so does the encampment...outside the town? That's not good...   : This is not looking good.: Why are there so many people in the fields?: We can't stay outside in the open like this.Oddleif finds you amongst the many refugees.  : Rook, I just talked to some of the women here. Nobody is being let into the city.: Why?: It's overrun with varl from Blotsbalkr, Greyhorn, people from Bitra, all the nearby villages. The dredge are everywhere. And the chieftain of Frostvellr has locked himself in his great hall. That's when they closed the gates.: When the dredge come, these hills will turn red. We have to get in there.: Where else could we go?: With our whole caravan? South, but Sigrholm or Boersgard are so far away they may as well be horseborn lands.: The dredge are moving south. If we keep going west we might get out of their path. Wyrmtoe is half as far as Sigrholm, and full of varl.: and it's across the wastes. These people won't make it.: I don't like any of these ideas.: That's because they're all bad. There's no point talking about leaving. We have to get in there.: We're getting in the walls somehow.: I can get that gate open.: Let' ssee if there's any other way before we start breaking down gates. : I wasn't going to break it. Just push really hard. There's nothing of particular value in the store. The jarl's seal gives +1 willpower per turn, and I thought about giving it to Egil so he can just use stone wall forever. But I thought better of it. Very few supplies available, which makes sense given how crowded the town is.  There are branching paths here. And the decision you make in Frostvellr matters fairly significantly. However, the first LP of this game took one of the paths so we're gonna take the other major Frostvellr decision. That plan Iver had? "I'm a loving giant varl; gently caress your gate?" It sounds good.  Archers up on the walls make it clear that nobody will be getting in. Men and women below intermittently call for mercy and reason, when they're not flinging stones and curses. : Iver, did you really expect to push these gates open? : OK, give it a shot. Then, unbelievably, the doors start trembling. The archers shout, more to those inside the walls than out. The creaking becomes louder, then a crack. Then the doors part, slightly. "Help him!" you shout to the rest of the caravan. When you look back again you see that nearly everyone has thrown in to push. The gate finally succumbs under your combined effort, and you find yourself face-to-face with dumbfounded guards. You bark at the mob to attack!  There's no opportunity to set your battle party here; you plunge right into the fight. Fortunately I wouldn't change my lineup anyway. The only other character we have is Alette, and she doesn't want to fight humans.  That enemy archer is gonna be a pain in the rear end if I can't get to her, but fortunately she was only able to reach Egil this turn.  Iver has 4 armor break. Couple that with his exertion and he breaks the poo poo out of the enemy thrasher's armor. If Rook can get in position for a mark prey, Iver will autoattack and do a poo poo load of damage.  It doesn't quite turn out that way, as Rook has a chance to kill the enemy archer instead, but Iver nevertheless gets the last laugh against the thrasher. Sorry I'm not showing how the whole battle unfolds, but really there's just not much to these. Basically it's a bunch of: 1.) Figure out ways to make the enemy waste turns attacking Egil. 2.) Break the poo poo out of enemy armor with Rook and Iver 3.) When opportunities present themselves, mark prey and have Iver maim people 4.) Maintain shield wall since with 3 units (Hogun, Mogun, Egil) on the map that can boost armor, I can keep pretty much everyone safe. 5.) Use Oddleif as a decoy with rain of arrows.  I hosed up here and mislicked. My plan was to have Rook mark prey so everyone but 1 of the thrasher brothers would get credit for a kill. Instead, Hogun hogs the final kill.  We could've done lots of things to get into the city. Such as: 1.) SEWER LEVEL! (Iver's too big to fit into the cistern so you have to fight without him) 2.) Wait for a supply cart from the city to come out and negotiate with them to be let in 3.) Wait for the supply cart from the city to come out, murder the supply cart's crew, and come back into the city in it 4.) Nothing at all; just make camp outside. But Iver offers a direct approach.   : What in the depths are you doing?: Letting ourselves in.: I can see that. I'm very impressed. But all those people you just let in here? DEAD. All those women and children with you? DEAD. And thanks for killing the only ones holding this place together. Skal. : What are you talking about?The man orders his guards to get the doors closed again before more refugees notice. : If I knew there were fighters and a varl outside I would have brought you in. I'm Ekkill. I'm in charge here. You heard about the chieftain?: We heard he's hiding out in the great hall.: Oh really? Think you mean hiding out in a grave. He's eating worms, if that wasn't clear.: What happened in here?: Soon as they heard dredge were coming, anyone who couldn't swing an axe got one to the head. That's the short story, anyway. At least three clans in here warring over turf and food, and the WORST are the god-forsaken varl!He eyes Iver and shrugs with exaggeration as if simply stating the obvious. : We're in more danger here than out there?: Look, I was in charge here before things went to crap. You've got some people who can fight. You've got a varl who apparently has the strength of a god. I can keep your flock safe, in the great hall. You fight for me. And to take back Frostvellr.: I don't take sides. Too hard to tell when the good guys have become the bad.: Fine. Cut these sheep loose and watch your own asses. What do I care? All I want to do right now is get out of the damned streets. Think carefully about what you want. This would ordinarily be a vote, but we're intentionally going with options that differ from the previous LP. : We're not staying here. Let us out.: I don't know if that's...Ekkill has already shouted to his men, who stare daggers in return. They had just finished closing the massive doors. : A fine waste of time, and lives. Now get out.You pass again through the gates of Frostvellr, wondering if you just threw away your best chance for survival. : Hope we know what we're doing.: Making it up as we go, Iver. And on that note, chapter 2 ends. Whatever happens to Rook and the Skogr refugees will have to wait, we're POV switching back to Ubin/Hakon/Ludin next time. FairGame fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Sep 18, 2018 |
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Sep 9, 2018 15:11
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Huh. I remember this part being a lot more involved when I played through...is it considered a spoiler to discuss paths NOT taken? Wait until the start of chapter 4. I skipped a bit of content but also suspect some of what you're thinking of is actually early chapter 4 stuff.
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Sep 9, 2018 22:04
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I hosed something up and we've had our first character death. I didn't even know this character could die. More importantly, perhaps, the death of this character means one fewer vote y'all get to do. And also I have to post the entirety of Chapter 3 (the most boring chapter in the whole series; it's nothing but combat) without any thread input. Hang with me, folks. If you can deal with the next couple updates (which I also suspect are the parts that caused people to stop playing, once upon a time, you're in for a real treat the rest of the time.
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Sep 10, 2018 00:28
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UPDATE 6: YOU'RE THE WORST GODDAMN WARLEADER Yeah, I'm absolutely doing some metagaming with Rook's party and we'll explain what's going on with that next time we see them. Which won't be for a bit, because we have to do the worst chapter in the whole series now. Unless you like the combat, in which case it's probably the best chapter.  Sit tight, Rook. We'll see you eventually.  For now, it's time to play as Ubin...or not. I guess Hakon's the POV character now?   : Hakon. We're back. I was able to get about as many warriors from Strand as you wanted, and more weapons. Extra supplies, too.You perk up, just now realizing Mogr has been talking to you. Since Vognir died everyone has been looking to you to make the decisions. It's exhausting. : Hakon? : Sorry, just tired. Go on.: I was saying the valr we sent to Strand have returned. The governor gave us most of what we wanted.: Good enough. Much resistance from the governor?: Some. I don't think he was happy about us buying his figthers using his own money. He also insisted we take on a lackey of his to watch over his "property." A man named Eirik. : Eirik? I met him. He seemed competent enough.: Regardless, the governor will have to get over it unless he wants dredge crawling through his streets. We've put down every slag that has wandered through here while you were gone.: Enough flapping of mouths, then.: You're sure that wound has healed, Ludin?: I agree. Enough has already gone wrong. If something happens to the prince on a mission of peace...the alliance would rot. Or worse. : Ludin makes his own decisions.: We would only be made to do this again later. And I will not suffer it all a second time. Either take us through the Wandering Road, or do your job and slaugther some dredge.Ludin turns abruptly with a scowl. He stamps back to his ring of tents and followers. : Wandering Road's not an option with this many.: I could crush that boy's skull with one hand...: If Ludin won't be deterred, you'll have to deal with it. Don't let Ludin get to you.: Let's go. I'm sick of looking at this dump.: What do I tell the warriors, Hakon? : Tell them we cover the mountainside in dredge bodies.Editor's Note: This is just flavor text. But Hakon isn't really a leader. He's a a figther, and the mantle of leadership doesn't sit well with him. I figure slaugthering the poo poo out of dredge is in character, and his class is literally called "warmaster." This decision to RP a guy who loves battle...welll...you'll see. : Good. Give the word, and we'll set off. We're still in Vedrfell for now. Let's talk to Ubin and Mogr.  : You knew him well, didn't you? : Vognir? No. Ah, well...I don't know. I remember him. Always rushing around with some important business. But I never knew him. Never got a chance to talk much.: Longer than I did, in any case.: I suppose so. When he spoke, varl listened. I knew that.: I could use help there.The scrivener leans back, considering the sentiment. : I've seen worse. They respect you for your ability to swing an axe. They need to respect you for your actions. But you're not talking to the right varl. Mogr's got some skill there. Most I can do is hold a quill.: I heard you were a terror back in your day.: Do you know how old I am?: Dare I ask?: I'm competing, you know. Nobody knows how old we varl can get. Naturally. There's one by the name of Snorri. He's got a few years on me, just hunkers in Grofheim collecting rime. Bastard might actually beat me. Another one named Krumr is close, I think. But the addled son of a bitch still welcomes a fight. He'll probably be offed before I am. Although...The scrivener gestures around him as if you remind you of the current situation. You chuckle. : Anyway, point is what difference does it make? I'm just a delivery bairn for Jorundr now. Can't remember half of what I've done.: Hence the journal?: "Hence?" Don't get fancy on my behalf, Hakon.: OK, I won't. What are you always writing in that journal of yours?: How do you mean? What do I write? I write what happens.: They've got a banner in Arberrang for that, you know.: You mean the Long Banner? Yes, the Manders wove up something that writes its own history. You want my opinion? I don't trust it.: No?: It tells a broad story. I think there's some value in the narrow. Whose story does it write? Mine? Theirs? Ludin's? ...gods forbid.: Hah, you relic. The gods have been dead a long time.: Oh, have they? Old habits, I suppose.: What do you suppose happened to the sun?: Gods, how should I know? Never seen something like this before.: Are you worried? Some of the varl in the caravan think the world's coming to an end.: Others think it's the best thing that could happen. No more black months. I'll take it. If it's the end, I'm ready.: What about the rest of us?: To the depths with you.: Hah! Get some rest. Always more marching to do.: I've hoofed more hills than a horseborn with a grudge. Don't worry about me.We'll go see Mogr next.  : I'd ask how you're dealing with Vognir's death, but I already know the answer.: Do you?: Steady old Mogr, which is good. I know most of these varl, but they're not under my command. They came to follow Vognir. : Tell you the truth? I wouldn't want to be in your position either.: Haven't you ever wanted to be in command?: More than I am? Any more rope and I'd hang myself.: I doubt that.: I forget you weren't around back then. At one point I had more rope. I hung myself. So no, I'm not interested in command. It's all yours.: Thanks. Anything you can tell me about the caravan?: Throw together this many varl, half of them want to hit each other, the rest want to be left alone.: Anyone I should keep an eye on?: There's a couple of clan leaders trying to show off for each other. Not a big deal. I've got it under control. The figthers we just got from Strand aren't bad, but they're unruly. Give it a few days. And there are a few moaning about fighting for you instead of for Vognir. Those are the ones to worry about.: What about Ludin's men?: They don't want to hear anything from me, I know that.: Any problems?: Could be. Ludin's pet varl is named Bersi. I'm not sure what he came from or what his deal is. Bastard knows how to fight, but there's something I don't like about him.His girl in red is scary too. Yrsa. She's probably the best figther Ludin's got, to be honest. I've overheard some of the varl call her "the witch." : Why?: The flaming arrows, I think. It's a good trick, but the fire upsets our varl more than the dredge.: Still doesn't make much sense. "Witch?": They're not scholars, Hakon. I think they're mostly just afraid of her.: That makes more sense. Don't let her find out. You think we're walking into a death trap?: With this many varl? No, we should be alright. Things could get rough though.: I don't like being the one to send varl to their deaths. I like worrying about myself, and that's the extent of it.: Who would've expected Vognir to drop like that to a couple of slag?: I'm still wondering what happened. He had hundreds of dead slag to his name. I don't get it.: Just happens sometimes. No big moment. I'm sure it surprised him even more than us. Although...I have to wonder. Nah, nevermind. Anyway, I'll worry about the warriors. You worry about not doing something stupid.: That's asking a lot. What were you holding back about Vognir?: I'd rather not say, Hakon.: Why not?: It's the kind of thing that'd get stuck in your head, and you need a clear one. It's better if you let me worry about it.: Sounds important. Tell me.: How did Vognir die?: He ran into dredge. Wasn't expecting it.: When we found him he was lying face down, like he was struck from behind. Did he really get taken down by some random slag? Who else was there?: You think Ludin...?: He probably didn't, but...: Dammit. We should keep an eye on that bastard. If you see anything else, tell me.: I will.: Let's get back to it.: Let me know if you need anything else.: I will. Despite having the prince of men in our caravan along with 2 bodyguards mentioned by name, they're not playable. Eirik's back, though. And Gunnulf is still hurt from when he got beat up by those raiders way back in the first update.   We immediately level up those who are eligible. Eirik goes right to level 3.  Unlike Rook's party, we're chock full of fighting men and giant. And in good spirits. And have shitloads of supplies. This will be easy!  The first of many of these updates. Mogr sees dredge and lets us know. We could not fight them, but the fact is we need levels and renown, so...  : We'll deal with it ourselves.The caravan stops and waits while you lead a small detachment up the hillside to take care of the dredge quickly. You tell Ludin to stay by the caravan. He folds his arms and mutters something about being treated like a child.  Not the best party with my heavy hitter at -4 strength, but it's a pretty easy fight.  We're significantly outnumbered, but most of the dredge are pretty lovely and can be maimed easily by Hakon or Gunnulf.  Stuff happens. Eirik and Gunnulf go down. Hakon and Mogr stay up which is the imporant part. Varl get wounded for 6 days when they go down. Gunnulf is now back to -6 strength (not -4 + -6, thankfully.)  Anyway, that optional fight cleaned up, we press on, until...  : Hakon!You can hear Ludin's hard-booted trot as you set up camp the first day, and brace yourself.  : Can we speak? As equals?: We can try.: It seems clear to me you plan to kill a lot of dredge along the way. Am I right? : In fact, I plan to go out of my way to kill them.: I shouldn't be surprised, but...don't assume only the varl can fight. Do you understand me? That is my banner we fly to Grofheim. The banner of Arberrang. I insist on joining in battle.: Almost gutted in your first encounter and ready for more? Whatever you like, prince.: And...uh. I expected more resistance.: From Vognir, maybe.: They tell me you were his kendr. That's why you're in charge now. Some kind of next of kin...varl thing? Don't you take on his responsibilities?: Why the tough act, kid? : Don't look down on me again. Don't you dare.: When you're nearly two hundred years, it's hard to take a twenty year old man...is that right?...seriously.: You'd better start. We'll both be kings someday.: That's the last thing I need to think about right now.Ludin looks at you as though you just punched yourself in the face. He heads back to his tent before saying whatever was on his mind.  Might as well meet the rest of his crew.  : You have a moment?As you approach Bersi, he lowers the book he was reading. He doesn't strike you as the book-reading type. : You're Bersi.  : You're Hakon. We've gotten that out of the way, haven't we?: I had some questions.: Say what you want to say.: What's a varl doing working for Ludin?: What's a varl doing working for another varl? What difference does it make? It looks like you're in charge right now, so do me a favor and don't get Ludin killed. : He's important to you?: No. But that's one way to put it.: Where'd you learn to fight?: Same way as you. By fighting.: You know what I mean.: I robbed well-protected merchants for at least one man's lifeetime. Is that what you mean?: Yeah. Not anymore?: I've had a lot of jobs.: Can I trust you?: What a loaded question. Depends what you mean.: Whose back will you have if things go wrong?: Assume I'm looking out for myself and you'll figure it out.: Does Ludin understand that?: Ludin doesn't even understand that half his army is here just to protect him from the people he talks to.You laugh at the unexpected gouge. Bersi grins, pleased with himself. : I won't keep you any longer.: See you on the battlefield, oh leader of varl. : You could join us.: I'm where I want to be. Don't forget what I said...about keeping Ludin alive. Got it?As you step away, you can't help but wonder if there was a bit of threat behind that gravelly request. Bersi is a warhawk, like Gunnulf. Only not like Gunnulf in that he actually has some points in exertion so he can get himself into position to hit things. Lower strength, so he's not as heavy a hitter as Gunnulf, but in general you'll get more use out of him. Yrsa next.  : Yrsa, right?She watches you appraoch with her head tilted back, and points a thumb toward Ludin's tent. : No. Here for you.  : Oh?: Can we talk?Yrsa shakes her head 'no,' a smile on her lips, eyelids low. : Why not?: I don't.In those two curiously contradictory words you get two impressions: she has a beautiful, obsidian voice. And this might be a complete waste of time. She watches you expectantly. : You don't talk.: No.: You do, though.: I don't.She smiles warmly, clearly enjoying her game. : You're Ludin's bodyguard?: No, he's mine.Before you have the chance to be confused, she cackles, abrupt and loud. Then looks slightly embarrassed. : You are his personal guard though?Her expression changes to "of course." : How did you end up with someone like Ludin?: Luck.She raises an eyebrow. : It's about the flaming arrows. Varl and fire don't get along.All you get is a shrug. : If you're going to use them...She pulls an arrow. There's a flick of the wrist you don't quite catch. Suddenly a bird combusts in the tree behind you and falls to the ground, smouldering. Half the camp has turned to watch. : Don't tell me not to.She crosses her arms, a hand on her chin, and cocks her head to one side. : Until next time, Yrsa.: Hakon...You stop, and look over your shoulder. : I am a witch. So be careful.She puts her forefinger to her lips with a soft "shhh." You depart, not quite sure what to make of that.  So now we have a full roster of heroes. And even one who can sit on the bench. Yrsa is an archer. We've seen that class before. Puncture passive. Her active, though, is interesting. It's called "slag and burn," and it's her fire arrow trick. She throws coals on the ground in a plus pattern (meaning 5 tiles catch fire). Anything that's directly in the ignition takes +2 strength damage, indendent of armor. Anything that's on the center of the plus sign takes armor break damage equivalent to Yrsa's break stat (which right now is just 1, but that'll change). Her coals stay aflame until her next turn. Anything that walks over them takes +1 strength damage independent of armor. So she's great at hitting multiple targets for chip damage, and can also do strength damage through armor. She's very useful. The downside? She has like NO strength or armor, especially early on, and anything that gets past your front lines is liable to one-shot her.  Bersi's really not better than Gunnulf, but starting with a point in exertion is a significant point in his favor.  Like I said: 6/6 armor/strength is a great way to get killed.  We saw Ludin get creamed in the Vognir battle, but he's actually a very solid unit. His passive ability grants willpower to himself and any adjacent unit when he kills something. Handy. His active, "impale," will move an enemy back 1 to 3 tiles, do strength damage (min. 1), and any tile the impaled unit moves causes it to take 1 damage. Very handy when comboing with battering ram, though Iver's not in this party. Spearmen can also attack from 2 panels away, though the impale move requires adjacency.  Upon hitting the road, we immediately get this guy talking poo poo about us. Hakon gives no fucks.  So much for that nerd. "What's his name?" you ask his companions. "Griss." "Take care of Griss," you reply. You hear them laughing at his misfortune as you wander off. We get +5 renown for keeping our disaffected units in line.  Some time later, we hit some more folks. We tell them the road to Strand is clear. They thank you profusely. One stops as he passes. "If you're passing by Denglr, do me a favor? My wife's brother stayed behind. You'll know him by a necklace with many rings on it. If you see him, say we are safely in Strand." You nod. After a short time they continue on.  Time for more fighting! Dredge watch you, waiting to see what you do. "When's the last time you commanded a few hundred, Hakon?" asks Mogr. "Don't overthink it. The warriors can take care of themselves."   We are now at war. War battles consist of two waves, and the difficulty of the initial wave is determined by your battle command. From most difficult to least difficult, Charge through Oversee. Charge will give you a very difficult tactical battle, but if you win, you will save a lot of varl and figthers from being killed offscreen, thus weakening your army. Formations, Hold them Off, and Oversee all make the battle easier but put your army in more danger. Oversee skips the fight entirely but you take a shitload of losses and also get no renown. Hakon will charge into every goddamn fight. Because I'm an idiot.  Here's our war party, charging in. 3 guys at level 1. Great plan.  Aw...gently caress. Most of these guys are pushovers, but there's enough of them that I'll get worn down.  Mogr's job is to break the armor of the toughest guy around so that he can die. Also, a thing I failed to mention earlier about dredge: if you do 3 or greater armor damage to them, all adjacent units take +1 armor damage, down the line. You can get like a 5 or 6 dredge chain like this. It's moderately useful and not worth planning around, but it's a nice bonus to splinter a bunch of people at once.  Here's Hakon's sundering impact at work. He hits the middle unit, and the left and right units both take 1 armor and 2 strength damage too.  Apparently dredge bleed?  Yrsa fires off a slag and burn at the big guy. You can see 2 active coals and also 3 inactive ones to form the "plus sign" I referred to.  A nice thing about Ludin's impale skill is that the enemy AI doesn't recognize it. So sometimes an enemy will start walking and die of it, wasting their turn completely.  Ludin racks up another kill. This is going great!  Eirik kills the penultimate dredge, putting us in PILLAGE! mode. Hey, everyone's healthy! Let's fight the second wave!  What could go wrong?  Here's what could go wrong. That big guy spanws in right next to Mogr and Hakon, and neither of them can move before he does. Which means someone's getting OHKOed.  Bye, Hakon.  Bye, Yrsa.  Bye, Eirik.  I just don't have the DPS to take out the remainder. To make matters worse, the big stoneguard begins summoning reinforcements and I can't stop him. This battle is lost.  Bersi puts up a good last stand, but it's too late. He falls a moment after Ludin.  Well...at least we got some bonus renown for killing part of the second wave.  A bunch of varl and figthers die because we fail. Dying in the second wave is treated like dying in the first in terms of how the game penalizes you. Fortunately, we're in no hurry. We can rest for 6 days since we've got 2 goddamn months worth of supplies.  Hey, more dredge!  We're going to draw some of them forward and split them.  Another fight. Another war.  We charge into battle again. At least this time we have some levels to our name.  An ENORMOUS number of the 2x2 dredge greet us. If we were a predominantly human party, that'd be great since we could just run circles around them as they got in one another's way. Against a varl warparty though, this is kind of a pain in the rear end.  Yrsa scores her second kill, ensuring I can armor her up a little bit next time I have a chance to promote.  Mogr tanks, armor breaks, and splinter chains armor to the point that Hakon can finish off wave one. I've learned nothing. Let's see what wave two has to offer!  This isn't quite so bad. Plus 3 of them spawned too far to hit me on their first turn.  Ludin's a dick, but don't doubt his bravery? Or his value as a unit. Late in war battles you're low on willpower, and his ability to self-replenish and also help adjacent units when he kills something is pretty valuable.  Much like the last time I was dumb enough to do a second wave, Ludin and Bersi end up last standing.  Unlike last time, I'm strong enough to take them down.  My reward? ...a lovely level 1 item that gives +1 willpower. Goddammit.  More importantly, nobody in the entire caravan died.  ...and we can sleep off the injuries again. Levels for everyone! I'm back in business and nothing can go wrong!    All 3 level up. I'm so strong now! What could possibly go amiss?  Hey, things are so good that I tell Griss he's got one shot and I get a free unit! You tell him to report to Mogr. "I don't sit in the back lines. Make a mistake and you'll get your head caved in. Nobody'll lose sleep over it." He nods and goes to speak to Mogr.  Hey, let's take the fight to them! We have new levels! And let's see what Griss can do!  Griss is a shittier version of Iver. But being able to go 15/15 with armor and strength AND have 4 break makes him tremendously versatile. And a good partner for Ludin. We'll bring him.  Oh man, Griss right after Ludin! He's gonna battering ram so many impaled units! This is gonna be great!  So far, so good! I'm unstoppable.  Ron Howard Arrested Development Voice: He wasn't.  gently caress.  I really wanted to get into that town. A shop for a varl party that has very few items. And a vote that'd be impactful not only here, but in later games.   Jesus christ. Griss, killed by my hubris. I feel awful about this.Next time: I still don't learn my lesson! FairGame fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Sep 18, 2018 |
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Sep 10, 2018 03:05
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I will only use it in 2, and only because the renown rewards from special missions are baked into the renown economy.
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Sep 10, 2018 17:39
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UPDATE 7: YOU'RE STILL THE WORST GODDAMN WARLEADER Remember last update, most of which was spent fighting various dredge on identical snowfield maps? Well I hope you liked it because that's what the rest of this chapter is. But then everything's good from here! Consider this the Babylon 5 season 1 of The Banner Saga.  Well hey, more varl are always good since I kinda got a lot of the old varl killed.   : You must be with Vognir.: Was. Vognir didn't make it.: You're serious? It's getting grim out here, but...didn't expect that.: You're flying the Schlid banner. What's happening? Isn't Ulfar in charge there? : I'm Fasolt. Ulfar's still in Schlid. In case he needs to be. He sent me to meet Vognir...well, you. We've seen nothing happening in Schlid, yet.: What do you mean?: No dredge. They never came through Schlid. They're all pouring out of Ridgehorn. We only just found out about it. One group went that way. We came here.: Ridgehorn? The fort on the bay? That place has been abandoned for hundreds of years.: Yeah. Maybe that's why they're there. By all accounts it looks like another damned invasion.Ludin forces his way into the conversation.  : Wait a godless minute. What did you do?: Careful now.: You be careful! What did you start? You think men don't remember history? The Long Banner hangs in Arberrang! The second great war nearly screwed us all. What did you do this time?: Who the faen is this? : Nobody. No one to worry about, anyway.Ludin's head swivels in your direction, eyes wide. He seems uncertain whether to be insulted or threatened. : What orders did Ulfar give you, Fasolt?: I'm supposed to offer any support you need. I've got three hundred thirty varl behind me, and Ulfar wants to know what's happening at Ridgehorn. What's your plan? This is a choice that matters in that I can send Ludin and his retinue away, but I really need them. So I'm taking this choice away from you all. : Forget...As you try to give the orders to go to Grofheim, the words catch in your throat. You need to go to Ridgehorn. : We're going to Ridgehorn. You're coming.: I'll have my varl fall in line. Yours to command, Hakon.: Are you insane? He just said an army of dredge are pouring out of that fort!: Go on to Grofheim then, prince. Having your blood on my hands would be worse than doing nothing.That shuts Ludin up a moment. You can see the battle raging in his head. He looks desperate for safety, but he didn't expect to look like a coward. He expected you to come along. He glances at his men.  : We're already this far. If this is the varl's doing I'll know if it, and so will my father. Besides, you need my help, and my fighters. If I go, so do Yrsa and Bersi.Ludin's unexpected flip-flop catches you like a swift kick to the shins. Mogr can't contain a chuckle. : Hah! The prince has courage!: Do whatever you like, Ludin.: Paint me the villain, Hakon! What do I care? I'm sick of you being the only one to do as he pleases in this alliance!: These are varl lands! We're facing an army of dredge! How much experience do you have in these matters?: True, mankind has never provoked them into a war! You're going for a third! Is taunting the dredge into genocide a game for your kind? Believe me, I wanted to. But...Hakon walks away. You curse and threaten pandemonium. The prince has chosen to be no responsibility of yours. If Ludin stays, so do Fasolt's warriors. They join the caravan.   Another war battle before we reach the next godstone. This one's...at least a little different.  You know the routine.  Fasolt stays on the bench. He comes with enough to promote to level 2 immediately, but we don't really need him. Fasolt's a "Provoker," a kit of the shieldmaster. Same passive as Mogr and Iver (and Griss ). His active, "malice," taunts an enemy and forces it to make a strength attack against Fasolt on its next turn.Which would be really useful at level 5, as level 3 malice lets you piss off something in the back line and have it march all the way up to you. But at level 1 it's only useable against adjacent foes, and you might as well attack an adjacent foe. In short, he sucks at low levels and as such it's not really feasible on Hard difficulty to get him to high levels.  Meet the bane of all varl: dredge slingers. They're ranged units. All really weak. But they have better movement than varl do, and they're really just a pain to fight. All slingers have the "back off" passive: when they take armor or strength damage, they take 4 random steps AWAY from the attacker. Which makes Ludin's impale great, since it's a free +4 damage. There are different varieties of slingers. Some can drop explosive stones on your tile, which does 2 armor and 2 strength damage in a plus pattern around the explosive stone. It doesn't detonate until the slinger's next turn, though. So you can move away. Or kill the slinger. Some can do an attack that makes you unable to use exertion on your next turn. Great for locking down poor mobility units. I...think that's it. Later games have other varieties.  Bersi shines here. Enough mobility to get into tempest range, so he can maim multiple slingers at once.  This doofus was impaled, and used his turn to move into attack range, at which point he died of the movement.  Mogr takes out the big guy. This is going well!  Let's push my luck. I really want the guaranteed item that a wave 2 gets me, and surely nobody ELSE can die...  Tough luck for Bersi, had the enemy spawn in right by him.  Hakon has been maimed for a while, but Sundering Impact gives him 1 armor 2 strength minimum so he's still useful.  Eventually, though, he succumbs. Down to Gunnulf and Ludin.  Gunnulf is at 13 strength, which is a TON at this point in the fight.  We've got this.  Gunnulf finishes off the last slinger, and we get the Sprddrekt Bur, a weird little item that I've never used. I like it. A lot.  Not sure why some varl died. Maybe because we were outnumbered heading into the war fight. Still, 26 casualties is pretty good!  Oh right, nobody can die in the fight but now there's this bullshit. Surprised varl pull weapons, but not before the whole cart slides off slick rock and a sheer drop, stopped suddenly by a low growl.  Gunnulf is just gonna keep the entire goddamn wagon using brute strength. Or die trying. We order him to let go, because, uh...he'd die trying.  Gunnulf is simply too valuable to lose trying to save gold. This game doesn't even let you pay for poo poo in gold! It's worthless! With a roar that sounds more like you stabbed him in the side than gave an order, Gunnulf lets go of the cart. It flips over the side in a flash, followed much later by a dull thud and a crack. At the base of the steep cliff, hundreds of yards below, the treasure cart has exploded into a frozen firework of gold, valuables, and yox and dredge gore. "That was a costly mistake," grits Ubin between clenched teeth. You wonder why the dredge went after the yox in the first place. Then you realize the bigger problem is the vast fortune now lying at the bottom of a cliff. You try to recover what you can. You gather ideas for hoisting the loot, all of them difficult and time consuming. Eventually you settle on lowerin ga man by rope into the valley. He grabs a few valuables and covers up the rest, but not much else. You face the fact that you've got nowhere to put them and nothing to pull them with, even if you managed to recover them. A day later you're back on the march without much to show for it.  Au contraire, game! We have this artifact to show for it! The 5% dodge str is as low as dodge goes, and I'd never bank on it. But +2 aggro...that's enough to make the AI do stupid poo poo, like attack Mogr's armor instead of try to maim one of my units.  At last, we reach Godstone Stravhs.  Hakon is many things, but he's no grave robber. He searches for the necklace. In the midst of the pile of bodies a glitter catches your eye. You fish a gold necklace out from a jerkin to find five golden rings strung on it. The merchant's brother. "Guess he didn't make it," you mutter. You toss the necklace to Mogr and tell him to hang on to it. If anyone can be trusted, it's him. We don't get the necklace as an item, but we *do* get 10 renown for our honesty. It's actually a pretty even trade; the necklace is a very good artifact.   Every godstone in this game has an item associated with it. We punted on the item here--it was the necklace.   gently caress sending scouts. We do everything ourselves!  Oh, of course it's another fight. Not a war, though. 1 wave only.  Nothing too dangerous here. And our spawn point is such that we can set ourselves up to have Yrsa rain fire on people from safety.  I've been trying to get an image of this for a while. Dredge stoneguards (the 2x2 big guys) have a move called "Tremble." They slam their shield on the ground, and any adjacent units to the stoneguard take 1 armor damage and are pushed back up to 3 tiles, doing 1 armor damage per pushback tile. It's devastatingly good when deployed against multiple units. But the AI is weird and it'll use it in the dumbest circumstances. Here, breaking Gunnulf and Hakon both is smart.   I did good at the captures here. Ludin impales the stoneguard, and then KICKS it onto the hot coal 2 tiles back.  I really am pretty good at this game. I can almost always finish a wave with no injuries. It's just...the second wave that's really screwed me.  Another 280 varl join our ranks. We're at 1000 fighters between man and varl now.    Ludin's still going back for the gold. I wish we could pummel him in his stupid face, but no. We just threaten him if he doesn't stop.  Stupid jerk. Really good and necessary-in-combat character. But a jerk.    As we get closer to Ridgehorn, this happens. Uh...ok.  Between that vision and not being able to avoid Ridgehorn in favor of Grofheim, something's not quite right.  That tower in the background is Ridgehorn. But, uh...we're not getting there without a fight. Several, in fact. So let's get this one out of the way. "OK," says Mogr. "I'll ready the warriors. Careful Hakon. This isn't the time to start taking risks.  This is a war battle, and one with very favorable placement. With them surrounded I can bomb the poo poo out of them with Yrsa, use splinter when I break armor, and have my warhawks and Hakon do adjacency damage with heavy impact.  Pictured: a stoneguard slamming the poo poo out of...another Stoneguard in an effort to get Gunnulf. Except that stoneguard that's going flying was impaled, so he takes a lot of strength damage (and will take more when he tries to walk back.)  You know the routine.  The reinforcements are pretty weak. And slow. And don't spawn in on a side where I can't react in time and let them get the first hit.  Still, Mogr with that +2 aggro thing is a magnet for all attacks. He tanked very well but eventually he succumbs.  Hah, nevermind. I suck. No deaths as a result, though, and we sleep off the injuries.  At least it's not as bad as it could have been if you hadn't taken out a good portion of them already, you think to yourself. : Get the others ready to fight, Mogr.With the warriors readied, you burst from the woods at full tilt, weapons and shields at the ready, battle cries on the wind. The dredge may have known you were coming but still found themselves surprised. As you cut one wide-eyed slag nearly in half, you bark orders and engage!  Despite failing the previous battle, we split enough dredge and kept enough varl alive that we have a significant numbers advantage. Enough that CHARGE! is actually a smart move here, and not the role playing move.  That's...a really lovely spawn. drat.  We split the party, Bersi can tempest the upper two to death, Mogr can tank the big guy while Gunnulf gets into position, and the others can impale, heavy impact, and ignite the grouped up slow stoneguards.  Piece of cake.  Wave 2 isn't bad at all, and most of our units are at full health.  Everyone remains standing, and I get the Eyeless Rift as my prize.  A flawless victory.  The closer we get to Ridgehorn, the more lightning we see. It's only striking the top of the tower.  Tons of lightning strikes later, we arrive at the abandoned fortress, Ridgehorn.  But nobody's here. No dredge. No varl. Nothing.  : What is this mess about? Looks like a full-scale battle happened, and recently.: But only dredge bodies remain.: Maybe we'll see something from the tower. Have varl search the buildings and make sure there's no dredge waiting to spring on us.: On it.: And don't set up camp or make a fire. We'll take a look and then get out of here before anything else goes wrong.: You mean MORE wrong... The Eyeless Rift is a nice little relic. Never getting deflected means we can make strength attacks (with exertion) against an enemy regardless of its armor and always connect. Good for units that don't have strength-guaranteed attacks AND have high exertion. Which to be honest doesn't really describe anyone in this caravan. It'd be quite nice on Iver, though.  We take a war party up the tower.  We find a bunch of dredge slingers and one stoneguard.  Oh, and 2 dead humans right at the top middle of the screen, nearly obscured by the horn.  This battle is a bit of a pain because the tower has holes in it, and your giant varl have a tough time navigating around them. The smaller ranged units on the dredge side don't, and a lot of units get pretty injured before they can close in. Poor Mogr got picked apart and is now running away as best he can, for example.  Yrsa is SO worth leveling up.  Eventually Eirik puts down the last enemy.     Well, maybe this man will know what happened. But first we have to do some more fighting!  While we were up in the tower, somehow a SHITLOAD of dredge showed up.  There's no opportunity to rest between fights, so staying healthy in the tower fight is a necessity.  You can see Ubin carrying the sole survivor of whatever happened here in the background. The battle itself is pretty straightforward. No clever positioning tactics.  It wasn't necessary, but Bersi's Eyeless Rift procs its crit cahnce and he does 15 damage (double strength) to some poor bastard.  Mogr's drawing TOO MUCH aggro with that item, I think.  Who needs Mogr, though?  Or Hakon?  So Hakon and Mogr are hurt, but everyone else emerges unscathed. I hope I get something good for my trouble.  Huh. Well...interesting. It's a -2 aggro item. Meaning you can make things NOT attack you. I guess that could be good for Yrsa. Or Bersi or Gunnulf--get them into melee range for a nice big tempest without getting maimed.  : What's going on?: I had one eye on the fight. Next time I looked down dredge are swarming into the courtyard. Can't tell how many more are waiting out there.: But it's a lot. If we're getting back across the bridge it'll be a fight.: Any options?: Not really. Unless you want to wade into that valley we're going to have to leave the same way we came in.: Hakon, I think you should take a look at this.Nearby, the man rescued from the tower had been bundled and laid near a short wall protected from the wind. : I think that man is a mender.: That raises more questions than it answers.: That's right. I knew his look was familiar.: The spell weavers? In Ridgehorn? Why?: Maybe they knew something about what's happening. If he's going to tell us anything we need to get out of here alive. Let's go.: Hold on. We've got a lot of tired and wounded, Hakon. This is going to be rough. : Each day we wait means more dredge. Or another ambush. Or we get snowed in.: A heavy snow may act in our favor if we can get past the first line of dredge and lose the rest.: I agree for once. I don't have any intention of staying here.: Er. Look. It's your call, Hakon...but we can't run on this one. There's one way out. If any varl fall...if ANYONE falls fighting here, they'll be left behind.: Ludin, what would you do?: You want my opinion? How unexpected. I think there's no point in waiting. Let the wounded ones fall behind. If you've got any sense we'll get out now before they bury the rest of us.: OK. Let's prepare to fight.: Good. That wasn't so hard, was it?NOTE: Had we elected to rest, we'd be able to, but Ludin would piss and moan and try to fight his own way out. This will get him, Bersi, and Yrsa killed. You can avoid this by PUNCHING HIM IN HIS STUPID FACE and knocking him unconscious. You lose him for the next fight since he's incapacitated. But it keeps him alive, and Yrsa and Bersi will still fight for you. : If we're doing this now, we need an approach. We can't just go up there swinging. Nah, Mogr. We're going to go up there swinging.  None of the plans work particularly well. You want something done right? Do it yourself.  Fasolt will take the place of Hakon this fight. Mogr is still useful at -6 strength since he can still tank for a while. A maimed Hakon is pretty useless. Sure, he still has sundering impact to do guaranteed damage, but his armor is low enough that he'll probably die pretty quick.  The 2 16 strength big guys are a problem. As are the slingers who have pretty good strength and we won't be able to get to for a while.  I miscalculate and Gunnulf takes a nasty wound.  A slinger puts some explosives around Yrsa, but Ludin responds by killing the slinger. So they'll never detonate.  Gunnulf goes down.  Slingers are an enormous pain, as Fasolt learns.  Team Arberrang finishes things off, with Bersi, Ludin, and Yrsa.  You know what's happening here. Unlike other fights, though, I can swap out units and everyone starts fresh.  One last hurrah.  Gunnulf is pretty useless, and Fasolt is useless when NOT injured, so this is what we'll do. I toyed with just going with 5 party members, but Hakon's the leader!  Yrsa hits rank 5 before we start, though.  No slingers. This'll be easy.  Yep. Easy. Except for Mogr. But that's kind of what he does. Tanks until he dies.  We slaughter our way out of Ridgehorn and we're in the clear.  So in the clear, in fact...   That we just sorta fast travel to Grofheim.  Some time later, we're on the outskirts of the varl capital.  : Hakon, join me a moment. There's something I thought you'd want to see.: Is it a welcoming party from Grofheim, bearing mead? That's about the only thing I want to see.: No such luck. The mender from Ridgehorn woke up. He says his name is Eyvind.: Sounds like a mender name. How is he?Editor's Note: It's also the name of EYVIND EARLE, who did a lot of the old Disney artwork in the mid 20th century. The art style in this game is modeled after his work. I really want to get an Eyvind Earle print but his estate apparently never sold out and Eyvind Earle artwork is ludicrously expensive. A pity.   : Not well. Where are we?: A day or two from Grofheim. We found you at the tower of Ridgehorn. What were you doing there?: Grofheim...no. No, no, that's the wrong way. Juno. Where is she? Where's the woman who was with me? : She didn't make it, my friend. We only brought the living with us.: No, we have to go back.: I don't think so. We barely made it out two weeks ago. Do you know why the dredge were crawling all over Ridgehorn?: Dredge? WE HAVE TO GO BACK!: It's a damned graveyard, boy! I'm sorry, Eyvind, the girl was dead when we got there! What we have to do is tell Jorundr what's happening and prepare for a bloody war, so if you...: She is dead. I couldn't save her. I couldn't save her.Eyvind suddenly looks spent. He slips to the ground and you motion for some varl to help him onto the cart. : Not what I had hoped to hear. Not sure what I was hoping. Come on, Ubin. Sooner we get to Grofheim, the better. Ubin narrates this next section, despite it being Hakon's caravan.  That's, uh...that's the varl capital.  And on that happy note, we're back to Rook's party next time! FairGame fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Sep 18, 2018 |
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Sep 11, 2018 03:21
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Humans and varl fought bloody wars against one another. Eventually the gods were like, "stop fighting you assholes" and created dredge so that man and varl would have a common enemy, as the dredge were too strong for either side to vanquish independently. The two sides took a long rear end time to form an alliance, and both sides blame the other for the arrival of this virtually unstoppable enemy. Add in the fact that varl live for centuries, and varl remember what ACTUALLY happened. Whereas dredge are just fairy tale boogymen to most living humans, and interlinked with "the varl made the dredge happen." Plus Ludin is just kind of a dick.
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Sep 11, 2018 16:44
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Jack2142 posted:Eh I wouldn't comment if you weren't the OP, but I disagree with some of this interpretation. Go for it, dude. So long as it’s not a spoiler, by all means lemme know your thoughts. A lot in this game is painted in broad strokes and it’s quite possible my interpretations are wrong. Or maybe it’s stated explicitly somewhere and I still screwed it up. I will have, at the very least, the Frostvellr stuff up tonight so those of you who’ve wanted to talk about it will be free to do so. I’m trying to get as far as the major thing but there’s a LOT of talking surrounding that.
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Sep 12, 2018 01:34
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PART 8: THE LONG ROAD TO EINARTOFT This game really likes cliffhangers. Remember how last time, Hakon's party reached Grofheim, the varl capital, only to find it a fiery ruin?  Well, we don't get any immediate closure on that.  Instead, we're back to Rook. Who previously had bashed his way into Frostvellr, seen that it was hosed up, and then left after kinda murdering the gatekeepers.  : Is this really necessary?Stuck outside the city walls, you've been fighting against the dredge when you have to and moving between hiding spots when you can.  : If we do nothing, the people in there are going to die.You crouch near a building you know has survivors hiding inside. Dredge are making quick work of the walls.  : We can't keep throwing ourselves at any dredge that wander near these drat refugees!: We're already here! : What choice do we have?: Leave. Get the caravan and go, right now.: Not yet. We need to help here.Iver growls, but leads the charge, bowling over the nearest dredge and taunting the rest. : Come on, you stony bastards! Nothing else I'd rather be doing right now!...so basically, Iver was 100% right: if you stay outside the walls of Frostvellr, you're gonna get clobbered by dredge. Iver and Oddleif are kind of playing devil/angel on Rook's shoulders here. Except it's more pragmatic/benevolent, in a game where playing the hero gets you killed more often than not. Still, we're already here, and Rook's team with its archers tend to do really well against dredge.  It'll be nice to get ourselves some more renown, anyway. Too many level 1s in this group.  That 13/19 dredge is a major threat. The 11/16 in the far corner not so much; he'll be picked apart by archers before he can get close to our spawn point.  We start the battle by running away from the major threat. Oddleif traps a tile so that when the 11/16 dredge comes to poke Iver, he instead takes an injury and loses his turn. The axe brother can still do damage with bloody flail even if he takes a nasty strength hit, so he's gonna deal with the 2 big guys up top.  Enemy AI is utterly predictable when you give them only 1 target. Oddleif's trap works like a charm.  Alette doesn't like fighting humans, but she's really drat good against dredge. She scores enough kills in this fight to jump straight from level 1 to level 3.  Rook's "mark prey" ability is devastating when you've got archers in range. Puncture procs on their attack.  I get a little sloppy on the cleanup, and both Hogun and Rook take injuries. Hogun's is worse--4 days. Rook counts as an archer even though he can fight in melee, and it's just a 2 day injury.  All told though, a solid effort.  I know I said we were done with endless battles on snowfields. And, in fact, we are: these fight backgrounds have houses! And we could always listen to Iver and bug off immediately. But helping people is THE RIGHT THING TO DO, DAMMIT. You hurry to follow her. Sure enough, a boy has stranded himself on a rooftop. Dredge mill around below. As you approach, they spot you.  We bench our injured unit in favor of his brother. Rook can stick around. Mark Prey and armor break don't require high strength.  Largely the same enemy composition as before. Much easier fight, though, since all those 2x2 guys will just get in one another's way, and I can armor break plus use splinter to wear things down to the point that a good puncture will end them.  Hell, I don't even need to use stone wall on Egil yet.  Egil is built SUPER defensively, so it's important to get him kills when you can.  Alette's "thread the needle" active is difficult to make work, but when it lines up it's pretty handy!  2 maims, 1 kill.  I let Rook go down again. Injuries don't compound, so he has another 2 day injury instead of a...2 day injury.  Piece of cake.  In the distance, you think you hear shouts. From further up on the hill a group of people saw you fighting the dredge and are calling to you. Nobody else seems to have noticed. Look at our clansmen count here as compared with the end of the last Rook chapter, by the way. We're growing our caravan (and the number of useless mouths to feed) by being heroic!  This is actually difficult, you see, because... : You can do this, Iver.If you didn't know Iver so well, you'd find him quite terrifying right now. He looks like he's about to lose it. Still, he bends and behinds to hoist the crumbling wall on his shoulders. Grunting under the exertion, you hear a shriek behind you and see approaching dredge!  Only Iver can lift the wall, so we have to protect him this battle. Which means our biggest weapon is out and we have to field a wounded Hogun.  Ugh, slingers. They got a special introduction in Hakon's last chapter. Here they just kinda appear, and they can immediately start doing strength damage to our archers--our biggest weapon.  So instead I sent Egil out to draw fire. Let the slingers expend their willpower on him while I deal with the easier units down below.  That kid tanks like a goddamn champ.  Mogun gets the benefit of +2 armor from this shield wall as well as some extra damage from bloody flail. He chops the stoneguard down a bit.  This is why I hate slingers. At some point they're gonna get past your front line and start raining nasty damage on your archers.  Which costs Alette an injury.  I misjudge enemy movement and waste a trap. Egil also gets maimed in the bargain.  Still, it's well in hand and Egil finishes it off. Finally, the refugees are able to pull the body out of the rubble and Iver lets the heavy wall crash to the ground unceremoniously around him. The man has been long dead, and they look on solemnly. "For your trouble," an old woman tells you. She puts an odd gold medallion in your hand.   Well, now we have the Calabilla, which is the real reason we do that series of fights. It's a rank 5 artifact that gives +1 willpower and +1 armor per turn. It's awesome. : Thought there were a lot more of us than this.Surveying the rest house you're struck by how many wounded and missing clansmen there are. : Only going to be less over time. We can't keep fighting off dredge and hope they'll pass.: We're not getting in that gods-forsaken city, I know that.: The dredge have all been heading south, that's not an option either. Wyrmtoe's the only thing that makes sense. They won't follow us across the wastes.: If there's really no other choice. Why are you so insistent about Wyrmtoe?: I know someone there who can help us...if we're lucky.: OK, get everyone up. We're going to make a run for it.Within a short time, you're ready to leave.  This is also something I wasn't expecting. In earlier versions of the game, you started this chapter with 3 days of supplies, wholly independent of what you ended the previous chapter with. Now, it seems like your supplies from the end of the previous chapter roll over. Which is great, had I known that. Because, uh...  The rate of exchange in Frostvellr SUCKS.  I can't have my caravan starve, though, so I burn a hefty 36 renown on enough supplies to get us across the wastes. I hope. I also spend 6 renown on that Svalinn Dust, which gives a flat +2 armor. Handy.  Someone else shows interest, though. From the gates of Frostvellr, a group of fighters are rushing toward you, a cart stacked high with supplies at their rear. You ready yourselves for trouble when one of them shouts "Hold!"  So...this is Onef. He's a playable character, and probably the most hated character in The Banner Saga (well, part 1 anyway). Going to spoil some stuff for you all here. Seriously, DO NOT READ THIS SPOILER IF YOU ARE EVER PLANNING ON PLAYING THIS GAME FOR YOURSELF. Ekkill (the twitchy redbeard guy in charge of Frostvellr) and Onef have a history--Onef's his brother-in-law. Onef acts like the reasonable one and says Ekkill's crazy and evil, and will always give you a chance to gently caress over Ekkill. The supplies he has here are stolen from Ekkill. Ekkill will now starve to death without them, along with the rest of Frostvellr. Had we stayed in Frostvellr at the end of the last chapter, Ekkill would attack us at the start of this chapter. Onef is in the group of attackers, and if you spare his life he takes you to Ekkill's secret stash--which basically puts us right back to where we are here. Onef offering to join with some fighting men, and some supplies. If you take Onef along, you get a bunch of fighters and enough supplies to cross the wastes without having to spend all your renown at a terrible exchange rate. Ekkill, realizing he's going to starve to death, gives chase. You have the option to kill him, take him captive, or have him and his men join you. The whole time it seems like Ekkill's the bad guy and Onef's the reasonable one. Then, in the penultimate chapter, Onef decides he wants to be leader and stabs Rook and drags Alette into the woods, where Alette kills Onef in self defense. Onef kills Egil who's trying to defend Alette, though. Ekkill kills a shitload of the mutineers and reveals that Onef was calling the shots all along. Ekkill was just kind of beaten down after Onef murdered Ekkill's sister. Basically, Ekkill and Egil are mutually exclusive, and Onef is a dickhead who will ALWAYS betray you. You'd have no way of knowing this the first time you play, and I'm only going to refuse Onef (and his valuable supplies and fighters) because the previous LP of this game took Onef in. Anyways, gently caress Onef he's a dickhead and now he's gonna die.      Read the spoiler above if you're curious as to why I'm not listening to Alette and refusing what seems to be perfectly good fighting men and desperately-needed supplies.  Having just spent the last little while fighting dredge, this is far more dangerous. Onef (11/11 backbiter) is the most dangerous unit on the board, though the shieldmaster in the far corner is no slouch.)  Sorry, Alette. You're not getting the "Innocent" achievement. But hey, had we taken Onef in you'd have killed him offscreen...  The rest of the fight is uneventful. This poor bastard gets to -32 HP as he gets hit with 0 armor by everyone in the crew thanks to Mark Prey.   And that's that. Anybody who wanted to talk about their own gameplay experience in Frostvellr is now free to do so.  Of course, we do still only have 10 days of supplies as we cross the aptly name wastes. There's...nothing out here.  Nothing at all.  And we also have the misfortune of getting the blizzard random event. It'll cost us time we don't have to look for survivors, but I built a couple days' buffer into my supplies. We can do it. Barely.  Still, not everyone makes it back, and morale goes to negative (-1 willpower) for the first time in the campaign.  In the middle of the wastes, there's a godstone.  They welcome the caravan, mingling and swapping stories with the others while you rest. They have almost nothing of value to trade, but their leader approaches and offers to let you join in their tribute.   Rook indulges in their weird ritual and gets some Gullenfryi for his trouble.  After some rest you continue on. The sun god worshippers are keen to stay, so you pack your things and return to the road.  In the middle of the wastes, dwindling food supplies...morale drops to the lowest possible.  As if on cue, some vultures begin circling us.  We join her in shooting.  Morale improves somewhat, but it's not a 5-point scale. It's I think a 100 point scale with 5 bands. Our morale improvement isn't enough to get us out of the lowest band.  Without Onef's men, we really need more fighters. And if they're half as badass as Oddleif, we're in good shape. We can always use more fighters,' you tell Oddleif. "If Alette is any proof, you know how to train someone with a bow." Oddleif gives you a smile. She heads off to some of the women in the caravan, showing them the vulture she shot down.  I just have horrible luck with random events out here in the wastes. One of the strangers approaches, saying, "We've run out of food. Any help would be welcome." His hard eyes reveal nothing of his intentions.  I really can't spare it (and they are, in fact, bandits, who will steal your poo poo if you let them in.) So I just give them a meal and move on.  Nobody should have to starve to death.  Of course, now we're at 2 days of supplies and we're about 2.5 days outside of Wyrmtoe. Have I doomed us to starvation deaths?  Thankfully, no! Don't care what this is, we'll eat it! Many clansmen follow your lead, gathering as much as you can, while others continue eating and collecting. Later that day, a few fruit-stained peasants stumble around with drunken grins. Apparently the fruit was fermented, not poisonous.  The fermented fruit gives us a modest boost to our supplies. It's enough to get us to Wyrmtoe. Barely. Like...hours to spare.  I was looking at the day clock as Rook narrated this. Would we get into town before supplies hit 0?  Seriously, that's like 6-7 hours before we take starvation deaths.  Welcome to Wyrmtoe.   : Well, I'll be damned.: Krumr. It's been a long time.: Yeah, it has. So what brings Yngvar to Wyrmtoe with his very own village of humans?: Bad news. Dredge are coming down from the north. We barely made it this far.: That is dire news. Come on, we have food. We'll discuss more in the mead house.As you follow the old varl into their meager town you catch him quietly saying "If it were anyone else..."  : I've talked with the warriors here. I'll be honest with you. Half want to go north and find out what happened at Blotsbalkr. Some think we should go to Grofheim instead. And none of them are happy you're here.: What do you think?: If I had it my way, I'd stay here and let the dredge come. But you made this a problem, didn't you? We can't feed this many people for long, even if they don't eat much. This is a varl town, most of us take care of ourselves. You've got women, children...: We could pitch in...make this place liveable.: It doesn't work like that. These varl are here to get away from civilization, not make one.: It's Krumr's call. It won't be long before dredge are here, too.: No, it won't. If there's one thing we should do it's tell Jorundr what's going on.: Who's Jorundr?: Varl king. Well, as close to one as we have. Yngvar, where'd you find these people? Stay here and rest, but once yours are ready to go, we do. I'm going to see off those who want to head north. But I'll join you to Grofheim.: More travel? No...we've already come so far.: Stop the pouting, girlie. Even if Jorundr won't listen to a tired old varl like me I have a feeling they'll pay attention to your friend Yngvar, here.: They'll listen to Iver?: Hah, he hasn't told you? Of course he hasn't. Do what you need to, but don't be long. Our caravan is in a sorry state. No food, little renown, and desperately poor morale. We need to rest, but we can't really afford to do so. So let's talk to Hogun and Mogun instead.  : Just take it easy for a while! People are noticing. : Oh, they've noticed, have they? We're on the edge of dying daily and you want me to take it easy? Gods, I should be plowing twice as many fields! You understand?: Don't get us thrown out of this caravan, Mogun. It's not just you who suffers!: Right, so you get married? Have kids? Now I'm supposed to settle down too, yeah? What happened to...The two brothers clam up as you approach. : That's right. I've got a kid to take care of. Cool your head, Mogun.Hogun departs, leaving Mogun looking awkward. : Rook, what brings you around? : Just heard yelling. Came to check it out. : You come running every time you hear yelling? Must be why you look so tired. Look, it's not secret. I like women, Rook. They like me. They like the scar. Feh, forget it. Listen, all this? All this death? Every night, half the caravan cries itself to sleep. Pathetic. Come on, Rook. Be honest. This is good living. Half the world just tilling soil 'til they keel over. What kind of life is that? We're lucky. You could go your whole life with no goals, no purpose, nothing to fight against but boredom and hunger. I'm glad for all of this. : I'm not sure I agree. : Look at it like this. We're fighting to the death almost every day, yeah? You can curl up in a little ball of fear. You can go hide in the woods eating nuts and appreciating leaves or some nonsense. Or you can enjoy the struggle. Know which one I pick. Anyway, just so you know, I'd never go for Alette. Promise you that. Or Oddleif. All yours.: Uh, appreciated, Mogun.You depart, unsure whether your opinion of Mogun changed for the better or worse. Let's go talk to Krumr next. He's been calling Iver "Yngvar" and surely there's a story there. Also note that Krumr is one of the varl that Ubin mentioned who might be older than Ubin.  : Krumr, can you spare a moment? : Mostly no. But I'll try.: I never had a moment to thank you for your hospitality.: Consider it done, then.: So...who is Yngvar?: Hah! I'm not surprised he never told you. I'm just surprised he can stand being around anyone at all. Your friend was one of us, long ago. I mean, the dredge-bashing type. He was called Yngvar then. And if you want to know why he changed his name, best ask him yourself. I'm too old to peddle in gossip.: How did you get all these varl to follow you?: Respect, young one. After the second great war, wasn't much left for me to do, so I started training other varl to fight. Got tired of that, made a place in Wyrmtoe. They still come calling, even with no wars to speak of. Seems like that might be changing though, don't it?: Any wisdom on fighting dredge?: Depends how much you know. They're all armor. Tap 'em hard enough though and it'll shatter. Line up a whole row of slag and they'll explode on each other all the way down. You get in a big brawl, half your time is spent setting them up for it. And if you see one bang his axe like a tuning fork, try to kill him quick. Sometimes the slag he's calling won't even show up.: I bet you have some incredible stories.: I might. I might. Or I could be the most boring varl you ever met. Depends how much you like killing dredge. Ask me again someday, might tell you about the time we filled a dead yox with whale teeth. And why.: I'd best leave you to your business.: I suppose you should. Take care, friend of Yngvar. I'd love to buy that worldhook (+2 armor break), but I really can't afford not to spend all my renown on supplies. Which is what I do.  We rest a couple of days. Not enough to heal up everyone, but enough to get the archers back to full strength, and perhaps more importantly get our morale out of the gutter. For now.  Krumr joins along with some varl and 20 supplies. It's enough to stretch our stores to 10 days' worth.    This is a bad random event even if you don't rob him. People are mad because you don't rob the farmer and consign him to death. People are mad if you do rob him. At least that way you get some supplies. But we don't seem to need supplies too badly right now and Rook's not a monster.  I'm just full of bad random events. I think maybe they're tied to morale? We post some extra guards. To deter any further theft, you discretely place some trusted guards by the caravans. You hear a few people casually point out the extra manpower, but nobody seems to raise an alarm for now.  As day 95 winds down, we approach another godstone.   "A blessing!" shouts one of the men in your caravan, holding up what looks like a silver coin. "It's a fish scale," he says, pointing out the rainbow pattern that shows in the sunlight. Soon, a curious child has found another hiding in the snow, and then a third is discovered. "Perhaps they'll bring us luck," you overhear, and before long the caravan has become obsessed with gathering the shining scales. We can let them take their time or cut them off. Taking their time takes...a while. Like 3 days of sitting at the drat godstone, eating supplies and gathering scales. However... By the end of the second day, the scavenger hunt still continues unabated, and even you are starting to feel something in the back of your mind, like you need to have one of the scales. You shake it off, uncertain to let this continue. It's another day before the fervor calms down, and you think there must have been something unnatural about it, because when the last scale was found the obsession suddenly stopped.  I'm really not sure if this was worth it. We get the Godscale, a rank 5 artifact that gives +1 aggro and +3 armor. Great for Egil who you want drawing aggro. But that assumes we can get him to rank 5 and actually use it. In the meantime, we eat up almost all our remaining supplies and morale plummets as everyone gets demoralized looking at our dwindling stores. : Rook, come here.Oddleif motions for you to join her, where she shows you a small group of women bearing bows and arrows--those women she has trained to fight.  A group of men from the caravan approach. "Listen here," says one. "Practice all you want, my wife isn't fighting dredge!" The other men agree in chorus. "We don't want to see a battlefield full of dead wives and daughters!" Yeah, guys? Well tough poo poo; I need the fighters. : Train more archers. "To be honest," says Oddleif, "this was already harder than I expected. I don't know how many more would really take to it. But the more people who can hold their own, the better." The men continue to complain. The women return to camp not just as clansmen, but as fighters. We lose 25 clansmen and gain 25 fighters. I think it's a great trade.  OK yeah, at this point I'm convinced you get more negative events when morale is poor. I've never had this bad of luck before, but I almost always have Onef and Ekkill, their soldiers, and their supplies with me. : Explain yourselves."Ragni chooses my daughter on his own," the insulted mother says. "But this one thinks I have something to do with it." Launching herself forward, the first woman flails wildly, shouting, "Liar!" The women are separated and eventually calm down, but you worry this is far from over.  Day 100, almost out of supplies when we see a conflict in the distance. It takes almost a full day to close to it.  Oh hey, it's Fasolt.  Rook is ALSO good at counting! But he's not as reckless as Hakon.  We're going to take this easy.  The Gullinfryi, by the way, is just a crit chance item. Crits are nice, but in a game where kililng an enemy isn't always a good thing, I tend not to use items with it. This battle will be Krumr's debut. Krumr has the same "heavy impact" passive as Hakon and the warhawks from the other caravan. His active, though...it rules. But he has to be leveled up. His skill is called "Forge Ahead" and he can target a unit and make it act next in the turn order. Meaning in this instance, if I wanted 2 straight turns for Alette, I could make that happen. At rank 1, Krumr can only do it to adjacent units. At rank 2 he gets a decent range. At rank 3, he gets infinite range. He's an extremely good unit with great stats and we need to do our best to get him leveled up.  Rook's caravan really needs a warhawk. Bersi or Gunnulf in the upper portion could just walk forward and tempest those slingers into uselessness.  Instead, what we end up with is an enormously bloody battle in which we take shitloads of injuries. Alette, Egil, and Krumr get most of the kills, though, which is good--we need them to level up.  Yeah, no way. If you try this and fail, by the way, one of the axe brothers dies. I think Hogun. If you didn't recruit them, then I'm guessing it's another opportunity to kill Egil.  I really wish we could have done the extra wave. We don't really have 20 fighters to spare.  : Isn't this a drat curiosity. This is the second time I've been sent to find a varl who is headed in my direction with humans in tow.: What are dredge doing up here?: Gods, does nobody know what's going on around here? They leveled Grofheim to the ground. We've been losing ground for days. Jorundr's in Einartoft now. They sent me to gather Krumr and the rest from Wyrmtoe, when we ran across this bunch of slag. And there's a lot more where they came from. Is this all the varl you've got, Krumr? What've you been doing, eating each other? : Many went to Blotsbalkr. Are you tellng me Grofheim is completely gone?: And Vognir's dead. Slag on our heels. The varl you sent off north are probably dead. The world's ending. Come on, this is old news. We're gathering in Einartoft. That's where we need to go right now. Wait.Fasolt takes a long moment to look out over the caravan of men, women and children behind you. : Not them. : We just saved your rear end!: Little one, you have no idea how many slag I've butchered in the last few weeks. I don't get in fights I can't win. That includes men who invite themselves into Einartoft.: Dammit Fasolt, who cares about that? What in the depths happened at Grofheim?Before Fasolt can reply, a low rumble grabs your attention, growing louder by the moment.  : GO! Don't stop until you reach Hadrborg! The mountain in the background splits in two.  And behind it, we see...something enormous sliter through the split mountain.  It's there only a split second, and then obscured by the crumbling mountain and snowfall. The caravan continues its mad dash to godstone Hadrborg.  Our caravan, terrified out of its mind by whatever it was it just saw, arrives at the godstone to see varl building fortifications.  : Hold up. We're going to have a talk. : You're still standing. Well, most of you. Rest up. Then move on.: A mountain just sank into the earth, and some...something is out there! And you're just going to send us away?: I don't know who you are, but you're not going to Einartoft. There's a couple hundred varl here who will back that up.: Where are we supposed to go? Back the way we came? We're stuck between two mountain ranges. In one direction, a few thousand varl. In the other, an army of dredge and whatever caused that quake!: Einartoft is a varl city. This shouldn't be news to a varl. : Give it a rest, Fasolt. Don't you recognize who you're talking to?Surprise suddenly flashes across Fasolt's face. The other varl are starting to come closer, now. You hear "Yngvar" being whispered between them. : I think this might be the one person you want to let into Einartoft.: You're... : The humans come with me. All of them.Fasolt glances between Iver and Krumr before stalking away, pushing past the mob of curious onlookers. : Iver...who are you?: Some other time, Rook.   Suddenly there's a lot of activity. Word comes from below to retreat to the next village over, and you soon see why. A black shadow is sweeping down the valley from the direction of Grofheim, where the quake, or whatever caused it, has obliterated the mountainside. On closer inspection it's a veritable ocean of dredge, more than you imagined possible. In their midst is a towering giant of a dredge, blood red from head to toe. You gather your things in short order and join a good many varl, leaving the godstone behind.  We get Iver's old belt, the Farthingjord. It's awesome. Rank 4 artifact with +3 armor break.   Another not-great random event that I think can only get an outcome that isn't actively bad, rather than give you a positive effect.  We hit a small village before reaching Einartoft. Iver helpfully lets us know we'll need 3 days worth of supplies to get there. "Dad," says Alette, appearing at your side. "I liked old Iver." Somewhere in the back of your mind you feel the same way. You focus on preparations instead, realizing that you may be one of the first humans about to set foot in Einartoft.  The exchange rate here is incredibly good. But...dammit, with only 10 renown we have to buy supplies only and I have to ignore that worldhook. Again. Gotta keep moving. Not enough supplies to putter around.     Next time: Einartoft, the last varl city.
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Sep 12, 2018 03:46
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Nuramor posted:I remember from the last LP something about a guy who warns you about men with helmets. Was that the optional one you didn't activate for this? Yep. I think we will see him in the second game, though. Pretty sure the game doesn’t check to see if he was enabled in BS1, and since he doesn’t have any death conditions in that game you can kind of handwave “he was among your clansmen offscreen the whole time and now he is playable.”
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Sep 12, 2018 12:42
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PART 9: LENDING A HELPING HAND Our caravan arrives in Einartoft, which is brimming with varl armies ready for battle. BGM: Walls No Man Has Seen  : All these warriors...another great war is upon us. It is the third time I have seen such a thing. There are far fewer of us now than there once were.Krumr heads up the stairs to the great hall, and returns shortly after speaking to some varl. : What did they tell you?: By all accounts the dredge are coming here. Looks like they plan to end the varl for good this time. This place will become a killing field soon. They say the prince of men is here. They've got a mender, too.: Prince Ludin is here? From Arberrang? : In any case, we'll be given no audience today. You remember the last time you were here, Yngvar? : It's Iver. Yeah. I remember it.: What now?: We find somewhere to rest. I'd recommend keeping your people out of trouble while you're here, Rook.: In fact, keep them invisible. Jorundr won't be happy you're here.You're shown to quarters, but could wander the city while you wait for an audience. You feel like you could sleep for a week straight.  So...here we are in Einartoft. 2 days of supplies left. Which is about to be 1 since we have to rest.  Rook inexplicably is invited to the council meeting.  Hey, it's all the dudes from Hakon's caravan! ...except Griss.  : Enough, Eyvind. The bridge stands. Find some other way.: Greetings from Wyrmtoe, Jorundr. I've brought an ally.: Who are these people? We don't have time for games.: Wait...I recognize you. : Yngvar among us again? Is this what the end of the world looks like?Jorundr steps down from his throne to get a closer look. In the light you spy deep wounds on the varl king. : It was my last option. You look like death, Jorundr.: The Sundr came through Grofheim. All of them. Or we would still be there.Editor's Note: It'll be explained in a moment, but Sundr are essentially superelite dredge. Instead of names like "grunt" and "stoneguard" they have actual names.  : A few thousand varl remain. Bellower has been following us since Grofheim.: That is what he does. What will you do?: Remain. There is no better place for us than here. We make our stand in Einartoft. But even if Einartoft falls, the varl won't be wiped out. Hakon is taking our best warriors to Arberrand, as we were discussing.: I'm not going, Jorundr. We're needed here.: This is not a debate...A messenger bursts through the doors, cutting the tension. He says a Stonesinger has been cutting a path across the bridge. : Gods, can we not have a moment's respite? They should not be here already! : A Stonesinger is with them? Let me bring down the bridge as I said, it will buy us...: I said the bridge stands, mender! I say it again to you, and the prince of men, and the whole mender council, were they here! I will not say it again! Hakon, you go to Arberrang! Eyvind! Do not even touch that bridge! Am I understood?: You are. Then I'll confront the singer myself.Nobody tries to stop Eyvind, but many follow as he leaves the great hall.  : What is that thing?: A stonesinger. As clsoe as the dredge come to menders of they're own. I've only seen one before. It didn't go well.: Can Eyvind win this?: I don't know. Think we'll find out.: We should help him.: Listen to me, Rook. You will probably die here. And so will everyone else who steps on that bridge. Look at your daughter. Are you prepared for that?: You're not doing this alone, Iver.: I won't stop you. Fight like it's your last.Editor's Note: You can decide not to fight here, and instead you'll play the next battle with Hakon's crew. Hakon's crew is...not great given the enemy composition, and Rook's party is at 0 renown. We're going to starve to death if we don't get renown to buy supplies. Pragmatism, as much as heroism, puts us on that bridge.  The good news! Eyvind's playable! And also he's level 5 and you can allocate his stats however you see fit. He also can use the Calabila and get +1 armor and +1 willpower per turn. The bad news! This fight loving SUCKS and I don't have the renown to promote Krumr, who teams VERY well with Eyvind at higher levels.  We max out Eyvind's willpower and armor. He's 1 point shy on strength, but he's a wizard. He's not gonna be fighting anything. Or be anywhere near the front lines. Eyvind is the only character of his type in The Banner Saga. He has TWO separate active abilities: 1.) Mend: He can select ANY allied unit on the board (regardless of distance) and immediately heal its armor for 1/2 of Eyvind's currenet willpower, rounded down. So with a max 12 willpower, he can heal 6 armor. Extremely handy. 2.) Arc Lightning: This is a ranged attack that requires him to be within 6 tiles of his target. He does damage to THAT target, and then lightning jumps in a diagonal. If any unit--allied or enemy--is immediatetely diagonal to the struck unit (meaning it has to be corner-to-corner), it will ALSO take lightning damage, at +1 whatever the previous target took. Lightning can jump as many times as there are diagonals. Get a good group of diagonals and you can neuter and entire board with Eyvind. Stuck Krumr behind him in the turn order and you can have Eyvind strike 2 times in 3 turns and absolutely just rain destruction on people. It's awesome. BGM: Strewn Across a Bridge  This fight is either easy or AWFUL depending on what the stonesinger (the 11/14 guy in the yellow scarf) does early on. Sometimes he wastes his time. Sometimes he makes your life miserable. He...did the latter in this battle. The 23 strength dredge scourge is also a problem, and needs to have his armor whittled down before we can make him manageable. Had we brought Oddleif we could've made this easier. So...Stonesingers have 3 abilities: 2 actives and a passive. The passive, "disease strike," poisons any unit that gets hit by the stonesinger, causing it to take 1 strength damage per turn until it dies or the fight ends. Worse still, any allied unit that is adjacent to the diseased unit ALSO gets the disease. It's awful. Active 1 is called "Rupture," and it turns dredge into bombs. Any dredge with < 8 strength will EXPLODE, doing its remaining armor damage as strength to adjacent units. Very dangerous but I've never actually seen a stonesinger use it in this game. Active 2 is EXTREME bullshit and incredibly dangerous. It's called "umbrage," and takes 2 turns--1 to start casting, and 1 to finish. But if it's cast, ALL units allied to the stonesinger take 2 armor penalty and gain a +3 strength bonus that can go over their max. Look at how many ranged units there are on this map. If he boosts them, they will be able to rain down melee-strength ranged attacks on our crew and it will decimate us. Oh, and you can cast umbrage as many times as you want. The boost does go away if you kill the stonesinger, and will also kill any unit who is only alive BECAUSE OF the strength boost. But your best bet is to kill the stonesinger.  Naturally, the stonesinger immediately starts casting umbrage. Meanwhile, that monster dredge maims Egil through his stonewall.  I have to spend all my time working on the monster dredge to the extent that the stonesinger gets his cast off. This battle just got MUCH more dangerous.  Rook marks prey this guy who goes down HARD.  Alette basically one-shots him after Iver does decent strength damage.  Note this inferno slinger who now has 13 strength. If Egil weren't here this might well be a wipe. It still might be a wipe.  Archers with this much strength should be illegal. And the damned stonesinger keeps retreating out of harms's way.    Eyvind gets off an arc lightning to trivialize the 1 melee dude left and wound the slinger diagonal.  But, like...I can't do anything about this. Krumr gets maimed FROM DOWNTOWN BOOM SHAKA LAKA.  Hey, remember how much you hated umbrage! Well guess what he's casting it again! And it'll take less time to cast now that there are only 5 enemy units.  They've got like no armor left but who needs armor when you can one-shot me?  This archer has 11 strength left AFTER taking 4 damage from a lightning strike.  Umbrage doesn't work for the stonesinger himself, but he still puts Iver down.  And Rook.  Remember how I said that Eyvind would never melee? Well...this was the easiest way to hurt the stonesinger.  It's not enough, though--Krumr goes down like 1 turn before the fight would've ended.  Alette kills the stonesinger, and the flame singer dies due to only being alive thanks to the temporary strength bonus granted by umbrage.  Of course, now the dredge Sundr, Bellower, is here.  Iver tells a dumbfounded Rook to grab Eyvind and run. And then...  A wounded Iver squares off against a 21/21 Sundr in blood red. This isn't looking good.  Indeed, Iver agrees.  Bellower has too much armor to do damage against. Iver breaks him, but this is a lost cause.  Bellower also regenerates armor AND health each turn. He drops Iver to 1 hitpoint.  He then uses his special move, "quake and despair," which is the worst move in the whole game. It does -1 armor and -1 strength to ALL units, and there's nothing you can do about it. Oh, and it chooses 1 allied unit to be stunned and miss its turn. Oh, and he can use it whenever he wants. Oh, and since Iver's the only allied unit, he's by default stunned and loses a turn. Which means Bellower can strike him down easily next turn.  Which he does. Iver, our mighty varl and Rook's best friend, tries to block the strike, but instead his arm is torn clean off by the blow. He falls to the ground.  Well...yeah, that's one way of putting it.   I'll say this for Eyvind: he's incredibly brave.  Eyvind could barely handle a stonesinger; not sure what he's gonna try against Bellower, but then...      That giant thing we saw before? You all mostly guessed it was a serpent. But now we know for sure. And the dredge are apparently as afraid of it as we are. If nothing else, it gives us a chance to collect Iver and run like hell back to Einartoft.  We're brought back to Einartoft where we can talk to Eyvind. But before we do so...  OK game you clearly want to give me a worldhook and I'm buying this. I also spent the remaining 6 renown on 18 supplies. Enough to hold us over a couple more days.  : Can you save... : Yes. Probably. Give me silence.Nearly three hours pass silently as Eyvind plies his trade. Flesh slowly forms and closes across Iver's torn frame. : That...is as much as I can do. He should make it...: Thank you.The mender looks exhausted, leaning heavily against the bed. : When was the last time you slept?: A couple...days ago...I'm ok. Just need to sit.Before you can catch him, the mender crumbles to the floor.  Cheerful, that. Iver's lost an arm and is at death's door, and our newfound wizard friend just passed out from exhaustion. BGM: Weary the Weight of the Sun  The next chapter opens somewhere we've seen before: the ruined tower of Ridgehorn. Except...the woman who was dead next to Eyvind is very much not dead. Oh, and the serpent is there.  I don't know what this means. Anyone?  You also realize that a monumental serpent is speaking to you now. Your last certainty was that you died some time ago...and that it is about to happen again.  The serpent tries to exsanguinate Juno, but she...has a shield spell, I guess?   : Frustrating. You are slow to understand the serpent. It speaks in a language that recalls very ancient memories of words you learned long ago. : If you are not going to die, I suppose we must speak instead. Who are you?  : My name is Juno. : You are a Juno? It means nothing to me. Maybe I have asked the wrong question. What are you? What is your purpose? : I am a mender.: Mender? Ah, Valka. Now the picture is forming. Do you not know me, Valka?Though your memory is still fuzzy, you're certain you know nothing about an enormous serpent. : What do your prophecies say? The gods gave you prophecy. Fate. Destiny. Is there no child coming to slay me with a magic sword? Are there no stars in the sky fortelling this disaster? Do you truly not know?: The gods are dead.: Dead? How is that...are you a god? No. The gods are silent and before me stands one who knows not what they have done. Listen carefully now, for I will give you a prophecy. : I am the end. Do you understand? This world, and this tapestry, I would devour. It is my purpose. But I cannot. Instead, now comes a wall of night to consume your pitiful world.: Wall of night? The dredge?: Dredge? Stone men marching across a long bridge? No. It is darkness. The egg white that has turned black. I am meant to devour the tapestry itself, not idly witness the dusk smother this rock.: I am incomplete! A worm crawling through a dung field! Because of you! Who are you to take my destiny? What are you?!! RETURN WHAT IS MINE! He tries to kill her again, with similar success.  : Eyvind...: Ju, Juno? You're alive...you're alive! How?! Where are you? Wait, where am I?: Asleep, I presume. Or unconscious. I am in Ridgehorn, I think. A serpent was trying to kill me, now I'm talking to you. Time is moving strangely. I've lost swathes of memories. But I found you. For a short time, at least. The serpent said something about a long bridge. So I took a guess.: It came after you? We saw it at Einartoft. Are you ok?: It tried to turn me to ash after we spoke. I'd be surprised if that's the last we've seen of it.: It could tear the land apart or crush cities if it wanted. What do we do?: It gets worse. A prophecy of the gods that I've never heard of.: There are still prophecies out there?: It was vague. Sounded like that serpent was supposed to swallow the world. Instead, some kind of darkness or nothingness is seeping from the north. It devours whatever it touches.: That would explain why the dredge are swarming on us like someone kicked an ant hill.: Eyvind, are you in danger?: You could say so. Bellower is here. The varl are holding him off, but not for much longer, I think. Of all the Sundr, why the immortal one?: Bellower. That is the worst of luck. I would have you come to me, but...we will have to do this the hard way. Listen closely. I will return to Strand and find passage down the Red River. You must leave Einartoft and meet me in Sigrholm.: Juno, we'll never make it to Sigrholm. Bellower is about to overtake us. The varl won't listen to a thing I...: Find a way. Do whatever it takes. I will not be able to contact you again before Sigrholm. Go. And Eyvind?: Yes?: I love you.So...I guess that's the next step in our journey, but we have to get out of here safely first.  : You've spent a lot of time next to him since he passed out.: Just keeping an eye on him. It's not like that, dad. He saved Iver. He might save the rest of us.: Can he hear us? He just moved... : How long was I...?: You were out for a couple days. How do you feel?: Juno! She's alive! I need to meet her in Sigrholm.: Hold on, slow down. Who's Juno?: She's my mentor...on the mender council. She contacted me.: Contacted you how?: She's not like most menders. What happened here since I passed out?: The varl are holding the dredge back, just barely. Bellower has disappeared. Iver is still out of it. Jorundr sent Hakon, Ludin, and a couple hundred varl away to Arberrang. I don't know how long we'll be able to hold out here.: Rook, I need your help. Take me to Sigrholm. Juno is going to meet us there.: Sigrholm? That's got to be a week away, at least. And just abandon Einartoft?: Maybe, or...No, I could destroy that god forsaken bridge myself. That would delay the immediate threat, but...Jorundr will never agree to it.: I need to understand a few things, Eyvind. What's going on around here? That serpent? Bellower?: Look, I know things are...it's...it's a long story. How well do you know history?: We're from a very small town in the woods.: I'll keep it short. You know how men and varl were made...the Loom-mother, the other gods. In the first great war, the armies of men and varl hated each other. They fought bitterly for land and dominance.: Then one of the gods created the dredge, and they were such a threat that unless men and varl set aside their differences, they threatened to wipe out both races. So they did. They ended the war, pushed the dredge into the north, and formed an alliance that has held ever since.: The second great war began generations later. The dredge rallied their forces, defeated the varl who watched the borders and laid wate to unsuspecting settlements throughout the world.: They were led by Sundr, powerful dredge warlords and weavers, like Bellower. He was there in the second great war. Humanity was on the brink of extinction when the inner circle of menders went forth, and finally sent the Sundr and the dredge deep underground. For the most part, the dredge haven't tried to return since. Well...until now.: Those menders were called "Valka." Juno wasn't there herself, but she's from their bloodline. : So another great war has begun.: If I didn't think the world was ending it would be incredible. Ancient history is playing out before us.: What about the serpent?: That's another story. I...there's nothing in the mender's libraries about that thing.: It must have something to do with the dredge returning.: That seems likely.: What do we do about Bellower?: I can't stop him. But I believe Juno can. That's why we need to go. We could just leave... : And let the varl die to give us a head start?: It's not my first choice. I've done everything I can on my own.: Why won't Jorundr bring the bridge down?: I can't completely understand it myself. The last time I mentioned it he made his mind very clear. He'll let the city, and the rest of the world, fall before that damned bridge.: You said you could bring the bridge down yourself? How?: Not by myself. I could blast it apart, but this bridge wasn't made to fall. It'll take time, and concentration. That's why I need your help. And the varl will try to stop me. It could mean holding off both the dredge and the varl.: I need time to think about this.: I understand. Be quick, Rook.: There has to be some way to...I can't believe the varl would be so stubborn!: Speak to Jorundr yourself. He's in the great hall. Maybe you'll have more luck. Or maybe he'll put your head on a spike. Rook, I hate to put this all on your shoulders but I've got few friends here. Come to a decision quickly. Either way, we can't stay. We have to make it to Sigrholm. Juno will know what to do.VOTE TIMESo...there you go. We need to get to Sigrholm, but our current situation is pretty desperate. Do we: 1.) Abandon the varl to their fate and make a break for it? 2.) Try to hold out a while longer in hopes that Iver recovers and can offer guidance? 3.) Try and bring down the bridge RIGHT NOW 4.) Try and hold out, but if things get shittier try and bring down the bridge?
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Sep 13, 2018 02:02
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None of the choices are good. Some are just less bad than others.
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Sep 13, 2018 02:21
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This is an incredibly close vote. I will close voting when I get done simming my baseball thing, so probably there's like 20-30 more minutes. e: by a whopping 1 vote margin, we elect to pin our hopes on Iver. VOTING CLOSED! FairGame fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Sep 13, 2018 |
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Sep 13, 2018 23:35
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PART 10: UMBRAGE: -1 ARM, +5 STR OK, y'all voted to stick around in hopes that Iver comes to and can do something more useful than offer "die on a bridge" or "piss off all the varl." And actually, the vote was so close that had it gone the other way I'd have done a bit of fighting and left before any plot triggers. The caravan needs the rest, and we need the kills and renown for food and leveling.  We can leave or destroy the bridge, but Eyvind said that maybe we should go talk to Jorundr. Let's give that a shot.  : You'll do as I say.: I'm not here to argue. I'm telling you that we're dying by the dozens every day now. You sent our best away with Hakon. How long do you expect us to last?: You asked for this command, Fasolt. Don't let them get across that bridge.Fasolt takes his leave just as you approach. Not great timing, you think to yourself.  : Thank you for the audience.: I forget your name.: Rook.: Rook, how is Yngvar? Will he survive?: I believe so.: That is good, then. If I remember Yngvar well enough, he hasn't told you why he faced down Bellower alone, did he?: I would be interested to hear.: Yngvar confronted a Sundr in his youth, during the great wars. He won that fight. None other but the menders have done that. He proved us stronger. Maybe he thought to do it again.: Iver killed a Sundr? How did he end up in Skogr?: You'd have to pry that from him yourself. I don't know. He disappeared when the last king tried to name him kendr.It occurs to you that Jorundr would not be sitting on the throne had that happened. : But why are you here, Rook? Be brief. Buddy, see reason. Fasolt is telling you the same thing... : That bridge needs to be destroyed.: Oh, you have the answers? Wonderful! Come, sit upon the throne! Every man I've ever met thinks he'd rival the gods himself, if only he were in charge. I am over four hundred years old, and I know that I know little. You are a child, an infant, and yet you know everything! Listen, human. This story is not about you.: If you jumped from that bridge today the world would not change. Now either help Fasolt retake it or leave my city. I don't care which!Guards are quick to usher you from the great hall. You don't resist. Well...that could have gone better. Guy is stubbornly clinging to a bridge that's going to get us all killed.  Talking to Jorundr does open up a new option, though: we can fight on the bridge alongside the defenders. It'll take a day to do so and won't really change much when it comes to the invading army, but it's a day for our caravan to rest, improve morale, and get us some much-needed renown to buy supplies. Even if we flee the city right now, we'll be killed by starvation as surely as we'd be killed by dredge. There are supplies here I can buy to prevent this, but I need renown to do so.    And so we find ourselves on the same bridge as before--but on a segment much closer to Einartoft proper.  Krumr's in sorry shape, and Iver's completely unavailable, what with getting his arm cut off and being near death. But Krumr doesn't really have to fight--he just has to stand next to Eyvind and help him cast arc lightning 2 turns in 3. Fasolt's playable too now, and if you gave him something when he was in Hakon's caravan, he still has it now. Items are not shared across caravans, but they do persist with characters that switch caravans.  My kingdom for a warhawk; I could wreck so many slingers early on. Instead, this is gonna be a slog.  Egil is easily the MVP of this playthrough. Because I spent so much renown in Frostvellr on supplies, I'm fairly underleveled and Egil's the only reason I'm able to hang in long enough to win.  The other nice thing about Egil is that if you let him tank long enough, things will surround him in a pattern that makes them very susceptible to arc lightning.  I've never really used Alette, but honestly she's pretty drat strong when she has the opportunity to use her special.   "Come back tomorrow if you're looking for more," says Fasolt. You sleep poorly, Eyvind's suggestion to collapse the bridge repeating in your mind. Rook goes down at some point, but overall a pretty decent effort. We get 10 renown for our troubles.  That renown immediately is applied to buying 30 supplies. The "statue of a sightless man" is a pretty good relic--+2 strength, 20% chance to dodge strength attacks. But we don't have any level 5s that would want it (Eyvind doesn't rely on strength and shouldn't be getting attacked) and we already have the Namejs Ring and Godscale as useful level 5 items. And honestly we can't afford it. Maybe we'll get lucky and see another one later on.  Day 2 of our siege. Everyone rests overnight, including Rook, whose 2 day injury from the last battle is now just 1 day.   Back into the fray.  No sense changing anything that worked well before.  Our opponents are more melee-oriented this time. And the 23 strength colossus is a threat to Egil--if in fact he can ever get close enough to attack.  Some bad luck early on as a slinger moves to hurt Rook before I can do much about it. This is the real problem with our being underleveled. We just don't have the armor to defend against an alpha strike.  The enemy AI is really stupid when it comes to the shield slam move. It moves Egil over but does 0 armor damage, and absolutely cripples its ally.  I make a pretty bad mistake here. I planned to move Eyvind over to arc lightning the colossus, and then double up with a Forge Ahead from Krumr. Which I did! But I forgot Rook, despite being able to attack with bow-and-arrow, doesn't have puncture and couldn't finish the job maiming the colossus.  The upshot of this is that the colossus lives long enough to summon an ally instead of die right before it. And the ally spawns RIGHT NEXT TO EYVIND, and puts him down. Not a terrible character to be injured since he doesn't rely on strength, but menders take a 4 day injury. Not great, either.   All told, Oddleif, Alette, and Eyvind go down. The first two aren't so bad since archers only take 2 days and you get a bonus rest day between battles in Einartoft. But still, sloppy work on my part.  We clean out the last of the supplies here. I'd have left town at this point had the vote gone that way. Instead...   Oh hey, Iver's back. And...he's gonna fight with one arm? PS: Fasolt, you were kind of a dick. Yes. He is going to fight with one arm. That probably won't go so well.  ...or...maybe it'll be incredibly good somehow? You get the opportunity to reallocate skill points on Iver from previous levels because his stats have changed. The loss of his arm has made him...stronger, somehow. He loses his "return the favor" passive that does chip armor damage when attacked, since he doesn't have a shield to chip armor with. Instead, he gets "heavy impact"--the same thing that Gunnulf, Bersi, Krumr, and Hakon have. Oh, and he gets 3 exertion to go with the absurdly high armor and strength caps. Given that he starts with 8 willpower, that means he can do crazy poo poo like "attack with 20 strength" or "break 6 armor without items" for 2 turns at the start of battle.  He gets a new battle model, too. By the way, it's rare that I'll use it, but he still has "battering ram" as his active ability. Only instead of slamming his shield into something to knock it back 4 tiles, he...headbutts it.  The battle itself is fairly uninteresting, even by the standards of this game. With Iver back we've got 2 tanks (and 3 tiles worth of tanks) which means our archers and mender can wreck poo poo from safe distances.  Iver has had enough fighting on the damned bridge.  : Yngvar, glad to see you well.You swear you catch a note of trepidation in his voice. : Jorundr, enough. This fight cannot be won.: Again, this? I'll be damned if that bridge falls during my reign!: You'll let our whole race die?: We'll all be gone someday, Yngvar. I need not tell you. There are no more varl being made tomorrow...or a thousand years from now. We are it. And I will not destroy what we have made! Would you leave no trace of us when we are gone? As if we never existed?!: I know this, but yours is one voice of many. I know that the varl are equal. The days of kendr are over. I ask these varl, all there is left in the world, to follow me. And live another day. Who do you think they will choose? : Go on. Take the mender. Destroy the bridge. Do it and leave. Take whoever would join you, and do not return to my city. The alliance of man and varl is through.Iver is almost out the door before Jorundr has finished his sentence. Well...that's probably not good long-term, but if Hakon survives the trip to Arberrang with Ludin, maybe it'll be OK. Jorundr's as good as dead, so Hakon will be the new king. Problem is, Hakon loving hates Ludin, and for good reason.    This is the shortest chapter in the game. Y'all drat near voted to make it even shorter. It ends as soon as you leave Einartoft, which you have the ability to do from the very start of the chapter. Anyway, we get some surviving varl that don't want to seek a glorious death in Einartoft amongst their brethren.  We'll pick this up later on--I have another thing I need y'all to vote on.
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Sep 14, 2018 11:48
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queserasera posted:So what happens if Eyvind destroys the bridge as soon as the option becomes available? Fewer casualties (including Fasolt)? Something else? I don't think it matters when you do it, but if you attempt to destroy the bridge yourself you fight a battle against dredge (with eyvind). Then he leaves your party for a battle while he works on destroying it. Varl led by Fasolt come to stop you and it starts a fight. Fasolt still dies. Just by your hand instead of by the dredge. I think the only way to save the bridge and also not have Fasolt die is to just leave outright.
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Sep 14, 2018 14:47
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PART 11: Yngvar Man, I don't know what Jorundr was so upset about. Most of the bridge is still there! Can't cross it, but if you wanted a monument to the varl it's still quite useful!  Two days out from Einartoft, this happens. I'm even more convinced that good/bad events are tied to morale. We've got the supplies to party it up. Which costs us 10 supplies, but gives a HUGE morale boost and also (and more importantly) +15 renown.  Before he's even finished his sentence you have your weapons out and rush forward to attack! This is...a less-good random event, but it's not as if bandits should be a problem for me given how much armor Iver has. I mean, unless it's a group full of nothing but archers who can puncture me into oblivion.  Krumr hits rank 3, which is important becuase now he can use Forge Ahead on units within a...4, I think?...tile radius. Doesn't have to be adjacent anymore, in any event. Also look at that armor break.  Aww...poo poo.  Human enemies are more dangerous than dredge because they always have HUGE willpower reserves, huge exertion, and in the case of archer bowmasters, can use their "bird of prey" special to attack from well outside normal range. Poor Eyvind never even gets a chance to move.  This is...getting really dangerous tbh.  The trick to fights with archers is to kill the archers first before they use armor break + puncture to ruin you. But if I kill an archer here, just...that leaves the remaining archers more turns to ruin my day!  I let Egil do some fighting because I need this fight to END, and look at the loving armor break on these things. A natural 3 break + 2 exertion.  Thankfully they've largely ignored Iver.  I win, but Eyvind, Alette, and Krumr take injuries.  Still, overall, things are looking up, because...  : Greetings, Iver. IT's been quite a while since we talked, hasn't it?  : I know you. Ubin? Never imagined you be one to defy the king. What made you leave?: Someone had to.: What do you mean?: Bellower is headed this way.: Already? How is that possible?: A group of varl from Wyrmtoe showed up around the back of Einartoft. The long way. Bellower and his army chased them across the Summer Path, they said.: Past Wyrmtoe? That doesn't make sense. Bellower was at the bridge.: He must have doubled back after the serpent appeared. While we fought on the bridge he led half his forces around to approach Einartoft from behind. : The attack on the bridge was a feint?: Don't let anyone tell you the dredge aren't clever. Einartoft will fall within a day.: Maybe not. He's following you. I thought one of you might know why.You exchange nervous glances but nobody speaks up.  : Must be me, then. : Is there something I don't know? That's quite a grudge he's holding if he's coming for you, Iver.: It doesn't matter. Our only chance is to get to Sigrholm. Juno will know what to do.: We'll join you. I bring supplies and warriors,a nd my friend Gunnulf here bears a heavy sword. I believe he'd be happy to swing it for you. Ubin (still non-playable) and Gunnulf join, along with the rest of the tax collector band--some renown, supplies, and fighters for our trouble.  But we don't get too far before this. Ubin thinks we should go around, but if Bellower is chasing us we need to get to Sigrholm as fast as possible. We will try and cut through the dredge.  Rook's party didn't fare well in the last war battle. Let's see how it goes now.  Well...we're badly outnumbered, to start.  We'll fight in formations. It'll cost us a few fighters that we really can't spare, but if we manage to win both waves it won't be so bad and can save us some time, hopefully.  Iver becomes the first natural level 5 character in the caravan and puts on the Namejs' Ring. His strength isn't great and I wish that weren't the case, but if he manages to survive into the next game when the level cap is higher we can fix it. For now he's a tank with decent strength and great exertion.  We'll bring Gunnulf, too; Krumr is too beat up to do a 2-wave fight.  Fortunately, it's melee-heavy. Very few slingers. Unfortunately, Gunnulf's movement still sucks. He'll just hang out in the corner for a bit.  I need to level Egil up. He can't fully tank the toughest dredge anymore.  The first wave is pretty easy, but everyone is a little wounded. Remember how Iver started with 16 armor? Well now he's down to 5. Some of the others aren't much better off.  Then again, the enemy AI doesn't realize that thanks to Iver's Namejs' Ring he will ignore 2 points of strength damage and now it's wasting its turn attacking him.  Which it does for a while once we're in PILLAGE! mode. But here's the thing. While it keeps wasting turns, everyone else in the party is resting. You get +1 willpower back when you rest. Oh, and Eyvind has the Calabilla equipped--that rank 5 coin I got for saving all the civilians outside Frostvellr. That gives him back +1 armor and +1 will per turn. Eyvind can heal armor using his "mend" skill. Half his current willpower, rounded down. So we rest. A lot. And Eyvind gets all his willpower back. And he mends the entire party. Now everyone is back to full armor, full willpower, and only Alette took any strength damage to speak of in the first wave. We all move to the center before Egil kills off the lone slinger to start the second wave.  We're properly prepared now. This should be a cake walk.  The only real threats are the 2 blue-pants slingers, and Gunnulf immediately moves to maim one.  Rook and Alette go down--enemies with turn advantage are a pain--but the battle is under control. Gunnulf crits the hell out of this poor slob for 24 damage.  Eventually Eyvind and Iver succumb, too. Having 3 enemies on the board is a HUGE pain if they're at full health.  But Gunnulf takes care of things to win wave 2, and...  Hey, nice!   That's a pretty decent trade, if you ask me.  Unfortunately, the road is just too choked off with dredge. Pushing any further is a bad idea with Iver (and to a lesser extent, Rook/Alette/Eyvind) injured. We'll have to go back to the main road. You order the caravan back around and head back to the main road before any more casualties are had. At least the dredge may think twice about following too closely.   : Who are you and what are you doing out here?"Call me Unnarr or anything else you like," the old man says. "A man goes where he pleases, doesn't he?" His stern look is more comical than intimidating, but you stop looking for answers. : You're welcome to join if you can keep pace."Keep pace?" The old man puffs through his moustache. "No fleeter than old Unnarr! And husbands, mind your wives! I'm cursed with the golden tongue. Not silver." The caravan enjoys as good laugh as they start moving once again. Weird old dude gives us a morale boost.  We hit a random village on our way to Haukstorp. I'm pretty satisfied with our ability to maintain a caravan at this point so I encourage them to join.  +112 clansmen is...a lot. I hope we can manage it.  Certainly this'll help, and we can probably even rest a day or so to recover a bit.  But first we'll stop to talk to Gunnulf, now with Rook's party instead of Hakon's.  : Don't talk much, do you?You approach the massive green-clad varl who is sitting quietly by himself, eating bread.  : So?: Just wanted to know anyone who can cleave a dredge in two like that a little better. I'm Rook.: What to know? Ubin asks me to chop a dredge in two, I chop him.: You like that sword, huh?: No. I love this sword. Given to me by old Skrymir, himself. When I start working for Ubin, he says, "I protect the king's collection, I protect the king." Gunnulf makes an expression somewhere between pain and frustration. : I couldn't save it, though.He makes a hand motion like an object falling from a tall height and exploding. : Mattered a lot at the time. I think it doesn't matter now. Skrymir is dead, anyway.: Traveled with Ubin for long?: Yes, long time. When I was young, I fight for another varl. It did not work out. But I learn to swing a sword. Ubin pays well, gives me plenty of things to kill. To be honest, maybe too many things these days.: I'll let you finish your meal.: Want to be friends with Gunnulf, Rook?He pops the last bit of bread into his mouth. : Keep food in the cart....I'm trying, man! Also, he's referring to the tax cart that went splat a few chapters ago. And Skrymir was the king before Jorundr was.  Not even a day goes by after we leave the village that this happens.  What's that?  Hey, neat. Let's go back and see if there's anyone else. The warriors complain as they ready their weapons. "Nid," you say, "Come with us if you can keep that up." She smiles and joins the fighters getting ready to head back to the village.  Thanks to Oddleif training the women, we now have a new hero unit: Nid. She'll join us in this battle (offscreen) and that might be it. She's very good, and her special allows her to attack units from SUUUUUPER far away. But although she starts at rank 2, she also starts at 0 kills meaning she needs to get the full 14 to hit Rank 5. And even 5 kills for Rank 3 which is sorta the minimum to make her useful. I'm not sure I've got the time to do that given how little renown I've got to spare.  Nothing we haven't seen before. Biggest threats are the slingers, as usual. The big guys will be cut down to size before they can reach melee distance.  Abridged version: they're no match for us.  This gets us 21 clansmen, though the delay costs us a day's journey.  "I think you just ruined her dream of marrying a varl boy," you say, timing your smile just right. The giant grins, then throws back his head with booming laugher. Other varl join in the mirth and the caravan feels a bit uplifted for it. The giant explains, "We live in the North for its space. Endless miles of snow, ice, mountains, fields. Space to be alone. But here there is no time for such things." Understranding slowly trickles through the caravan, relieving some of the tension.  At long last, we get clear of the endless snow and see green grass for the first time since crossing the wastes.    We arrive at Godstone Dundr, which looks more impressive when played in real-time.  "I almost wonder if we should rest here for the night," says Iver, who seems to have noticed the same thing. With all the snow around it, dredge might not even be able to find us. Godstones haven't steered us wrong yet, so we stay overnight. You walk around camp before settlng in. Along each strand of Dundr's massive beard is carved a different part of his story, and you turn your head to and from to read it. While the Loom-mother was the first to create, she soon found a counterpart in Dundr, who embodied her ideals in a masculine form. Dundr took some of her creations, gave them beards and showed them the secrets of smithing, though many remember him just as fondly for teaching them games and songs of mirth. As the camp settles in you notice a group of boys huddled around something. They show you an offering box, carved into the godstone itself. The box is an elaborate construction of interlocking pieces which slide around when touched. "We can't get it open," they tell you. "It's like a puzzle." : Let me take a look at it.The boys take turns working out the puzzle and give you tips when it's your turn, though you don't seem to make much progress. Eventually they leave to sleep until it's just you and a couple of other determined youngers. : This is too much for me. Skal.Instead of spending all night on a silly game, you go to Alette and huddle together to keep warm. You wake up with a thought so profound it strikes you like lightning. Rushing to the puzzle box, your fingers move with purpose until you hear a click. The lid springs open! Inside is...nothing. "Oh no," says a boy who was watching. "What a waste of time." To your surpirse, when you close the lid the whole box detaches from the stone. With a shrug you take it with you. You're suddenly glad you didn't spend all night working on this. I'm glad too, because if Rook doesn't go to sleep he isn't granted the epiphany he needs to acquire the PUZZLE BOX OF THE TWIN RIVERS, a level 4 artifact that gives +1 will per turn and +3 willpower in general. It's AWESOME for Eyvind.  Alas, my good luck doesn't hold. Right before Haukstorp, we catch fire.   We take a hit to our morale, and we're drat near out of food again. Thankfully Haukstorp is a stone's throw away.  Bet you can't guess what comes next! : I hope others would do the same for me. Dredge are nothing we haven't faced before.: Hmph.: Besides, it might throw Bellower off the scent a bit. We immediately have to fight upon getting into town.  I've had enough of low-armor Alette getting maimed. She gets both her points in armor as she promotes to Rank 4. She also can use Iver's old belt with +3 armor break now.  I hosed this battle up. Completely forgot to move Alette out of the lower half when I positioned everyone.  With predictable results.  Otherwise, the battle's a cake walk. Annoyed that I let Alette get injured, but it's only 2 days.   We get a whopping 1 clansman and also can raid his market stall for the last 50 supplies in the town. It only costs us 5 renown.  Let's meet Nid.   : I don't know if we've ever spoken. I'm Nid. You're Rook, I know. We've actually been traveling together for a long time. Isn't it strange how you can be so close to people and not know them?: Every day I pass peopel I swear I've never seen before.: I wanted to thank you. For letting me join you.: Where are you from? I don't think you're from Skogr. I knew most of the people there.: No. I had a house in Frostvellr. But we were driven out when the dredge started to show up. My husband...died trying to protect our home. My sons and I were thrown out into the fields. : I'm sorry.: Ekkill's men killed my husband. When we left I was angry. Why was I the one who had to leave their home? How do I deserve this?You look away momentarily, not sure what to say. : But I've let it go. I have three sons. And I don't want them to grow up with hatred in their hearts. That's why I wanted to thank you.: Have you always been such a good shot?: Honestly? I never even tried before Oddleif made me. I spent my whole life making clothes, cleaning. : Oddleif's good, but I don't think this is all her doing.: It feels right. I just look where I want it to go...anyway, I feel better. The caravan, the people worrying all day and making problems...sometimes they really stew in their misery. I'm glad I can do something helpful.: You're welcome. I should be going.: Don't think anything of it. We all have our own problems to deal with. Let me know if you need to put an arrow in something.She returns to her tent where her boys are waiting for her. Nothing left beyond that, so we head out again.  I don't remember getting this many random events before. Anyway, I think (hope) we've got time to stop and heal her. As the caravan's tents rise, a fire is built beside the girl who is covered in furs and ointments. Progress is slow, but soon you see the girl alive enough to swallow water and some heated broth. When you wake the next day, the healer tells you the girl should be fine in time.  Not long after healing the girl, we arrive at this godstone.  Godstone Ingrid.  Godstones always give us an item, seems like, so let's see what's at Godstone Ingrid.  As you're readying to depart, you hear screams from near the main godstone. The same boys so curious about the dead dredge before are shrieking and pointing. For a moment you think it must not have been dead. But then you see that they have opened a wrapping that was in the dredge's hands. : Wait. This shouldn't be seen, Rook. Get everyone away...Alette rushes past and gasps. : STOP!But it's too late. The curious onlookers have already seen it.  On the ground before the dead slinger is a small stony figure, its hands searching for something it can't find.  : That's a...baby.: That dredge is a woman?: We've been killing women...we've been slaughtering women and children this whole time? Leaving them to die? : In a war it's only the males who fight.: We've been fighting these dredge the whole way. WHy are women with children on their backs attacking us?: They're not invading. They're running.Everyone stops dead in their tracks. The entire caravan is gathered around, aghast.  : When I spoke to Juno, she told me something was coming. She didn't know what. A darkness. Something black is covering the world, and the dredge are running from it just as we're running from them. The serpent. The quake. It's all the beginning of the end.: Iver, you knew? Why? Why didn't you say something?: Iver? : When I was young, I killed one of the Sundr. During the second great war. We called it Raze. Every time we would build our defense it would flatten them, and push us back again. I became separated from the rest of the varl, and stumbled upon Raze deep in a snowstorm. Alone. She was nursing.: I threw my axe, it twisted in the wind...her son died in her arms. She was so pathetic, kneeling in the snow. She didn't even try to stop me when I took her head. That's how I killed a Sundr. When I found my way Grofheim, the varl wanted to make me kendr. Next to be king.: I left. Walked until I ended up in Skogr.  : Where no one knew what I had done.The only sound is the wind blowing through the trees.  VOTE TIME! Do we:1.) Let the caravan decide 2.) Demand we take the dredge baby with us 3.) Demand we leave the dredge baby to die 4.) I don't even know what this option does it seems like a cop out. Let's just vote on 1-3.
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Sep 14, 2018 23:06
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Alright, I was gonna leave it open for a day but this is unanimous. We'll save the baby dredge.
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Sep 15, 2018 02:09
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UPDATE 12: SIGRHOLM A quick update tonight because there's another thing that requires a vote.  Not long afterward, one of the women comes to you. "Its swaddling was being held by this," she says, giving you a hair pin that looks distinctly un-dredge-like. An inscription ont he silver almost slips your notice: 'persevere.' "From the goddess herself, if you ask me," the woman tells you. We gain the Vadrun Silver Brooch, a rank 3 artifact that ignores 1 strength damage. Useful, but we've got a better version of it on Iver.  Soon after leaving Godstone Ingrid, this happens.  : Ubin, you'd rather be known for falling asleep and dying in the corner of a mead house than battling a Sundr?: I'd rather be known for not dying.: Don't even know what you're worried about. I did this a hundred times in the great wars. Take some warriors. Plow headfirst into the dredge. They follow you into the hills, get lost, now they're not following you.: When you did this "a hundred times," did they have Bellower leading them?: Have you never heard about the time I hit Bellower in the head with a throwing axe?Both varl halt their debate when they suddenly notice you watching. : You're planning to confront the dredge?: Careful, my friend. A lot of old history getting thrown around here.: The warriors were just noticing that there's a drat good number of dredge on our asses.: Bellower pulling up the rear. This one thinks he can just wander up there and throw them off our tracks.: How about some gratitude? Thought you'd be happy to finally be oldest varl in the land, Ubin.: I'm never happy to lose more varl, Krumr. Besides, I'm not convinced you're really older than me.: Old rivalry you've got here.: Comments like that remind me, I've already wasted too much time doing nothing. In the old days I'd be halfway to the battlefield by now. Speaking of which...you coming, Yngvar? You could ask Bellower for your arm back. : Don't think so. Not exactly in the mood right now.: Alright then. I'll tell Hadrborg you said hello.Krumr and a good many varl warriors head out toward the growing army of dredge. : Is he going to come back?: He always has before.: But this time feels different, I fear.So...yeah. Krumr's gone, along with 40 varl. Can't be avoided. Unless Krumr can die in Einartoft somehow--he will always leave you at this point.  It's here that I make a fatal mistake. Morale is poor and I want to play along with the varl who are cool and good. Taking the mead, you shout, "Skal!" The crowd cheers and laughter echoes through the camp for hours as each person comes up wiht increasingly more absurd stories of woe. The varl's remedy is a success and the caravan is in a much better mood the following day, albeit hungover and with less mead than before. Guess what our supplies include large amounts of, apparently.  We have 1 day of supplies left, and Sigrholm (seen just barely at the left of the screen) is more than a day away. It's going to take a miracle to reach there without starving. I've been on the knife's edge so long...  Here's one miracle. Krumr returns victorious, along with 37 of the 40 varl he left with.   He gives us 20 renown--we can buy a lot of supplies with that in Sigrholm, albeit likely too late. He also has Dundr's Hand, a rank 5 relic that gives +3 strength. Handy!  I can see Sigrholm. It's only hours away. But...  : As Sigrholm approaches we fear the worst. The once calm lake surroudning it now looks like a bowl that has been flipped, proud homes sinking quietly into muddy water. A side effect of the quake... We were so close. A handful of our caravan starves to death, including 4 fighters from a diminishing supply of fighting-capable men and women.  Maybe Juno can help us. Can she conjure food?    Well...poo poo. Juno's not here yet.  : All I'm saying is how long are you willing to wait?While taking stock of the caravan you've inadvertently walked into a debate between Oddleif and Eyvind.  : As long as we need to.: And I think we need to get out of here. I don't feel good about this place.: Why? What's wrong?: Something doesn't feel right. The people here are staring at us like those vultures in the wastes. : I'm sorry, Eyvind. I think Oddleif is right. I saw a man...the whole time we were setting up he was just watching me. Uh...in a creepy way. And how long before the dredge find us here?: Juno will come. Just give it a little more time, Rook. Listen to me. I need you to trust me on this. We can't wait at all if we don't have supplies, so...  Ooh. The Bjorg av Leander is awesome. +2 armor per turn. I really should spend all 28 renown on supplies, but I'll take this and buy 54 supplies instead.  OK, we've got enough to last a week. Let's go talk to Eyvind and see how long this'll take.  : You're really worried about her, aren't you?: What? Oh, Juno. Worried doesn't begin to describe it. If she doesn't find us here, or if something has happened to her...: Are you sure what you saw was real? It could have been a dream. Or, I don't know. You were pretty exhausted.: I...I don't know. To be honest, I'm not sure anymore. Everything is a blur. Uh...dont' tell the others I said that. I have to hope it wasn't just a dream.: Why is Bellower still following us?: I saw Grofheim as it burned. Eyvind gets a far away look in his eyes. : The Sundr blew through it like a tempest. The varl fell in the thousands. Most of the Sundr left the city and headed south. Who knows where they are now. They might be destroying every town they come to, or heading toward Arberrang. Bellower stayed in Grofheim, just for the sport of it, I think. As we fled to Einartoft I thought he must want to wipe the varl off the map completely. But then he came after us.: Maybe he knew Iver was the one who killed Raze.: Maybe. But I...let's just make sure he doesn't catch up.: What's it like being a mender?: Being a mender? I guess I never really thought about it like that. It's just part of me. They knew very young that I would join the order. Born into it, you could say. My mother and father, both menders. The guild is for lots of people now, builders and healers.: Do they all pull lightning out of the sky?: No. No...that's...not normal. It's one of the reasons I know Juno. She's one of the council. She helps me control things like this. So we don't end up scaring people.: How does mending work, anyway?: Well, the hardest part is usually seeing the threads. Everything is part of the tapestry. It's made of threads woven together. If you can see the threads you can manipulate them. I don't know how to explain it, really. It's like trying to play a harp with invisible strings. Look at my staff, for example. Some menders carve intricate patterns in the wood to help them remember the shapes of...er, like I said. Hard to explain.: Do you think this is the end times?: I...I don't know whwat to think. I wish I could give you a better answer. Even if we escape the dredge, that serpent said a darkness was covering the world. I don't know how long that will take. Or what it means, even. I'm just trying to solve one problem at a time. The menders are in Arberrang. If we can find ships and make it to the capital, we might have a chance.: I won't take any more time.: No, it's ok, Rook. I appreciate the talk. It's good to stay grounded. I spend all day worrying about serpents or Sundr. I think a lot of people are intimidated, or scared maybe. Of me. Don't worry, it's nothing new. I'm used to it. Maybe sometime we can talk about things that don't include the world ending.  We make camp for a night, but the minute we do, this happens. We give chase, which predictably leads to a fight.  loving archers.  Rook takes an injury but otherwise we wipe the floor with them. Oddleif now has 14 kills so she can promote to rank 5. But first she has to promote to rank 4. But first we need to not be starving to death constantly so we can use renown to level up.   And...that's actually not so bad because the store still has the remaining 30 supplies from before, and now I have 10 renown with which to buy it. But still--we're now in a town where we have 7 days of supplies and no sign of Juno. And if we rest another day...  We can leave right now and not lose anyone. But Sigrholm is hosed, we can stay a week at most before people start starving (and the distance to the next town is probably significant, so the choice is starving in town or starving in the road if we wait too long.) On the other hand, giant world-ending serpenet and only Juno has managed to do anything about it so far. And Eyvind seems dead set on staying, is a stand-up guy, saved Iver's life, and also really helpful in battle. VOTE TIME!I'm only willing to wait 3 more days. After that, there's too great a risk of starvation. Unless mending includes conjuring food, even if Juno shows up 4 days or later she's gonna be too late to save the lives of a lot of clansmen. Or we can leave now. Or anywhere in between. We will absolutely have people disaffect and/or be attacked or murdered if we stay. Eyvind may well disaffect if we go. As usual, bad choices abound. A.) LEAVE IMMEDIATELY B.) WAIT 1 MORE DAY C.) WAIT 2 MORE DAYS 3.) WAIT 3 MORE DAYS
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Sep 15, 2018 03:06
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HardDiskD posted:3.) WAIT 3 MORE DAYS I can, but yeah—I’ve not heard otherwise. Folks, preferences?
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Sep 15, 2018 11:53
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Xander77 posted:It's subtly annoying, yeah, but I think just cropping out the text from the picture makes more sense. I’m definitely not doing that. I’ll just skip the headshot repeats when I use full images for dialogue.
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Sep 15, 2018 13:28
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kw0134 posted:I get that the game is simulating decision making while in the throes of crisis where you generally have a lot of unpleasant choices and usually your ability to make an informed decision is impeded but it feels like there's so many "decide how you want to die, A: drowning, B: immolation, C: disease" and that is rather demoralizing. It wouldn't be that much less dire, but part of the problem is the decisions I made earlier so that we'd appreciably deviate from the LP of this game like 4 years ago. Not taking Onef (and the supplies he comes with) puts you at an ENORMOUS disadvantage when it comes to supplies and fighting men. Sure, it gives you a character you otherwise can't have, but there's an enormous cost associated with it. I'm actually rather concerned about my ability to beat the final boss given how underleveled we are. Anyway, we're going to stay 3 days.
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Sep 15, 2018 16:03
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Tenebrais posted:Oh hey, I caught up! I'd been idly considering doing a Banner Saga LP myself but didn't want to before they ironed out the bugs in the second game when they patched it for the third. Uh oh. What bugs, without spoilers, do I need to watch out for? E: ugh, I just found them. That's pretty bad. I can work around them, but they're bad. FairGame fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Sep 16, 2018 |
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Sep 16, 2018 02:58
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UPDATE 13: TO THE END Alright guys, good luck. You're probably gonna die without me but I can't blame you. You give them your blessing, but explain why you can't leave just yet. You don't know where they're going but you hope you'll meet them again on the road as they start their trek back across dry land. We lose a significant number of clansmen, fighters, and varl.  Killing those bandits is a net win for us, since the 10 renown we earned is enough to get more supplies than they stole.  Day 1 of waiting. No Juno.  Day 2 of resting. No Juno. Morale is improving and we're healing injuries, at least. And besides, on day 3...  Nothing happens. She's not coming. You could wait forever and she'd never come. It's a trap. We're out of here.  : She's not coming.Eyvind looks out across the lake with a thousand mile stare. He says nothing. But wait, there's more!  Nice. And if I know my Oregon Trail, paying locals in supplies is 100% successful. So...   We lose a day's worth of supplies, but that's more than paid for by the fact we get more than a full day of travel out of their guidance. We also get +10 renown, and given how underleveled we are it's desperately needed.  This is where Onef would mutiny, if we'd taken him along. Instead he's dead back in Frostvellr.  I tried to form a council (it gets overwhelmed and disbands after like 2 meetings) last time. So this time I tried to keep people busy. Seems like a good choice, since...  We get 15 supplies in the bargain.  Immediately upon exiting the forest, we get this event. : Let us hear what the varl has to say.The varl shrugs, as if conconcerned, saying, "This one's father and I had a business deal. He lied. Now he's dead." "Lies?" shouts the man. "You murdered him over a lie, you coward?" The men wildly attack the varl who deflects them well enough, but you're uncertain of how long he can keep this up. I'd rather have a varl in my party than nothing at all, so we defend the varl. "Iver," you say, "we could use any varl with a good sword arm, couldn't we?" He nods, readying his weapon. The men immediately back off, the prospect of fighting your entire army suddenly unappealing. They watch from a distance, shouting obscenities and something about injustice. The varl turns toward you. "Didn't need hte help, but if I'm going to travel it may as well be in the company of other varl." He falls in line with the others and you return to travel."  There's an unnamed village in the distance. We'll stop there briefly.  Very few clansmen join and there's not much we can do about it.  I think this is the last of the supplies we'll need to buy. From here on in, all our renown goes toward desperately needed promotions.    It would seem the gods aren't fully dead. Anyway, this is a great random event but I wish it'd happened a few days ago. It would have saved us from starvation.  : What are your crimes?"Misunderstandings," the man says. "Mead houses are confusing. Never know when you've drank your share..." The woman hits him again and says, "We've stolen, killed a few when we had to. Skills that might benefit you out here." : Join us, but you'll be watched.The two quickly shiffule to a supply wagon as eight mroe bandits emerge from the wilderness. They gorge themselves on salted fish and cheese, taking time to thank everyone. After eating, they politely keep to themselves. This was an interesting choice. They'll rob you and leave after a few weeks, but...we don't have a few weeks left in our journey, I think. And I'm pretty sure whatever flag they travel with doesn't import into Banner Saga 2, meaning this is a chance to pick up free bannermen we deseperately need. Guess we'll find out.  At midday on day 150, we approach a godstone. This is for the god Bjorulf.  Hogun pulls you aside to show you some red berries growing on an ash tree that look like it was chopped down long ago. "These shouldn't be growing here!" he says excitedly. "I haven't seen these in a long time." He and Mogun busily go about collecting the berries. In fact, in honor of Bjorulf, some of the caravan crack kegs of mead and wine before anyone can stop them. "To the only god that matters!" they shout. Everyone drinks and you're glad for the merriment that has swept over the caravan. You travel with Hogun to collect more of the berries. "What exactly are these?" you ask him. "When I would travel to Boersgard with my father, sometimes he'd buy us a few of these," Hogun replies. "Couldn't be a luckier find. See for yourself." You try one and can feel energy returning to your tired limbs. Not taking a few more would be a wasted opportunity, you figure. As the hour becomes late, the caravan is eventually ready to get back on the raod. The day by Bjorulf's godstone is one of the few memories that hasn't been tarnished by the spectre of bad fortune, you think to yourself. We gain some morale and also get the "Tistleberry," a rank 2 artifact that gives +2 willpower on rest. It sucks and we'll never use it.  We get this even immediatley after the godstone. We can spare some supplies for this guy.  It immediately pays off: +1 varl, and also some renown.  Reynivik is the last town on the way to Boersgard, which is pretty much our de facto destination now. Nowhere else that even might be safe.  Y'all know the routine by now. "What is that?" points out Oddleif, up near one of the longhouses. In the distance, a large person, clothes seemingly covered in blood, is cursing loudly and stumbling about. He staggers into a longhouse, laughing. The dredge heading in your direction turn back, roaring, and begin to pound on the longhouse door. They seem to be holding a grudge against this particular person. You doubt the door will hold long. We could, obviously, ignore this. But when have we ever shied from a fight? Against my better judgment we should probably do something," you say. The others agree even though it means putting them all at risk. As you quietly approach, the dredge have managed to splinter the door and break through!  Hey, it's Gunnulf! Only...with a widow's peak. I guess the gods had a template for varl?  This is Sigbjorn, and he'll be joining us for this battle. He's a more mobile, but physically weaker version of Gunnulf. He's also pretty useless because his stats are already allocated. The 2 exertion is nice, but the low strength and armor means he's not really worth bringing into battle. He comes with the Crimson Feather, an item that grants +2 movement and -1 aggro. If we bother to work with Sigbjorn in Banner Saga 2, he might be pretty helpful.  I don't really like how the game is giving me multiple dredge destroyers per fight now. Egil really can't tank them even with stonewall, and their armor is high enough that I can't really alpha strike them to somewhere manageable.  Still, dredge are slow as hell and I can usually just win based on positioning. Here Alette uses thread the needle to hit 2 dredge...and Egil too. But Egil can take it.  Using mark prey to end a fight is great, not just for the overkill, but also because everyone gets credit. Helpful for leveling up.  : Wasn't expecting a varl this far south. Or this drunk. : I can see that.There are people huddled in the corners of the mead hall, looking on with uneasiness.  : No, no. They're friends. They made this place. It's not really mine.: You lured dredge back to a room full of unarmed people? What is wrong with you?: Come on. I saved everyone in here. They shared some fine drink. The best drink! Wait, I was saving your rear end too, remember that part? If you knew you'd come up here you could have told me.: What do we do with this guy?: How much mead is left?The townspeople show you a huge stack of barrels, filled with quality mead, and help you haul them back to the caravan. : I'll miss this place. Good memories.We gain 10 renown for the rescue, 20 supplies (in mead form), and Sigbjorn joins us.      We get "Bjorulf's Blessing," a rank 5 artifact that does knockback on strength attacks of 3 or better. Also gives a bit of strength. It's very helpful in 1 particular case, but unless Banner Saga 2 is different based on some of the decisions we're about to make, it's also entirely outclassed by an item we'll be getting fairly early on.  Rook is a hero. Always. The man turns completely towards you, shaking his head. "Had a feeling you'd be that type," is all he says before the brigands rush you.  Alette hits level 5. She's extremely dangerous now.  Fights vs. humans are a huge pain in the rear end but I'm starting to get strong enough that I'm not too concerned.  Eyvind of all people goes down in this fight, though we retaliate by hacking this poor bastard to shreds. And Eyvind doesn't really need strength to be effective.  This also gives us a hefty number of supplies.  I've never had this actually resolve. I think you need to be at low morale, maybe?   Anyway, we manage it to the best of our ability. I suspect this is probably the "best" outcome.  Boersgard comes into view, and I do a bit of metagaming. After Rook's monologue. We immediately make camp and rest for 5 days, getting our morale up to great. We need the willpower boost.  This is the final chapter in The Banner Saga. Let's hope we're the slayer.   Sigbjorn pushes past. "I won't be hearing the end of this for a while," he says, before yelling, "Open up, Bolverk! They dug me out of Reynivik. You hear a laugh echoing on the wind as the doors creatk. A dozen armed men led by the massive varl make quick work of the dredge, and usher you into the city.   Sigbjorn shrugs apologetically.  : I guess the mender will do. Either we've got a chance now or we're completely screwed.: I'm Rook. We've come a long ways, some as far as Skogr. Are you in charge here?: In charge of the governor, I suppose. Listen, if you have something to tell him, say it now. Otherwise you're on your own. I don't care where you go, but stirring up trouble is probably the only reason you'll see me again. It won't be to talk. Mender, come along. We're going to go see the governor.Bolverk and Sigbjorn leave with Eyvind, who goes willingly, signalling that he's fine.  : This is nothing like Frostvellr. The one in bearskin is probably leading the Ravens.: Ravens? Is that good or bad?: It depends on who they're working for. Hopefully it really is the governor and not someone trying to strongarm their way into his seat.: I guess we wait for Eyvind to tell us. If he comes back.: I'm not worried about Eyvind. I'm worried about the army of refugees we brought, who don't belong here.: You're probably right. Nobody ever uttered a ncie thing about Boersgard. So what now?: We ought to go to the docks and see what our options are. In case we need to leave quickly. Did you notice the city guards when we came in?: What guards?: I have a feeling the Ravens are all they've got left. Something serious went down. And when Bellower gets here, he's going to walk right through this place without even breaking his stride.: Let's keep that to ourselves for now. So, the docks... Welcome to Boersgard. It sucks here.  And merchants are gouging on what few supplies remain. We don't need it. Bellower will be here within a week, and if we don't do something about it we'll die to him sooner than we'll die of starvation.  : They're all gone. I see you had the same thought as me.  : I'm fine. It wasn't a lie. The governor is here. He's in hiding.: Why?: Since the dredge started appearing anyone with a ship and half a wit left long ago. People can't leave by foot. Food is scarce. The markets are bare. Boersgard is a fire keg waiting for someone to tip it over.: So the governor's paying the Ravens to protect him against his own people.: And keep the peace...so to speak. It's more like a massacre anytime there's a hint of an uprising.: Where does that leave us?: I...promised him the mender's protection in Arberrang. I don't think he's very popular there. They're going to start tearing this place down to build new ships. We can ride the Ormsa river all the way to the capital.: Leaving another perfectly good city behind...how long will it take to build new ships?: Hold on. What happens to the people living in Boersgard?: It's the best I could do, Alette. He thought it could take as long as a month. You don't usually makes ships out of scrap lumber. As soon as people figure out what's going on there's going to be riots in the streets.: A month? Why bother? Bellower will be here within the week, if not sooner!: I'm open to suggestions.: Gods be damned, is there no end to this?!Iver roars in frustration, leaving you standing by the docks. Alette gives you a worried look before chasing after him. : Eyvind...what do we do about Bellower?Eyvind says nothing for a moment.    Iver cuts you off before you can say anything. You know he's been through worse. : Just feels like someone should cut us a break every now and then. If we want to be standing a month from now we're going to have to be prepared.: What about the Ravens?: They'll save their own hids, and whoever is paying. They don't give two damns about the rest of us. We may even end up facing off against them depending on how this goes. Let's avoid that.: What did you have in mind?: FIrst off, our clansmen need a place to stay. They'll get torn to pieces out in the streets. I'll keep an eye on the dredge. IF they break through the walls we're done for, so we'll have to keep them back. Could always use a hand with that. We need to know who's controlling what and make sure we get our cut. Food's going to become scarce. And when they start building those ships we're going to have to keep people away.: What a drat mess. I'll do what I can.: Oh, and I think Oddleif was looking for you.: Thanks, I'll go see her. : Rook. Thanks for taking the time.: Iver said you were looking for me?: I should have told you before...my husband died.You pause, not sure what to say. : I'm sorry. He was brave.: He was. It was back in Einartoft. Just...never felt like the right time. You've got enough to worry about now.: So that means...: My husband's banner is yours. Remember what I said about other clans not wanting to follow a woman. You've gotten us this far, and I'm not going to say anything while we're in the middle of it in...this damned place. He wanted you to have the banner. I think it was the right choice.: I'll do my best.: That might not be good enough. Just...keep everyone safe, ok? Skogr's banner can't end here.: That's what I'm trying to prevent.: I know. Just...be careful, Rook. This caravan needs you. I need you.And with that, Rook is offically in charge of the caravan. Not that he's been anything but in charge since the start of the game. Editor's Note: I'm taking some creative license here. The chieftain of Skogr always dies. Most of the time he dies in Skogr. If you make good choices, Alette can save his life so that he's merely mortally wounded in Skogr. He eventually dies in Einartoft, but you don't learn this until after Onef's betrayal when Oddleif (who nearly dies in that event) talks to Rook. Without Onef's betrayal event, the fate of the chieftain is left unaddressed, and I think that's a lousy gap--one that most first-time players would never see. So I'm cobbling together pieces of Oddleif's dialogue even though it never actually happens in this track.   Ordinarily, I'd let the thread vote on this stuff, but frankly I don't think I can beat this game if I don't spend all my time fighting during the siege of Boersgard. We desperately need the renown. You can trade the mead from Boersgard to Bolverk in exchange for a shitload of supplies. But we're not in danger of starving to death. You can find a safe place for the caravan to stay, though doing so gets a lot of fighters killed as they die defending your clansmen and also don't have any assistance holding the dredge at bay that day. Later on we'll find out what happens if you don't find a safe place for your clansmen. (Surprise: it's not good). I've never tried the other options. I'm guessing Krumr dies if you put him in charge even though he seems exceedingly hard to kill.  So, yeah. We're gonna have a lot of fighting. A LOT.  And we're slowly getting Egil to the point where he can tank those 23 strength monsters.  Day 1 of the siege.  This will only become more ridiculous as Egil gets items that draw aggro.  I've never used Mark Prey as much as I have in this campaign. It's really really good. drat.  It's very important not to take injuries during the siege of Boersgard since you won't be able to sleep them off. Fortunately at this point we're pretty strong--especially when the enemy is foolish enough to stack up diagonally so that they get picked off by Eyvind.  This guy gets absolutely murdered to end the battle.  Day 2.  How about we lose 0 and they lose everything?  Rook hits level 4. Points go in armor--he'll get strength later. A 12 strength Rook wearing Dundr's hand is some bullshit.  My main weakness with this party setup is a lack of a warhawk. Gunnulf really would be helpful here in chopping down multiple enemies early on. But his exertion SUCKS and it's impossible to get his dumb rear end in position.  Fortunately, enemy positioning allows Eyvind to play the role of multi-target maimer.  Iver, Alette, and Rook all have about 35 kills now. It's a race to see who will finish the campaign with the most. Even Egil's at about 30 thanks to Mark Prey.   Day 3. The docks will have to wait. Not leaving a stonesinger unguarded.  We're a bit better prepared to handle a stonesinger this time around.  Those 2 high strength units MUST get maimed early or the stonesinger can turn them into absolute nightmares with a well-timed Umbrage.   Eyvind helps out quite a bit, and then Krumr lets him cast again in short order.  The stonesinger disengages and starts to cast umbrage. But it won't be enough--his allies are too wounded for it to make a difference.  Your first cast didn't save you, buddy. Your second isn't going to either.  Egil easily puts him down.  Day 4. Bellower has arrived.   Oh. So that's what happens if you don't defend your clansmen. We lose about 15% of the civilians. Ugh.  This is hopeless, but we'll make the dredge pay for every inch.  No destroyers, no slingers. This'll be easy.  It was easy.  Day 5. Bellower is going to attack soon and then we'll be finished.   Hey, reinforcements from Arberrang! Hakon made it!  Rook hits level 5. Now he has 15 strength including his item and can absolutely ruin someone's day from afar.  Not pictured: another 23 strength destroyer in the far back. I didn't see him at first either which makes this somewhat awkward.  I've got to get Egil to level 5 so he can tank hits from 23 strength dudes.  A stoneguard disengages and starts to summon a reinforcement. We'll let him--it's +1 more renown for us to collect.  And that's that. Maybe there's hope now, because...   She smiles and they embrace. Eyvind is completely taken aback, as those he doesn't dare believe she's real. : I'm sorry. I couldn't make it to Sigrholm. I ran into problems.: Problems is putting it lightly. There's a mile-wide canyon practically spitting the world in two over those hills. Couldn't find a place to cross. Worse, dredge are practically falling out of it like blood from a wound. They're not coming from the north anymore. They're everywhere.: We noticed.: Glad to see you made it out alive, Yngvar. I take it the others didn't.Hakon becomes quiet, then he motions toward Juno. : She got across somehow. Found her out cold for a second time since leaving Strand.: We need every axe we can get right now. Bellower is here.: Gods be damned. I thought I was free of that menace. : Come on. No need to tempt him by standing out here. Hakon joins you with his personal bodyguard, Mogr. Behind him the prince, Ludin, and his entourage are in tow, though looking less than pleased to be here. We gain a ton of supplies--enough to last more than a month--and 280 varl. Plus every surviving character and items from Hakon's caravan.  : Where? Why?"Not far," says Juno. She pauses and something shifts in your vision, for just a moment. "I know it's hard," she says, her voice filling your head. "And you've already been through a lot." As she speaks again the rest of the world melts away. "But you're needed." You can't find the words to argue.  And so Rook and Juno sneak out of Boersgard, past thousands of dredge. Alone.  Shitloads of dredge. Bit ones. Small ones. Stonesingers. And...a godstone?  You glance nervously around, but the dredge didn't seem to hear her. : It's ok. You can speak. Softly.: Is this where you're going to sacrifice me?Juno smiles. What could have come across as profoundly creepy looks sincere, instead. : No. The dredge cannot see us. To be more precise, they can see us, but I've convinced them to be unconcerned. I can understand your apprehension, though.: Who are you?: I wish we'd had time for a proper introduction. My name is Juno. I am on the Mender council. You've met Eyvind, my apprentice.: How are you doing these things? Controlling minds? I thought menders built things and healed wounds.: You are right. Menders do these things. Some of us still practice the teachings given to the Loom-mother's first creations. We are called Valka. I believe I am the only one who can influence another's mind.: Then why not take control of Bellower?: I learned the talent to heal minds, not control them. Though even some Valka have trouble believing this. : The truth is, we're rarely a match for the Sundr anymore. Our advantage is that we can train more Valka. It is also our weakness. The Valka pass on and lose their knowledge, while the Sundr simply grow older and more powerful.: Then how are we to stop Bellower?: Bellower is both immortal and beyond my influence. To a point. The god of secrets will play a part, as will you.: Why are all these dredge here?: They seem to be drawn to the godstone. There are many things we don't know about Stravhs. Maybe they see him as a patron, or it is an attraction they cannot explain. : Does Stravhs have something to do with that serpent in Einartoft? What was that thing?[img]http://lpix.org/3231808/Juno.png[/img: I cannot say? : Cannot?: I have my suspicions. But until I've had time at the mender libraries it would be unwise to speculate. For all our knowledge it always seems as though we know little.: Imagine how the rest of us feel.: On the contrary. The less people know, the more certain they tend to be.: So...what are we doing here?: Do you know of the god Stravhs? Few know this stone exists, even amongst those who have lived their whole lives in Boersgard. While Denglr deals in fortune, Stravhs taught men the value of trade in a different way. He showed them it has consequence. Two sides of the same coin. See the silver in the stone? The gales up here wear away the stone, but the metal remains. We need a piece of this silver. The god Stravhs is wreathed by imagery of silver weapons. The myths say he traded these weapons to the gods. : Those who seek out the stone call him the god of trade. The menders call him the god of secrets. He was both.: Why didn't you take Eyvind? Or Hakon? You don't even know me.: I apologize for putting you in danger. Eyvind must keep Boersgard from falling while we are away. And if something goes wrong here, I need to be certain one of us makes it back alive. I saw the thoughts of each person when I arrived at Boersgard. You were the only one I knew would return.: What do you mean?: You would find your way back to Alette no matter what.: Let's get what we need and go.: Indeed. You'll need to dislodge at least a fist-full of the metal. We will forge it into an arrow to slay Bellower.  : Make a magic arrow to shoot Bellower? That's all it takes? Why didn't you do that a long time ago?Juno gets a far away look in her eyes. : No. That is not all it takes. What I tell you now must not be repeated. : But it will sow doubt in his mind. When it pierces him, I will help him to believe that he is dying. The rest of you will convince him of it with sword and axe. Everyone who fights at your side must believe it to be true.: You're going to trick him into thinking he's dead. That is the most insane...he really can't be killed?: No. Someday he will awaken and realize he's not dead. I imagine he will be quite upset. First we must make the arrow. Focus on the task at hand.She looks knowingly at the godstone, waiting for you to start climbing. : Rook, I am not certain how the dredge will react when you do this. And behind us is a sudden drop. So, be careful. This plan is absurd. But we don't have a better one. We slowly approach Godstone Stravhs.  Well, if Rook will make it back "no matter what," I'm getting another chunk of the Sundr-fooling metal.     Our reward is Stravhs' Whetstone, a rank 5 item that helps with crit chance. We don't need it right now. But dammit if we're gonna pull a crazy stunt like that we're gonna take it!  We have now reached the endgame.  The renown Hakon got at the end of his chapter imports into our party. It's enough to level Egil up to 5.  He can at least wear the Godscale that I got several chapters ago, though I think I might actually have him use the +2 aggro item that Mogr was wearing.  Time to make a magic arrow.   : He told me a lot about Juno. Is she really as powerful as he says?: It certainly seems that way.: That might be the most luck we've had so far. Dad, I think I know what's going to happen now. An arrow? She's going to make you shoot Bellower, isn't she?: I don't know for sure.: Come on. Who else is going to do it? Iver?: Alette, I know where this is going. You're afraid of me dying. This isn't like before. We can't run this time.: That's not what I...let me do it.: What?: Why not let me? Because you think I'll get hurt? : What do you do when Bellower comes straight for the person holding the only thing that can destroy him?: Let me speak. Everything's changed. Skogr feels so long ago...I'm not asking because I'm afraid of losing you. I'm not...I'm not afraid of...anything, anymore. : I have a better chance of puncturing his armor. We only have this one shot. I'm not a child anymore. I'm not just "some girl." I'm your daughter. I can do this. For once, let me decide...what happens to me. This is, if not the most important decision in the trilogy, certainly one of the three biggest. Either Rook or Alette can hold the silver arrow in battle and take a shot at Bellower. In the LP years ago, the thread decided to honor Alette's wishes and let her take the shot. Which is what I did too when I played. We will take the other path. : I'm sorry, Alette. No.She stares into the firelight. You wait for the tears to come to her eyes, but they never do. : Just promise...promise we'll be together. And that's that. For better or for worse, Rook will be the one who fires our only shot at salvation.  Juno is in the middle of an animated debate as you approach, the arrow in your hand. : There is little time left. Bellower knows we're here. Whether he is waiting for more of his forces to arrive or simply starve us out first I cannot tell. But he will not expect a direct attack. : I will take a handful of warriors to face him. I can keep a small group hidden from sight. The rest of you will lead the charge from here. With luck, Bellower will send his armies away from himself to meet you.: What about the Ravens? They may protest.: They will not. I've arranged a task for them.: Even if you make it to Bellower, what chance is there of defeating him? We saw what happened at Einartoft. That thing can't be killed. Juno shows them the arrow forged from the godstone's silver. : This will make him bleed like the rest of us. Once he is pierced, he will be vulnerable.She looks you in the eyes. : We only have one. Do not miss. And bring only those you absolutely need. It will take all my concentration to keep the other dredge from swallowing us up. I cannot join in battle.: And if we kill Bellower, then what? The dredge will just wander away?: That is my belief, yes. I can't say for certain. : And then what? Bellower will hound our every step, all the way to Arberrand where I am certain more Sundr await. Now is the time to speak to loved ones, and the memory of any god that pleases you. Rest. ...or die trying.  That's it. No more running. It's him or us. And the Bellower fight is absolutely ball-crushingly hard. I hate it.  So while I said I'd let folks vote on party composition (and I will in the later games, to an extent), this is the best I can offer you all. We can bring 6 to fight Bellower. 5 of those slots are locked: Egil, who if we're lucky can draw aggro and have Bellower and his buddies waste turns attacking him uselessly. Rook, who has 15 strength and can snipe the poo poo out of things from afar. He also is required since he has the Silver Arrow. Alette, who has come into her own as a formidable unit and can break the poo poo out of armor. Or with a good puncture shot take down a high-strength target. Iver, who owes Bellower a debt of pain and also is heavily armored. Yrsa, who can use her fire arrows to weaken Bellower on a charge. The 6th slot is up to you. I will spend my remaining renown on any of the next options. Mogr: He can't do damage at all, but is a fantastic tank and also does chip armor damage. Sadly he's one kill short of level 4 eligibility. Still, he can use the +2 armor item and get himself to 20 armor. Gunnulf: He's not remotely mobile, but if he managed to get into position he could probably do some significant damage. If he got into position. Hakon: High exertion and guaranteed damage with his special means that even maimed he can help bring down priority targets. Plus he's big and will keep units like Bellower from walking past Egil and Iver to maim our archers. Bersi: Not as strong as Gunnulf, but more mobile. Ludin: The prince of men is a huge rear end in a top hat, but he could impale an enemy unit and really weaken it as we play aggro games. Plus he combos well with Yrsa and Iver. lovely armor stat, though--he might not stay alive long enough to matter. Eyvind: The fight against Bellower is nasty, brutal, and short--his mending ability will not be of much use. But his arc lightning can do 4 damage right through armor--and that could be the difference between winning and losing. Oddleif: Can trap tiles and make Bellower pay for every inch. And it'd give us 5 characters from Team Skogr. Krumr: A great armor break stat and the ability to let someone move 2 times in 3 turns. Invaluable. Downside is that I don't quite have the renown to get him to level 5. He'd be fighting at level 4, same as Mogr. VOTE TIME!: Who else comes to the final battle?
FairGame fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Sep 18, 2018 |
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Sep 16, 2018 21:08
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That's, uh...a lot of votes for Hakon. If this were binary I'd leave it open a while longer but given that the field is like 8 fighters deep, I'm not sure anyone is gonna outstrip the varl king. I wasn't expecting that. gently caress it; let's do it.
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Sep 17, 2018 00:47
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UPDATE 14: THE SLAYER AND THE SLAIN I was fully expecting this to be a 24 hour vote, but the chances of the "not Hakon" votes coalescing behind a single character seemed pretty slim given the early lead. And, well...let's face it. Traffic to both SA and this thread aren't exactly overwhelming to the point that it seemed like there were a lot of votes left uncast. Plus I really wanted to get to TBS2 where I haven't seen a lot of the content for reasons that will be clear shortly. Let's meet the team that will try and save human and varlkind from the immortal Sundr, Bellower. BGM: Long Past the Last Sigh  For an orphan from a small town in the woods, Egil has really made a name for himself. Incredibly high armor, though he's pretty much a one-trick pony. Poor exertion means he can't move all that far, and low strength means he won't do much damage. That said, if I can get Bellower to focus on him while he's casting a Rank 3 stonewall, the Sundr general will do ABSOLUTELY 0 DAMAGE. To that end, instead of further armoring Egil, I give him the Sporddreki Bur for its +2 aggro. I really don't know what +2 aggro is relative to +1 (other than "it's twice as much!") and I've never had this item before. When I gave characters the Godscale (+3 armor, +1 aggro) in previous games, it didn't really make a difference. But Egil really doesn't need the extra armor. 16 + 7 from his stonewall = strong enough to shrug off anything. So long as someone is dumb enough to attack him.  Iver's not as heavily-armored as Egil, but he can move a crazy amount with his 3 exertion and nearly limitless willpower reserves. Plus, that Namejs' Ring isn't seen by the enemy AI so if Bellower thinks he can maim Iver through the 16 armor, he'll immediately have whatever strength damage he can do reduced by 2. And since I'm planning to stand Iver next to Egil, he'll be even further armored.  The varl king gets the godscale so that he's not quite so brittle. Hits like a goddamn truck, and is good at both armor and strength damage. And, like Iver, he's huge. Planning to put him on the other side of Egil so that our archers have a nice wall between them and a OHKO. Crossing my fingers that the +1 aggro on the Godscale works as I've seen before--meaning they ignore him in favor of Egil.  Alette hasn't changed stats-wise since last update. With her exertion and the farthingjord, she can break a whopping 8 armor in a turn. The girl we were afraid to put into fights at the start of this game has completely come into her own. Rook should be proud.  Yrsa still has rubbish strength, but she doesn't need it. She's here for one reason and one reason alone: her "slag and burn" special ability. Anything caught in the center of slag and burn takes skill rank as break damage + normal break damage + 2 str, meaning that's at least 6 break damage (and actually 8 since I'll be casting at rank 3 in a fight this short). And, further: if I can manage to do it in such a way that Egil and Iver are on the edge coals, they'll take 0 damage. Iver because his Namejs Ring shrugs off 2 strength damage. Egil because with stonewall up he shrugs off up to 7 damage.  Rook has to be kept alive at all costs. If he can't deliver the silver arrow, it's a game over. Crazy high movement, plus the ability to dart in and out of allied units, will allow him to get to Bellower when the time comes. Dundr's hand means that he'll start with 15 strength--should be enough to keep him alive for a while in time to deliver the arrow.  "It's time," Juno says. "Gather your allies. Today one thing will end, another will begin, and our actions will decide on which we stand."  No turning back now. BGM: Of Our Bones, The Hills  As promised, Juno manages to deliver us safely to Bellower, who is relatively unprotected. Still, he's behind 3 beefy dredge which means that Hakon and Iver won't be able to get to him until we kill one. And those slingers might be a pain in the rear end too, to be honest. Oh, and Bellower? 20 armor. 20 strength. REGENERATES 6 ARMOR AND 6 STRENGTH EVERY TIME HE GETS A TURN. Further he still retains his "Tremble and Quake" ability where he shouts and makes everyone on the team take 1ARM + 1STR damage, stunning a random unit. Given how much of my strategy revolves around Egil being able to draw aggro, if he stuns Egil before I can get stonewall up, I'm in trouble. Or if Hakon or Iver get stunned and end up in the way of the archers. Or if Rook gets stunned and left hanging before he can deliver the arrow. The best way to keep Bellower from, well...bellowing? Give him a target. If he thinks he can maim or kill someone, he'll usually opt to do that instead of shouting, even though shouting is really the far more dangerous ability. There's a gimmick to this fight that Juno will shout at you from the sidelines: you only need to deliver the silver arrow. In order to do that, there must be a 0% chance of deflection (and sadly it can't be boosted by items like the Eyeless Rift). Meaning Rook needs to have AS MUCH or GREATER strength than Bellower's armor on the turn where I deliver the arrow. With 15 strength, that shouldn't be too difficult. After all, he's up after Alette and Yrsa who can both do 8 break damage.  I decide to go up the right side. Egil puts up a stonewall and Iver stands next to him, breaking the armor of the 23 strength destroyer in front of Egil. Hakon will be able to get into position to maim it before it's too much of a threat.  In response to Hakon maiming it, the destroyer fucks off to try and summon something. A fatal error, since: 1.) Now he's left us a clear path to Bellower, and 2.) Even if he succeeds in summoning, it's just 1 more thing on the map that isn't Bellower taking a turn.  Alette steps up and delivers an 8 break damage arrow. Rook, the way is clear.  But for good measure, Yrsa does a little more damage. This is going incredibly well. I can't believe it.  On Rook's first turn he runs up with the silver arrow. 15 strength is greater than 12 armor, so it'll be an easy hit. And hell, if Bellower runs forward he's just gonna get torn up by those hot coals.  But Bellower doesn't react to "losing his mortality" by running forward. Instead, he bellows. Everyone takes damage, and...Rook is stunned. Which makes the next part all too predictable.  He runs forward, coals be damned, and...  Hah, nice arrow, chump. After we finish you, Rook's gonna have quite the tale to tell.  Oh. Oh no. BGM: Of Our Bones, The Hills (2)  With Bellower standing over Rook's crumpled body, phase 2 of the fight begins. The gimmick in this one (which Juno will again shout from the sidelines): any time Bellower takes damage, he gets a turn. Thankfully his regen is now cut to 1/1 instead of 6/6. But still--play this wrong and he will just run roughshod over your whole team.  Going up the right side worked before, and now that there's not a giant destroyer between us and him, Egil can actually charge forward and immediately put himself in harm's way. Hope that +2 aggro is enough!  If Bellower attacks, the kid from Skogr will completely shrug it off.  Ha! It works! Bellower fails to shout and ruin my day. Completely wastes his turn. Of course, he still has 20/20 stats so he's an enormous threat, but Iver can get to him now. And at 20 strength it'd take Bellower several turns to chop Iver down--turns he doesn't have while my archers run up behind and lay waste to his armor. Unbelieveably, the most bullshit fight in the game has been rendered trivial by that lovely little +2 aggro item on Egil. I no longer regret keeping him alive the whole time, risking starvation and keeping everyone underleveled. It's well worth it. This fight is over and Bellower is dead. He doesn't know it yet, is all. Let's convince him of it, shall we?  Iver dashes forward and maxes out his exertion to do 6 break damage. If Bellower retaliats, he'll take...1 strength damage. I can live with that.  But...he doesn't even bother with Iver. Not when there's a +2 aggro Egil right there. Wastes another turn.  Hakon can't reach Bellower, but he can reach the adjacent enemy--and put up a further wall. Archers can stand between Hakon and Iver and be completely protected. More importantly, his sundering impact special does physical damage to adjacents. So even though he's not next to Bellower, it does break and strength damage to the Sundr.  Which, of course, triggers another free turn for Bellower. I'm sure his buddies--including the very dangerous stonesinger--are pissed off that Bellower keeps hogging initiative. They will literally never get to move this fight.  This is just sad, really.  Alette rushes forward to strip even more armor.  With predictable results.  Yrsa delivers another blow, with the coals not even bothering Egil or Iver because of their ability and item respectively. But now Bellower is completely unprotected.  Well...at least Bellower moved this time, moving up and right one so that he wouldn't be in Iver's melee range. Still goes for Egil, though. Still wastes his turn.  I don't need Egil to stone wall anymore. He can maim Bellower this turn to the point that his natural armor will be enough to shrug off the retaliatory blow.  Bellower has a shitload of armor break. It's also the only damage I take this fight.  Because Iver rushes forward and delivers the deathblow to Bellower. Imagine what he'd have done with both arms behind the swing.   I...I can't believe how easy that was. Goddamn.  : Dad...get up. Get up. Help me...where are the menders?!: Hush child, look at me. It's been too long. Put up your hood. You are alive and we must go.You're only barely aware of the surrounding chaos, as dredge flee from varl warriors who push their advantage.  : I will carry your father back to the city. He will be honored properly, I promise you that. Come now. We've won. It's a Pyrrhic victory. Alette is orphaned and Skogr is without a chieftain. Again. But we are alive.  There's nothing left to do but talk to Eyvind. As you might imagine, our POV for the rest of the game now switches to Alette.  : I think you're right. The dredge don't seem interested in us anymore. Since Bellower fell they've been going their own way.: The Ravens have been keeping the docks clear. Juno's talking to them about something now. When those longships are ready we'll be able to sail all the way to Arberrang. With luck...before the darkness shows up here.: How far south has it spread?: I couldn't say. Hopefully not far. We'll get the prince back to his home, and Hakon has already decided to come with us. The two look up as you approach.  : Soon we'll be ready to leave Boersgard. Find somewhere safe. One ship is done already. At the docks. I had it prepared for Rook. : Come, Alette. It's time to honor your father.BGM: We Are All Guests Upon the Land  Rook was Iver's best friend. Human/varl friendships are rare, but then again, Iver is a pretty rare varl.  Leadership isn't hereditary, but nobody is going to challenge Alette right now. Not after she slew the Sundr that her father bravely died trying to stop.  Rook's funeral boat is piled high with treasure. Including Dundr's Hand, those giant gauntlets that gave +3 strength. In gameplay terms, they're gone from the campaign, buried with Rook. In story purposes, you couldn't make gloves big enough or strong enough to fit Rook's heroics.  If you hadn't figured it out already, this is a binary choice. If Alette takes the shot, Bellower crushes her to death. If Rook takes the shot, well...you're looking at it. The surviving character is POV in The Banner Saga 2. Rook is...mad with grief if Alette dies. Absolutely broke my heart. In my Rook game, Egil died. Alette died. The chieftain died. All that was left of his dreams of Skogr was his maimed best friend, his widowed friend Oddleif, the crazy spear collecting guy (we'll see him soon), and nobody from the next generation. This is...the happy ending. Rook promised he'd protect Alette. And he did. And now his story is over. Alette and Egil can live to see another day. Hopefully a happier one.  Flames light up the boat as it travels down the Ormsa river. And with that, Rook passes from this world a hero.  But then...something happens. There's no nighttime in this world. Not anymore. And yet...  Rook passes beyond the veil to somewhere where night still exists.  The flame starts to flicker, an the boat takes on a glow.  As the boat's fire dies, it travels even further into the unknown.  The gods are dead. That doesn't mean death is the end, apparently.  Wherever Rook is, it seems nice. And goodness knows he's earned it.  And that's a wrap. We'll continue this later this week with The Banner Saga 2, which is a lot less clunky than the original, longer, and...apparently riddled with new bugs. But I'll worry about that later. Given the POV where most of the bugs occur, I don't think it'll matter. Because I fully intend to trivialize battle whenever possible and I'm excited to have the opportunity to do so for once.
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Sep 17, 2018 01:42
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The Sandman posted:Out of curiosity, if it isn't huge spoilers or something that you intended to cover, what are the consequences of your failing that one fight on Hakon's side which would have let you into the village? You rescue the village from dredge and the remaining villagers decide that staying is a lost cause and flee for Strand (the town the game started in on Ubin’s side.) Eirik realizes they’ll get murdered in Strand and asks to return with them. If you let him return with them he leaves the campaign but you get like 15 renown for it—enough that I could’ve promoted another unit. Plus it’s one more shop thst might sell a Namejs Ring or Bjorg a Levander or Worldhook. Though honestly we got every item I wanted, and that stupid little +2 aggro item is apparently amazing if Egil is alive. Asking for duplicates is just greedy. Wish I hadn’t gotten Griss killed though. Anyone that knows if there are further consequences, keep it to yourself. Orcs and Ostriches posted:That was all as bleak as I remembered. It will likely slow down, as a heads up. But then again I was going at breakneck pace to get past the game everyone has already seen LPed. FairGame fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Sep 17, 2018 |
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Sep 17, 2018 02:47
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