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Just because I will always vote against pop culture references I say Leave the cat as Shoe. Its a great cat name and Fane isn't blonde enough to be a witch.
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Apr 26, 2021 21:17
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Olive Branch posted:Nooo, Shoe was too good a kitty to die in battle like that. Valiant cat. Sure, do this, and keep Shoe. Do you have to trek all the way back into Fort Joy to swap characters out, I assume?
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Apr 27, 2021 01:06
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Schwartzcough posted:Do you have to trek all the way back into Fort Joy to swap characters out, I assume? Sort of - I can just fast-travel back into the ghetto, but I'd have to walk back out as I haven't found any waypoints in the Hollow Marshes yet.
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Apr 27, 2021 08:01
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For this update, we first voted to swap out Lohse, of all people – our healer and environmental master, with ice and electricity wielded at her fingertips – for Ifan. Which, don’t get me wrong, I like Ifan’s character arc and the Wayfarer class is really powerful with the proper tools, but I also like living. But, in any case, before we do that, I levelled up in the fight with all the grubs.  We got a new civil point to spend with this level as well. I decide to do something a bit unusual with this level up: for everyone’s attribute points, I put one into Memory and one into Constitution. More skills and more survivability is pretty great, especially since healing’s about to be a bit tricky. For the civil skills, though: Fane’s point goes into Persuasion; Lohse’s into Loremaster; Sebille’s into Thievery (which grants her another into Sneaking, thanks to Guerilla); and Prince into Bartering. And for their combat skills, I put Fane’s one point into Warfare; Lohse’s into Aerothurge; Sebille’s into Scoundrel; and Prince’s into Pyrokinetic. So, there, now we’re all squared up. Until we get Ifan, anyway; we haven’t seen him since the prison block underneath the fortress. I think that’s… two levels? Maybe three? That he’ll need to allocate.   : Oh really now? Well, well, well. I guess this makes us MORTAL ENEMIES. For now, at least. *Winks*. And then she walks off… to the east. The ghetto is to the west. I have no idea where she’s going.  This is normally where she’s supposed to be, but she’s not. She went off somewhere else. I’ll have to find her quick if we want to recruit her again. In the meantime, though:    : He grins, sharp teeth glittering in the midday sun. : Right you are. Lead the way.  Four points, meaning he’s got two levels. I throw three onto Memory and one into Constitution – which is perhaps a bit hasty, and he maybe could have used another point in Constitution (Wayfarers are fairly difficult to keep alive), but whatever, my decision has been made. I put his two combat points into Huntsman and Geomancer, and for his civil skills – he and Prince are both speccing into Bartering, so I might as well load up Ifan with Lucky Charm. Lucky Charm is a really big deal in the long run. Since Lohse is out, I’ll need other ways to help with my healing. Attendant can be summoned on water and they’ll learn Restoration that way, but it won’t be as strong as Lohse’s. Luckily, Summoning and Huntsman both have skills that can heal partners. The bigger problem is that Ifan has next to no armour on himself, and skillbooks are wicked expensive. I can’t afford to get both skillbooks and armour, and Sebille’s already pickpocketed every merchant in the ghetto.  Nebora sells summoning skillbooks, and she has the skillbook that I want, but… this ring she’s offering has +3 magic armour (which is a lot for this early in the game) and, more importantly, it gives +1 Geomancer, which Ifan could really use. The only thing Ifan is wearing is a tunic and a lovely pair of pants; the armour is more important than the skills, I think.  By the way, this is the bow that I had mentioned earlier, from after I lost the save. It’s a pretty great bow, particularly that +1 Finesse, but the elven bow from the old save was still better. Buying the ring put me down too much to afford the skillbooks that I need, so I run back to Kalias to unload my wares and get some more spending money. By the way: this update’s recording came out to 1:30:49 in length. 27:35 of that is just shopping and inventory management – one of the common complaints about this game is how much you need to focus on your inventory and keeping who has what straight and how much money you have between all your party members and which merchants you can get the most out of, and on and on and on. So, to summarize: straight after Kalias, I visit Butter, at Griff’s kitchen. She deals with Huntsman skills.   Alright, so –  Oh, a Magister and their dog found me. I guess I would be known among the remaining Magisters for being a fugitive. Anyway.  Like I was saying.  I buy First Aid, Tactical Retreat, and Barrage from Butter…  … I buy some equipment from Kalias…  Nice parachute pants.  … I run out of money, so I sell some hard drugs…  … and it still wasn’t enough for everything that I wanted. We also voted to o’en the chest, so, hopefully whatever’s in there will give me the extra float that I need to buy that last skillbook from Nebora. But, before I go open that chest. Ifan! It’s been a while, buddy, how ya doin’?   : It’s difficult for me to keep my bearings in a wild, overgrown swamp like this. I can find any passage in a book I’ve read once already, but put me in the thicket and I’ll forget which foot is my left one. I’m assuming a wayfarer like yourself doesn’t have the same issue; what do you think we should do next? : You spend a lot of time on the road. Does it ever get lonely?: Lonely? I wouldn’t think so. I went from life in the regiment, to life in the pack, to life on the road with you. I haven’t had time to be lonely…: He pauses, reddening slightly as he looks at you curiously. : (He’s suddenly changed colour and he’s acting a bit skittishly. What could it mean? And what could he mean by what I said? Perhaps this is a sensitive topic for him. I should play this a bit carefully.): I was just… making conversation?: Ah, yes. Of course.What ever could Ifan mean about that? Was he, perhaps… expecting a different answer…?  The chest is just a short walk west from our currently location. We have a chest to o’en!  First, I separate everyone from the chain, so that they all don’t wander into the circle when I open the chest and they participate in the fireworks. You know… the warning is for opening the chest. Is there a penalty for simply moving it? Maybe I can move the chest away from its spot and open it somewhere less explodey?    Guess not. The bulbous vegetation surrounding the grove will constantly respawn and detonate, over and over into infinity, making this a rather dangerous place to be – except all the explosions and poison and electrified water don’t touch the center of the ring, meaning I’m actually safest if I don’t move at all. I wonder if that was a potential solution to the problem: if I could have moved the heads so that they weren’t near the bulbs when they went off. Oh well, too late to worry about stuff like that now. And all of that for–  – sixty-eight coins; an elven bow; and a severed head. The ‘oss, I ‘resume? I’m fresh out of money, so the cash and the elven bow are a great thing to have to give me a bit of extra float.  Ehhhhhhhh… it does more physical damage, but its lows are lower and it doesn’t give me that +1 Finesse. Bonuses like that are particularly juicy and are generally worth more than the raw damage increase. The elven bow is worth less than the Provoker, but that’s for good reason – the Provoker is more valuable in combat. Sebille, consume this head for me. There isn’t a lot of flesh in the head, I realize. : You were a genius maze-builder. Clear of mind, sharp of wit. You built an invisible staircase, useful to those who may find it. Oh, nice, Sebille learned Peace of Mind for eating that head. Good for if she ever gets a point into Pyromancy through some equipment or something. Well, we’ve o’ened the chest, and we’ve sentenced those talking heads to an eternity of exploding over and over again as the bulbs around them grow, then burst, then grow again. The next thing on our list, as voted on by the thread, is to go to Zaleskar – he had business with both Sebille and Ifan, and it’ll be interesting to see if their quests overlap at all. The safest way there would be to retrace my steps: to head west until I hit the beach, and then head straight north until I run into Zaleskar.  As I go, there’s a cliff overlooking the rotten corpse of yet another ship, this one wedged good and deep into what appears to be a canyon. This being the kind of game this is, there’s a pretty good catch that an offshoot this distinct has something hidden in it….   Who’da thought?   Oh. This isn’t treasure at all. It’s someone’s grave. Maybe… the corpse has treasure???  The plate can be sold for forty-five coins. That’s treasure, if you ask me!  This is a few paces to the east of where Han dropped us off after we escaped Fort Joy. We’re not too far away from our original landing, meaning we’re maybe halfway to meeting Zaleskar from here. There’s a sandbar in the water that’s shallow enough to walk across, though…  … and across it is a small islet with yet more treasure, waiting for be liberated from its sandy cage. Weird that the chest is just sitting there, on top of the sand, though. It looks like it’s been freshly placed. Maybe it’s another trap? But I don’t see anything around nearby that could be construed as a threat, so… hell, fortune favours the bold, and all.  An oil flask for Sebille; a potion that grants more magic armour for Fane; and some cash. These hauls are worth dimes on the whole, but they’re also building up pretty quickly, and that magic armour potion could come in handy.  Another boat carcass, this one about the size of a skiff. And… someone buried in the sand? That’s interesting; I don’t remember ever seeing this is any of my previous playthroughs. Maybe this is a part of the living armour quest?  Approaching the hand gives us what I presume is the minimum amount of EXP possible, and it unlocks a new entry in our journal. Given that the title of the entry is ‘Threads of a curse,’ I’m probably on the right track.    : Persuasion success!My arms are very persuasive, yes. : Now free, the arm thrashes furiously. It doesn’t relent until wriggling out of your grasp. The arm hits the sand and goes rigid. Its wrist rotates like a compass needle, a single bony finger pointing toward… what? Huh. You don’t see that every day. The arm is constantly pointed towards the southeast, constantly lunging and pointing its finger straight ahead. Presumably, it’d like me to go in the direction it’s pointing.  Unfortunately, whatever it wants isn’t nearby, and there’s a big ol’ cliff in the way. Whatever this hand wants is beyond the cliff – which, according to my map, means it’s also probably beyond the Seeker’s hideout, as Han has listed it. It’ll be a bit of a hike to get to where this thing wants.  I can pick up the arm and add it to my inventory, and whenever I set it back down… : The arm’s every joint snaps rigidly into place. It points into the distance like a compass needle. … it goes right back to what it was doing before. Well, this is exciting! A new sidequest for me to embark on, one I’ve never done before! That makes three different quests involving the living armour: one with Daeyana the elven scion; the book about some dwarven ritual involving a bird; and now this skeletal hand. And like the other two quests, I likely won’t be getting to this one for a hot minute yet, so, I might as well continue on my way towards Zaleskar.  This spot right here is where Han had dropped us off. Heading straight north will take me to Zaleskar.  Here are the dead Magisters in the middle of the road, foretelling of the ‘ambush’ that was waiting for me just ahead.  What I didn’t picture last time is that there’s a slope to the left of these bodies. Heading up this slope will take me straight to Zaleskar. I got distracted by some weed (some very lucrative weed, to be fair).  At the top of the slope is a giant statue of… somebody, in a robe with angel wings, acting as a Waypoint that will allow me to fast-travel to the edge of the Hollow Marshes. There’s a handful of offerings at the base of the statue, including food and money, and since only the Magisters are allowed out of the fort, that probably means these offerings are from them.  A stone’s throw from the statue is a brick road with a signpost covered in blood. Always a welcoming sign.  To the west of the sign is the drawbridge that I had lowered back in the same update I had defeated Orivand. This is where that drawbridge would have taken me, if we had voted to use it: straight across the bridge is the edge of the Hollow Marshes…  … and at the end of the brick road is our man Zaleskar. The road was meant to be a bridge to somewhere, but the bridge has long-since collapsed, making it impassable and the only way to reach wherever it was going is through the swamp. But what that destination is will have to be for another update. : Loping up behind you, Ifan leans in to whisper in your ear. : By all means.: The hooded man exudes an aura of restrained menace. As he raises his head to speak to Ifan, the hood falls back, revealing the gleaming bone visage of an undead. They speak in urgent whispers.: Suddenly, the undead’s bony claw pulls an elaborate crossbow from seeming thin air. It appears to be enveloped in misty shade. He proffers it to Ifan, along with a single rank-smelling arrow.: Before you know it, the crossbow and arrow are tucked away in Ifan’s backpack, and the conversation ends with a curt nod on both sides. Well, that was easy. And Sebille was awfully patient this time. : Ifan nocks the crossbow with an arrow. He hoists it up to his shoulder, a satisfied smile brightening his face as he stares down the shadow-swirled stock. Raising an eyebrow, he holds it out for you to try. : Why not? Mind you, I’ve more of an eye for the tome and the sword, but it couldn’t hurt to try.: The arrow soars long and far, whistling a dusky tune as it flies against the breeze. It hits the target dead-on, fletchings quivering with the impact. Ifan whistles a matching tune and gives you an admiring glance as he takes back the crossbow. : I agree. After all, the most powerful weapon of all is a man with a friend to strive for.: With a smile, he claps you on the back, before packing up the crossbow once more.: Friends, eh? Well, let’s hit the road, friend. I’m sensing we’ll need to be good weapons out here.: He spins on one heel, and begins to stride onwards, keen eyes scouring the environment for any dangers. He turns to wave you along, eyes glittering in the swampy gloom. I’m curious about this crossbow – the game just spent a fair amount of time making a big deal out of it. But I’m more curious about Sebille and her interactions with Zaleskar. She’s waited patiently for her turn; I wouldn’t want to leave her hanging. : As you near a figure clad in old, blackened armour, Sebille takes your hand and gives it a squeeze. : … Go ahead, but I’d prefer it if he remains talkative by the time you’re done. : I’ll do my very, very best.: Sebille address the solitary figure. You hear but whispers – and hisses in return. Just when you think a fight is about to break out, Sebille’s words seem to sway him into submission.: He speaks, uncomfortably. She listens, her face hard and pale. ‘His name!’ you overhear her insist. ‘Roost!’ he croaks, and with that the interview’s over.She wanted someone’s name, and Zaleskar replied with a name like ‘Roost?’  : Things looked a little intense for a moment, there. Are you alright?: I found out who abducted me; who delivered me to the Master… I’m going to find the man who did that. And we’re going to get mightily re-acquainted. Neither Ifan nor Sebille have anything to say about the other’s meeting with Zaleskar, which is a bit of a downer. You’d think Ifan might not have appreciated Sebille interrogating and intimidating his informant – but then again, maybe their relationship is purely professional. Anyway, now it’s my turn to speak with Zaleskar, finally. : The hooded man exudes a restrained menace that near matches your own. As he raises his head, the hood falls back, revealing the gleaming bone visage of an undead. : Ah, one of my own kind. Be not frightened of me, brother. There’s far worse than my bite in this quagmire. : Pride has nothing to do with it. I am me; it’s modern society that’s ashamed.: He laughs, a dark and crackling sound that seems to make the ground vibrate underneath you.: Around here? You’ll be lucky to last a day, regardless of your personal feelings. : And what about you? How have you survived without a mask, mingling with the superstitious mongrels of the current era?: Zaleskar chuckles unpleasantly. : To whom am I speaking to, anyway?: With a horrific rasp of bone scraping against bone, he bows low before you. : And what, Zaleskar, should I be afraid of around here, that’ll make me lucky to last a day?: You look like a one to know already. There’s Source in you… I can smell it. I can feel it clinging to every dusty bone of your cadaver. : ‘The Seekers.’ I’ve heard that name a few times, now. What are they, exactly? : And how can I seek the Seekers? : If you’re here, away from the Seekers, and the Seekers lost their ship to the Magisters, you must be as stuck here as the rest of us.: He spits something dark and viscous onto the earth. You notice the little horror wriggling deep into the soil. : A moment ago, you mentioned that you had ‘trinkets and wonders’ in your pack. If you’re as old as I am… does that mean the wares you have are from… our time? : Oh… I was hoping for something else. Something… older than fossilised humans and dwarves. : Since you’re asking for specifics, I was hoping for something that has a bit more… Eternal longevity.: He stares at you silently for a long moment, then gathers his cloak tighter around himself. : Fine. Let’s see what you do have.: I only stock the best baubles, the choicest curios. Take a look… Zaleskar sells armour and weapons, but not a lot else. He doesn’t stock a lot of potions, which, while that would make sense for an undead, it also doesn’t really cater to what is probably his target demographic. That said, some of the equipment he’s got is pretty choice.  This staff, for example, would go really, really well on Lohse, and not just because it grants Arcane Stitch for free (Arcane Stitch is a Source skill and she wouldn’t be able to use it at the moment anyway). Unfortunately for me, I’m fresh off a huge shopping spree, and I don’t have a ton of cash to be throwing around. Zaleskar sells some really good stuff, but it’s all well out of my pay range, especially now.  This medallion would go pretty well on Prince, although I’d prefer stat-ups to skills that assist in combat, so it’d get outshined faster than others of its relative pay grade, I think.  This two-handed axe, though, the Sundering Cleaver, is very tempting. Numbers-wise, it doesn’t quite do as much damage as Scumkiller, but that +1 to Strength and Warfare puts it a few steps higher. As a general rule of thumb, stat-ups are generally more important than raw damage; the weapon’s damage numbers don’t factor in the stats they give, so if one weapon gives more stats but does a bit less damage, it’s probably the better option. Thick of the Fight is also a pretty handy skill to have, but it’s also a Source skill, so.  This armour, though, would go especially well on Prince. Likewise, you want to try and focus on survivability first, and then damage, and Prince is a squishy mage; he can use all the defense he gets. Unfortunately, everything is way too expensive. But what if I, you know, just took it? Utilize my five-finger discount?   Oh, nice, that helps a bunch.  Sundering Cleaver is too expensive for Sebille to pickpocket, so that’s right out. I could take the Commander of the Tides for Lohse, but she’s not currently in my party and I’d like to focus on my dudes that are still around.  Surprisingly, the Mentor’s Mantle is fairly low on gold value and weight, and Sebille would have room to take a bit more with it. Might as well help myself. I take the Mentor’s Mantle; a ring with +2 magic armour but no attributes; a set of gloves and a new helmet for Ifan; and with the rest of my allotted gold value, I steal a handful of money.  Pleasure doing business, Zaleskar! I run across the drawbridge and back into the fort to dole out my ill-gotten gains.  Lizard sets of armour tend to look pretty wild, particularly the lizard wizard set. You should see their wizard helmets; it’s something else, that’s for drat sure. I also picked up that new crossbow from Zaleskar, the Shadow’s Eye. Let’s take a look at that.  Hmm… by the numbers, Shadow’s Eye is a hell of a lot stronger than Provoker is, but Provoker provides an extra +1 to Finesse and it has a chance to set Chilled on hit. Status effects are no joke in this game and applying Chilled just for landing a shot is a tasty thing to offer. That said, that extra 17-19 Piercing damage is no slouch either – do I want my enemy cold, or do I want them dead? Obviously, that’s a pretty easy thing to ask. And that +25% Accuracy bonus is pretty massive, particularly since we sometimes have a bit of trouble actually hitting people in this game. And finally, Shadow’s Eye grants Chameleon Skin, which can help Ifan out of a tough spot if I need it. I’ll be taking Shadow’s Eye and the biggest reason why this is a tough call is for that +1 Finesse that Provoker provides. In the base game, Finesse provides an additional +5% damage for each point invested; in the Divinity: Unleashed mod, it gives +2% damage, plus additional movement, plus additional dodging chance. That’s a lot to be trading for raw numbers. Chameleon Skin sweetens the deal a bit, at least.  Now that I have a bit of extra money and some more sellable wares, there’s one last skillbook I want before I’m willing to move on.  And now I can finally round up all my purchases for your LP-viewing pleasure:  First Aid: Heal a target within range once. Cures Crippled, Atrophy, Knocked Down, Blind, Silenced, Suffocating, Bleeding, Burning, Poisoned, Diseased, Plague, Infested, and applies Rested. Tactical Retreat: Self-teleport to any location within eyesight and apply Haste upon landing. Barrage: Fire up to three arrows at once at three targets. You can instead choose to fire all three arrows at a single target to deal triple the damage you would normally. Costs 3 AP to use. Rallying Cry: Heal a single target once. The base amount of healing done is determined by the caster’s Summoning score, but the amount of healing done will multiply with the amount of allies near the target, including summons and totems. In the base game, it reapplies magic armour as well. Back to Zaleskar, thanks to the Waypoint right beside him… there’s a slope heading down towards the beach to his north, and there appears to be some manmade structures sitting on the sand. I’m kind of interested in where they leads me.  A dock, apparently; there’s a pulley and a winch on top of a platform, and the rest of the dock is built with brick. This dock must directly connect to Fort Joy.  Oh, good.  A bit to the north is a trio of Magisters having a talk over something that’s probably a bit less relevant to the troupe of walking zombies just beside them.  : You can’t be serious. : Course I am! You really think the Divine’d destroy the entire elven homeland?: Well, you know. Not on purpose.: Not a chance, no way, no how. Sure, he wanted to defeat the Black Ring, but he wouldn’t’a wiped out all that land.: I’ve seen the etchings myself, mate! It’s gone!: You can fake an etching, no problem. I’m telling you, wouldn’t’a done it!: Believe what you want, if it makes you happy.According to Ifan’s origin story, Lucian the Divine had indeed ordered the use of Deathfog against the Black Ring, which likewise took out an entire elven homeland. There’s clearly some truth to this story, but we don’t know the whole thing and we probably never will, now that Lucian’s been dead for a while. Anyway. Let’s fight this whole squad. Strap in, because this fight’s a big’un.      : Combat Music 1 : Dance on the Docks
Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 00:39 on May 8, 2021 |
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May 8, 2021 00:25
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Turn 1 This Inquisitor has something called an Aura of Favourable Wind active. As long as that aura is up, all allies within a radius around her will get a movement bonus. Normally, the aura only lasts four turns, but for this Inquisitor, it lasts forever. Anyway, she opens her turn by running up close to us, and thanks to Favourable Wind, she has the AP to also huck a rock at – Oh, right! We voted on what to name the cat in the last update! It was narrow, but Salem won out by just one vote – named after another, famous male cat that belonged to a magician.   Salem runs up ahead, getting right into the Inquisitor’s face, before swapping places with Fane. Fane’s freshly slowed thanks to the Fossil Strike, so this will be a big help in saving some AP.   Ranger 1 casts Reactive Shot (as you do) before putting an arrowhead into Fane’s knee.   Ifan uses his new skill, Tactical Retreat, to get onto the platform right beside him for easy high-ground access. Then he throws a Fossil Strike onto the walkway with all of the Silent Monks – the idea is that, if they want to approach via the top road, they’ll need to walk through the oil to do it.  Ranger 2 plugs Fane with two more arrows, putting him down to less than half already.    Fane reacts by drinking a poisoned potion and using Mosquito Swarm on the Inquisitor, putting him back up to about three-quarters. Because the Inquisitor has Favourable Wind, she’ll be the top priority for this fight – with his last AP, he uses Shackles of Pain on her. If he’s going to stand right in the middle of it all, then he might as well put the beatings he’s about to get to good use.   One of these Silent Monks makes a beeline straight for Ifan, which is a bit alarming – if one of them is going for him, then they all will probably aim for him, too. Thankfully, Fane’s there to at least capitalize a bit on their pathing.   A named Magister, Dayva, runs forward, hits the oil, and then does a rain dance, soaking everyone through.     Here comes the army of Silent Monks, each of them aiming for Ifan. Well, all but the last one, who seems to want to fight Fane.    This Knight decides that now is a good time to use Encourage – and with all of the Silent Monks nearby, he’s correct – before he hits Fane with Battering Ram and then repositions right next to Prince and Sebille. Normally, this fight is engaged from the opposite end of the dock, on the cliff where Gawin left us to rot. The cliff would have given us a natural height advantage and would have funnelled the enemies towards us, giving us a much stronger positioning advantage than what we have now. Because we engaged this battle from the Hollow Marshes, the battlefield is open a bit wider, but there’s a pinch point between the docks and the platform that Ifan is on – a pinch point that the Knight is now blocking, meaning Prince and Sebille will have to fight through him if they want to help out better than they can right now.   Luckily, Sebille has the Ruptured Chicken combo. Now, they actually want to try and stay still, to funnel the chicken as far away from the fight as possible, because then 1) when it changes back, the Knight will have to run a fair distance to rejoin the battle, and 2) obviously, the farther the chicken runs, the more damage it does to itself.   Prince puts down a wood totem beside Ifan – totems benefit from high-ground advantages as well – and then buffs Fane with Haste and Peace of Mind. I should give that combo a shorthand name too. The… Piece of Speed? No, the… Hasted Mind? No… the… oh, I’ll call it the Think Fast combo.  The wood totem that Prince just put down decides that the most dangerous target that needs dealing with right now is a barrel of water at the base of the platform. The barrel explodes as soon as the arrow makes impact, soaking the ground and everyone on it (and remember, Dayva just performed a rain dance). Mission accomplished, wood totem.   Unfortunately for Attendant, everyone is in its way and it can’t run in to help Fane with the fight. It’s forced to use Battering Ram to get through the blockade of bodies. It misses the chicken, which is to be expected, and then it uses its projectile attack on the Inquisitor, which also misses, which was not expected. So, that turn kind of sucked for Attendant.  Turn 2 This Silent Monk walks over to Attendant and slaps it twice, presumably in an effort to teach it to straighten up and fly right.    Fane goes next, and he uses Battle Stomp on the two Silent Monks that are about to threaten Ifan in order to reduce their AP. They should each only be able to hit him once. Fane repositions slightly and takes an arrow between the shoulders for it, which crits, which is good in that it also crit the Inquisitor, but it’s bad in the sense that I would prefer it if I didn’t die. To ensure that second one doesn’t happen, Fane uses Whirlwind, hitting the Inquisitor and two of the Silent Monks beside him, sapping their HP with his Necromancy skill.  Dayva uses an Aerothurge skill we haven’t seen yet: Dazling Bolt. Essentially, it’s a stronger version of Electric Discharge that hits straight down from the sky, so you don’t have to worry about obstructions between you and your target. She uses it on the ground around Prince, which is wet with rain and blood, and it stuns Prince, Sebille, Salem, Attendant, the chicken, and a Silent Monk. A little bit of friendly-fire but otherwise, a very cost-effective move for sure.    Sebille’s a bit stuck: there’s a bunch of people in her way; she’s Stunned; and there’s dangerous terrain in front of her. But a thief’s mobility is second to none: she uses Cloak And Dagger to join Ifan on the raised platform, and then Adrenaline to give her the AP she needs to chuck a bottle of Chloroform onto Dayva. It’s a little late for it to be effective this turn, but we’ll catch a break from Dayva next turn, at least.    The Inquisitor has a very defensive turn: she uses Fortify on the Silent Monk (rather than herself, surprisingly), before casting both Restoration and Shields Up on herself. This will help with her own sustain quite a bit, but she’s also at half HP and needs to make a bigger play, and soon.  The wood totem decides to actually do something and fires a dart onto one of the monks at the foot of the ladder.   Both of the monks at the ladder are Slowed, thanks to the oil from Fossil Strike, and they’re both Knocked Down from Fane’s Battle Stomp. This results in one of the slowest possible animations for climbing a ladder I’ve ever seen. Although it could maybe be slower if they were Crippled as well. This one monk eventually gets to the top of the ladder and then claws at Ifan twice. Salem’s turn is next, but he’s trapped between Attendant and some lumber, so he delays.   This Silent Monk does the exact same thing: he very arduously climbs a ladder before hitting Ifan twice.     Ifan has a bit of extra AP thanks to Tactical Retreat giving him Haste. With it, he uses Elemental Arrows to coat his arrowheads in his own blood (  ); he uses Encourage on everyone except Prince, Salem, and Attendant, who are out of his line of sight; he uses First Aid on himself to recover from all those swipes from the Silent Monks; and finally, he uses Barrage on the Inquisitor, plugging her with all three of his available arrows and doing a whopping 149 damage to her, plus an extra 28 by making her bleed on top of the electrified water.All of that damage is after the Inquisitor used Shields Up to sharply reduce her incoming damage, and now, she’s probably going to die from her statuses on her next turn. Like I mentioned way, way back: Huntsmen are a bit immobile once they’ve found their perch and their armour class means they’re fragile, but their raw damage output is top shelf. If you can keep them alive, they can rinse a battlefield clean.    This one Silent Monk on the stairs tries to maneuver around Fane, but he manages to get her with an AoO. She was probably aiming for Ifan, but after getting sliced across the back, she changes tack and turns around to hit Fane twice.  Prince is Stunned and has only three AP to use, so he summons a blood totem on the platform with Ifan and Sebille to help keep it under control.  It immediately targets the Silent Monk attacking Attendant. Which I guess is okay – it gets high ground advantage and it’s a target that needs to go out eventually – but I was hoping it’d help Ifan out a bit.  The Silent Monk that the Inquisitor used Fortify on has the AP to hit Fane three times, which is a bit annoying.   Attendant is still stuck and can’t walk around the monk in front of it, so it uses Restoration on itself before clawing at her once.   Ranger 1 uses Haste on himself, only to step forward and shoot Fane with one arrow before passing. By my count, he should still have one AP remaining, and with Haste, by next turn, he’ll have six to go, which is bad news for me.  Ranger 2 steps forward and shoots out Fane’s kneecaps from behind before putting another one into his back. I’m not sure how much HP Fane has remaining, but it’s gotta be in the single-digits now.    Finally, the fun one: the chicken knight attempts to run as far away from all enemy combatants as it can. Since Attendant is blocking the way deeper into the dock, that means running towards the beach. And Prince even manages to land a AoO on it. By the time it’s done running, it has only 15 HP remaining.   Salem takes his delayed turn – and the knight’s HP is so low that it’s entirely possible that Salem can claw him to death with his cat paws. But he doesn’t have the AP to reach the knight and attack. So, he uses Feline Leap to land in the water just off the sand of the beach, and then he passes, saving his AP for next turn. This was a bit of a misplay because Salem currently has three AP; he could still have approached the knight with them and if the knight tried to move, Salem would get an AoO. Oh well. Turn 3 Dayva’s turn is next, but she’s asleep and uses her turn to wake up.    Fane’s in a lot of trouble: his HP is dangerously low and he’s surrounded by two monks, an Inquisitor, a mage, and two archers. He doesn’t have a lot of options available. Well… he has one. He uses Mosquito Swarm on the Inquisitor to hopefully ensure her demise next turn, and then he uses a skill unique to the undead race: Play Dead. Play Dead removes all agro on the user, causing every enemy around them to ignore them and go for someone else. All statuses that the user is under still apply – for example, Fane is still Poisoned from that one potion he drank, and he’ll still regenerate HP per turn even while he’s ‘dead.’ While enemies cannot attack him directly, dangerous surfaces, such as fire, will still hit him, so if Dayva shocks the ground he’s on, he’ll still take damage for it. In exchange, all cooldowns are paused while the user is Playing Dead, so you can’t just burn all your skills, fall down, and wait for them to come off. Play Dead is strictly a last resort to give yourself a bit of breathing room. Also, it, like all skills, has a chance for your character to shout some victory cry whenever it’s used. There’s nothing quite like your character yelling “I’ll yield to none!” or “glory is mine!” while they crumple to a useless heap on the ground.  The Bleeding doesn’t kill the Inquisitor, but with her agro on Fane removed, she’s forced to reposition to try and target someone else. The water at her feet is still electrified, and that’s enough to take her out for good. Sebille’s turn is next, but she has no armour and very little AP, thanks to Adrenaline, and she’s also invisible. Rather than break invisibility by doing one action, she’s going to delay.   Ranger 2, for some reason, leaves her perch next to the dock… and then runs in the totally opposite direction of the fight. Uh, okay, you do you.  The wood totem fires a dart at point blank and happens to miss, which is always good and cool.    This monk hauls rear end up the ladder and lands a critical hit on the blood totem, taking it out in one hit. Which is actually a decent move; it’s a good idea to handle those totems before they get out of hand. With her last two AP, she takes a swing at Ifan. This platform’s awfully crowded… there are three monks, a totem, a ranger, and a thief up there. I’m outnumbered, but I’m not outgunned, and I’m not willing to abandon it just yet.   Make that four monks. All four of them are focusing down Ifan.  Salem’s turn is next, and he has the AP to run up to the knight and finish him off… but Divinity: Unleashed added a cog into the machine that I didn’t account for. In Divinity: Unleashed, if a summon’s master dies, then rather than the summon instantly disappearing, they instead go Mad, which causes them to attack anyone nearby, friend or foe. Salem, upon seeing his master Fane fall lifelessly to the ground, goes Mad, meaning I can’t control him and I can’t use him to attack the knight. And since nobody is within Salem’s current line of sight, he instead passes his turn. I didn’t anticipate that turn of events, and unfortunately, we’re all robbed of the sight of a kitty cat clawing a man in a full suit of armour to death   Instead, we all have to lamely watch this monk slap Attendant twice. Lame.    Ifan’s turn is next. He uses Fossil Strike on Ranger 1, the one that had recently Hasted himself, in order to remove the Haste and make him as slow as the rest of us. With only two AP remaining; with Tactical Retreat still on cooldown for another two turns; and with him being surrounded on all sides; Ifan uses Chameleon Skin, granted to him thanks to Shadow’s Eye. Now the only thing on that platform for the monks to target is the wood totem.   With nothing to target and with being as slow as molasses, Ranger 1 uses Peace of Mind on himself and then dips his arrows into the puddle of oil that Ifan just gave him before passing his turn.   Prince replaces the recently-destroyed blood totem, and then, rather than leave the knight to bleed out from his ruptured ankles, he uses Staff of Magus to make sure that he’s good and dead.  The blood totem immediately goes to work, hitting one of the monks on the platform and causing it to bleed.  And she reciprocates, hitting it back.  Attendant takes two swings at the monk in front of it, and only one connects. It’s not like the monk is twice its size and should be an easy target to hit or anything.   This monk hits the wood totem, taking it out in one shot, and then, realizing that there are no more available targets within reach, decides to run back to the ground, right next to Fane’s ‘corpse.’ Ought to be a free lunch for him once he wakes up. Sebille’s delayed turn is next, but… she still can’t really do anything with her conditions and position, so she passes entirely, opting to save the AP.   Turn 4 Ranger 1 moves first, thanks to his own Peace of Mind buff, and he wants to hit Attendant with Ricochet. A decent move, except he needs to wade through the electrified water to do it – a trade he’s clearly willing to make. The arrow hits and even crits Attendant before bouncing to Prince.   Obviously, Fane wasn’t going to get a stronger position as long as he Played Dead, but the whole goal to using the move was to ease some of the heat on him. Both of the enemy rangers moved off their high ground; two of the monks left him alone; and the Inquisitor is dead. He got a ton of value off of simply falling to the ground and holding his breath(?). With the heat good and eased, he chugs a potion and then chops at the monk right beside him. His HP is still quite low, but he’s recovering and he’s doing damage, and he still has Comeback Kid banked.   The monk harassing Attendant hits it once more before realizing that Fane is still alive, so she turns around (and takes an AoO herself for it) to try and focus a bit on him. Which is cool with me; Whirlwind comes off cooldown next turn.    After passing her last turn, Sebille now has seven AP to play with, but a lot of her most useful skills are on cooldown. She hits the weakest monk on the platform with Backlash, but misses. She uses Flurry to hit it three times, and whiffs one. And she ends her turn with a regular swing, which connects. That monk would be dead if her eyes weren’t crossed   Dayva does just one thing: she teleports Fane onto Prince, making them both Shocked and dealing physical damage to both. More importantly, Fane’s lost his position right in the middle of the fight.  The blood totem punishes Dayva for her hubris by lobbing a bloody projectile at her and causing her to Bleed.   Ranger 2, the one that took the long way around the fight, realizes her folly and runs all the way back in – and straight through the oil puddle, causing her to slow down. With the remainder of her AP, she fires off a Ricochet on Attendant, which bounces to Prince and Fane as well. Once more, Fane is on the cusp of redeath.    Now that Fane is no longer pretending to be dead, Salem is, likewise, no longer Mad and fully under our control. Unfortunately, Feline Leap has a visible jump arc, as opposed to most self-teleport skills which pluck the caster up and sets them down where you want them. Because of this, it means that Feline Leap can’t jump up to the platform with Ifan and Sebille, where Fane could be of the most help. So, instead, Salem just jumps up to the front, beside Attendant, and then swaps places with Fane from there. It’s a small distance, but that’s about an AP and a half that Fane won’t have to spend on walking.  This rambunctious monk stabs Sebille twice, putting her down to half.    For Ifan’s turn, he uses First Aid on Sebille, now that she’s surrounded by enemies; he uses Pin Down on Ranger 1, locking his feet to the ground by shooting an arrow through his ankles (although this may have been a misplay, and Pin Down would have been more effective on a target that actually needed to move to do damage, but whatever); and, with his final AP, he uses a Restoration scroll on Prince, who’s suddenly not looking so hot after he had a very heavy skeleman teleported on top of him.   This monk hustles up the ladder so he can punch Ifan in the back of the head. The Silent Monk problem on this platform isn’t getting any better….    Prince opens his turn with his new skill, Rallying Cry. Rallying Cry heals a small amount of HP that’s based on the user’s Summoning stat, but it multiplies for every ally nearby, including summons and totems. Because Fane, Attendant, and Salem are standing next to Prince, that means its healing is multiplied by four. With Prince’s current stats, its base is 44 HP, meaning it heals himself for 176 HP total. That’s enough to go from about one quarter remaining to nearly full. And it would have been more if he put down a totem beside himself first. In the base game, Rallying Cry also restored a chunk of magic armour. Is that better than Restoration? Well… Restoration also heals a variety of different status ailments, and it doesn’t require specific positioning in order to work. It’s comparing apples to oranges and whichever is better depends on how the fight is going. Anyway, Prince uses Think Fast on Fane, and then he caps his turn with Staff of Magus on this one monk.  This monk turns around and punches Sebille in the throat twice.  Attendant, unfortunately, succumbs to its Shocked status, causing Prince to become Despondent. Another of the monks on the platform takes its turn next, but because it’s so extremely crowded up there, it’s actually unable to move – it can’t get off the platform and it can’t attack either of my dudes, so it’s forced to pass.   Turn 5 Ranger 1 uses Haste on himself, which clears his Crippled status, which is a huge pain in the balls, not gonna lie. He runs forward and gives Prince a taste of my own medicine by Crippling him with Pin Down right back. Which, actually, I’d prefer it’s Prince that takes that hit, since Fane is a sneeze away from dying.    But, since Fane survived long enough to attack, that means he can rescue himself, and he doesn’t even need any potions to do it. Attendant’s death left a puddle of blood at his feet, which he’s all too eager to suck up with Blood Sucker; a Battle Stomp Knocks Down both Ranger 1 and the last monk that isn’t up on that platform; and finally, one Mosquito Swarm on Ranger 1 will put Fane back up to just a little less than half HP. Ranger 1’s got maybe one eighth of his total HP remaining. There’s a lot going on in this fight, but, hopefully, I’ll be able to take him out before his next turn.   The monk that Fane just Knocked Down makes her way up the ladder and stabs Sebille once. That’s it. That’s every single monk in this fight up there, on that platform. If I could find a way to get Sebille and Ifan off the platform and trap the others up there, this fight would be a cakewalk. (Spoiler: I don’t do that)   Sebille lobs a bottle of Chloroform at Dayva, who is on a different level of elevation; over two obstacles; and on the other side of a wall of bodies that the Silent Monks have formed around Sebille, and it lands true. She then turns around to use Tentacle Lash on the weakest monk on the platform, who is standing right next to her, and she whiffs. Sebille. Please. At the very least, Dayva’s turn is next, and she’s forced to wake up.  The blood totem continues to prefer to not attack the horde of zombies surrounding it and takes another shot at Dayva, which also goes wide. What is with my team today.    Ranger 2 uses First Aid on Ranger 1, which heals him of both Knocked Down and him being on fire, which is a pain. Then she uses Pin Down on Fane, which removes his Haste, which is a pain. And finally, she shoots Ifan once, which crits, which, you know, sometimes, man, this game.  Salem also succumbs to being Shocked to death. Luckily, Fane doesn’t have Pet Pal, at least.  Sebille takes two more stabs to her kidneys. This fight’s going sideways in a hurry.   Ifan shoots a fire arrow onto Ranger 1, reigniting him. If Prince can’t take him out, then hopefully the fresh fire and the bleeding from Mosquito Swarm can take him out. To end his turn, he turns around and fires a bolt into one of the monks. Thankfully, he doesn’t miss his shot. I’d have been a little flustered.  You know, there may be a ton of them, but at the very least, the Silent Monks don’t hit very hard. Even against Sebille and Ifan, both of them wearing leather armour, which doesn’t provide a ton of protection.   Because he’s Despondent, Prince only has three AP to work with, along a litany of other debuffs. Rather than try and be immediately useful, he plucks down another blood totem on the platform and then chugs a potion, attempting to drink away his sorrows at the untimely death of Attendant (until it’s summoned again, anyway).  The brand new blood totem fires a glob at the monk that Ifan just shot, doing just enough damage to take her out of the fight and finally put a dent into their numbers. The last monk to move opts to do nothing – I’m not certain why. With the death of his comrade, there’s enough room on the platform to move around, but he just… does nothing. Which I’m okay with, tbh.   Turn 6 Unfortunately, Ranger 1 survives the fire and the bleeding with just a sliver of HP remaining. He uses his final breath to put down a Reactive Shot (not that he’ll be able to take advantage of it) and fire a Shocking Arrow onto Prince, which, since he’s already Shocked, puts his straight to Stunned. Plus one extra, normal arrow, because why the hell not.     Fane hits Ranger 1 with Battering Ram, which moves too fast for Reactive Shot to punish, and it’s more than enough to take him out. Because of Executioner, he’s given two more AP to play with immediately. Shackles of Pain is off cooldown, but I doubt it’ll be of too much use, with all of the monks on the platform and with Dayva and Ranger 2 focused on Ifan. Still, I throw it onto Dayva because it’s there and available, so why not. Since Salem is dead, Fane can safely spawn Splodey with Ranger 1’s fresh corpse. And with his final two AP, Fane uses an Electric Discharge scroll on Ranger 2, which shocks both her and Dayva.   Splodey wades through the fire and electrified water to get as close to Dayva and Ranger 2 as it can before it pops like a gross, gory balloon, doing massive physical damage to them both.  Sebille continues to get ganged up on. She’s down to roughly one-twelfth of her HP remaining, all from getting slapped around by a bunch of zombified mutes.      Sebille needs to make a big play, and fast. Luckily, she has just what she needs to do it. Ruptured Chicken just came off cooldown now, and the space right beside Dayva is available for her to jump to with Cloak And Dagger. First, not pictured, Sebille chugs a potion and then jumps down. Then, finagling her movement to squeeze as much distance with as little AP as possible, she uses Adrenaline and hit Dayva with Ruptured Chicken. Dayva’s turn is next, so, even if this doesn’t kill her, at least I’ll get one more turn without her magic putting me down.    Dayva just barely survives the run, but thankfully, a successful AoO with Sebille’s offhand knife puts her beyond the threshold, and that’s one more target down. Now, the biggest threat is just Ranger 2. All of the other targets are Silent Monks, and they’re all pretty squishy; their biggest strength is in their numbers.  This blood totem managed to survive all the way to its self-destruct timer, where it promptly falls to pieces.  Speaking of, Ranger 2 takes a step back (and taking a bit of electric damage for it) before putting two more into Ifan. If he can survive until his next turn, he can Tactical Retreat to safety, but… that’s a big ‘if.’  The other surviving blood totem fires another round at Ranger 2.  Nope, unfortunately.   With the top platform finally free of bogeys, this one monk heads down towards Prince to start giving him his what-for.   Prince is still Despondent and doesn’t have the AP to be making very many moves at all. He can’t put down a totem and use Rallying Cry, so, he just uses Rallying Cry by itself for the paltry +44 HP healing and uses his last AP to breathe fire on the monk that just hit him.    Finally, this monk… he was the one that bugged out last turn and did nothing. Well, he finally decides to do something, at least: He runs straight past Fane, happily taking an AoO for it, so he can stab a barrel of water on the dock, causing its contents to spill out. It touches the already-electrified puddle, spreading that damage everywhere the spill goes, which includes Fane and himself. This guy clearly had a plan and was willing to wait to execute it.  Turn 7 This monk opens the turn by hitting the blood totem still on the platform twice, taking it out.   Most of Fane’s best moves are still on cooldown, so he does what he can: he uses Mosquito Swarm on the monk threatening Prince, and then he steps onto a nearby puddle of blood to suck it up, healing himself for just 44 HP. Still, any healing is better than none. Fane’s been teetering on the edge of death for most of the fight and he’s tenaciously managed to not die.   Likewise, Ranger 2 annoyingly uses First Aid on herself, curing her of the Bleeding from the last blood totem, and then undoes Fane’s efforts with an arrow.   Sebille is low on AP thanks to Adrenaline, so she does what she can: she hits Ranger 2 with Backlash and uses her remaining AP to chug her last potion, putting her back up to half HP.   This monk heads towards the man with the enormous sword and decides to pick a fight specifically with him, stabbing Fane once in the stomach. Which is very impressive, if you think about it.   The monk threatening Prince takes a shitload of damage from its status effects, and then slashes Prince across the back twice.    Prince is no longer Despondent on this turn, putting him up to five AP and restoring his stats to normal. He spawns an air totem behind himself to help him with the monk currently on his case; he uses Think Fast on himself, since Fane is out of his sight; and, with his last AP, he uses Ignition, which, despite its awesome effect, does only 13 damage to the monk beside him.  Awesomely, the totem Prince just put down decides to target the monk that stabbed the water barrel rather than the guy that’s right in front of it. Isn’t that awesome?     That same monk wades through all of the water that’s freshly electrified that he just put down to hit Fane once before realizing that, oh, he should probably be targeting the squishy lizard wizard, the one with no physical armour. So he goes to do that, taking an AoO from Fane on the way, and then he perishes in the fire that Prince breathed a turn ago. This monk in particular had a wild one.   Turn 8 This monk leaves the platform, leaving it empty save for Ifan’s corpse, to attack Fane once.   Prince casts Rallying Cry again, this time getting a small buff since there’s a totem right beside him, and then he puts down another electric totem on the dock, hopefully to help Fane with the two monks he’s facing down.  Lol no, it hits the monk standing beside Prince. Totems don’t have a minimum range and I’m pretty sure they’re just trolling me.    Ranger 2, realizing that the high ground is free and up for grabs, decides to wade through all of that electrified water to get to it, even it if means taking an AoO from Sebille. She’s left with five goddamn HP left; if the water were spread out just a bit more, she would have been downed. But no: she makes it onto the platform safely and plugs Fane twice, putting him down to six HP himself.    Sebille can take out Ranger 2 right now, but honestly, it’s probably going to kill her in return. She first uses Chloroform on the monk set to move next, giving Fane a bit of a breather. She uses Flesh Sacrifice to give herself one more AP to play with, and then wades through the ocean of electrified water and blood on the dock to get as close as she needs to the platform with Ranger 2 to put it in range for her to use Throwing Knives, finally taking her out. After all of that, we’re down to just three Silent Monks remaining. The one Sebille just put to sleep goes next, but skips in order to wake up.   The totem beside Prince hits the monk it was intended to shoot once, but that’s not enough to kill it. When its turn rolls over, though, the fire, electricity, and bleeding all compound at once, and that finally takes it out. Just two more….    Fane slices at one of the two beside him twice, killing it and refunding him two more AP, which he uses to Battle Stomp the final remaining monk.    Turn 9 Prince places one more totem up on the top platform; the monks don’t have physical armour and the high ground will give it a bit of extra bonus damage. Then, doing what he can with what he has remaining, he hits the monk with Staff of Magus and Ignition.  At least the blood totem strikes true.  After everything that’s happened this fight, this monk finally, finally brings down Fane. Only for Comeback Kid to kick in and essentially heal him for another 70 HP. Mission failed successfully. Sebille delays, but she’s probably going to die regardless thanks to her low HP and her standing on dangerous terrain.  One more swing of Fane’s sword is all it takes to bring this fight to a close. This fight took a whole lot more time and resources than it needed to, primarily because of the location I approached it from. Like I said, this direction involved a pinch point that forced my guys into a tightly packed position that they couldn’t easily maneuver in – hell, Prince never actually made it out. That, and my playing was honestly a little bit sloppy: my damage was spread a bit thin and I didn’t take near as much advantage of Ifan’s quiver of elemental arrows than I should have.  Sebille dies the moment the fight ends and she tries to reunite with Fane, meaning I have to spend two res scrolls in the aftermath. But hey, it’s finally done! That’s one more fight in the books, and in the end, we’re the ones that came away the victors. Which also means it’s time for some good lootin’.  As expected, most of them are empty of anything at all. The knight that nearly died to Salem was holding a key, but it doesn’t say to what, other than it should be used in the harbour.   According to this, the Magisters on the mainland apparently think they’re being sent tamed Sourcerers, and not zombies.  Dayva, being the only one with a name, has all the good poo poo, as you could probably have guessed. Some money; a grenade for Sebille; gloves for Prince; and a magician’s outfit that I’m probably just going to sell. It’s level four and doesn’t offer any stat bonuses or high defensive numbers.  Well, well. He certainly didn’t make it very far. Not surprising, given what was waiting for him here on the docks.  Electric Discharge; Shocking Touch; Favourable Wind; and Blinding Radiance. All of them pretty decent skills that I could have made good use of earlier if he didn’t try and pull a fast one on us. Still, if we decide to bring Lohse back, these skills will still be useful for her to have in the future. Waste not, and all.  There’s a chest hidden among the barrels here in the dock. That’s probably what the key goes to.  Not bad; the plate in particular will be worth a decent amount of cash.  Exploring the docks a bit more reveals a workshop filled with buckets, hammers, nails, and the like. In the Games forum on Something Awful, there’s a dedicated thread for Divinity: Original Sin 2 that’s tilted ‘Always put nails in your shoes.’ I’ve had plenty of opportunities to get some nails, but I’ve never demonstrated why that’s a good idea.  Nice, that amount of money is going to be a huge help. Anyway, nails! As I demonstrated way back at the beginning of the LP, you can combine two different materials in order to create something new, and that ‘something’ could also be a weapon or a piece of armour. If you take any set of nails and you combine them with any set of boots or other footwear….   You give them cleats, and now those boots give you total immunity to slipping and falling on ice, which would cause Knocked Down. This is a feature in the base game; no mods included or necessary. You can do this with any pair of shoes or boots; it doesn’t matter how modified they already are or how many enchantments they have. If you have a set of nails handy, there is absolutely no reason not to put them into your shoes. They’ll even work with lizards, who don’t wear boots – they wear foot wrappings. Nails can also be combined with canisters to create nail bombs, but they’re far more useful in the long term when you place them inside your shoes. There is literally no reason not to do this. Always put nails in your shoes.  Finishing up my exploration of the harbour, here’s the back door to the fort, where we last saw Gawin alive. This is the angle we would have approached that fight from if we decided to escape this way.   One trek back to Kalias later, to offload some of my wares and to load back up on res scrolls, and we’re right as rain for the next update.  No votes this time! There’s a hidden chest along the northern coast of the Hollow Marshes, and I might as well explore out in that direction to pick it up, since I’m in the area. See you next update! Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 12:31 on May 8, 2021 |
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May 8, 2021 00:26
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Maple Leaf posted:I didn’t anticipate that turn of events, and unfortunately, we’re all robbed of the sight of a kitty cat clawing a man in a full suit of armour to death drat, we should have named him Greebo. Also jeez your team all clearly need glasses. Their accuracy issues are getting worse. The nail thing is actually pretty cool, can you do other things like that to modify your gear that way? Or is everything else the more usual stat buffs?
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May 8, 2021 12:28
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I played this game pretty much completely blind and ended up not doing much with crafting. I have a feeling this LP is going to reveal a depressing number of ways I sabotaged myself by playing like that.
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May 8, 2021 16:00
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JTDistortion posted:I played this game pretty much completely blind and ended up not doing much with crafting. I have a feeling this LP is going to reveal a depressing number of ways I sabotaged myself by playing like that. Crafting in the first game was OP/broken, so it was toned down a lot in this game. Aside from the nails thing, crafting was only really good for making larger potions and runes out of smaller ones, and adding poison to your weapons.
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May 8, 2021 18:48
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The most I did with crafting is making the combination spells. The Fire combinations are particularly powerful, Fire/Necro, Fire/Warfare, Fire/.... Archer (forget the real name) are all top-tier spells (though Fire/Necro is weird in that it's actually best on a Warfare character).
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May 8, 2021 19:38
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Man, the loot from that fight seems like it probably didn't even pay for all the res scrolls and potions you burned. Rough. And aww, Ifan has a crush on... a skeleton. That's a little weird, guy.
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May 8, 2021 22:11
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Schwartzcough posted:Man, the loot from that fight seems like it probably didn't even pay for all the res scrolls and potions you burned. Rough. Well, he is basically a dog, of course he likes people made from bones.
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May 9, 2021 08:29
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GuavaMoment posted:Crafting in the first game was OP/broken, so it was toned down a lot in this game. Aside from the nails thing, crafting was only really good for making larger potions and runes out of smaller ones, and adding poison to your weapons. And see, Maple, you don't need a dedicated healer when you can just kill them before they kill you! Not to worry, swap Lohse back in later.
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May 9, 2021 15:45
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Olive Branch posted:I'd take a regular butter knife, run it through a weapon sharpener, and it would craft a rapier of legendary stats. Yeah, it was broken, but also really funny. I was a fan of rubbing two sticks together to make a legendary staff.
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May 9, 2021 17:51
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Sorry if this was addressed and I forgot - can you go back to the fort? What happens if you wait to help Gavin until you've cleared this fight?
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May 9, 2021 21:54
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Xander77 posted:Sorry if this was addressed and I forgot - can you go back to the fort? What happens if you wait to help Gavin until you've cleared this fight? As in, inside the building? Yeah, there's nothing stopping me. There's a ton of Silent Monks in there that I could slap around for some extra EXP if I wanted. And that's a fascinating question! According to the wiki, if the fight is cleared and then you help him escape, his body will be found a bit deeper into the Marshes, even if you've cleared the whole swamp out. You can also teleport him into the sand bar where, in our playthrough, Lohse found the hidden entrance to that one dwarf's prison cell, and if you do that, Gawin's body will be found in Kniles' playground.
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May 10, 2021 01:31
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 Last update, we left off with finding Gawin’s dead body located at the docks north of Fort Joy proper. We had a half-hour fight with some Magisters and some Silent Monks that, you know, all told, didn’t go so badly, I think. Like, yeah, Ifan and Sebille died, but it could have gone much worse. Remember when Gawin tricked Lohse into teleporting him across the gorge, forcing her to improvise a way out on her own? And when she made it down to that sandbar, there was a dead elf there, with a letter asking that a kinsman would consume their flesh to find their treasure? I didn’t hold a vote on what to do last update because we’re fairly close to a hidden treasure chest, and I figured that I might as well explore some more in that direction if I’m going to get it. That chest is the dead elf’s treasure, which explains how I know about it. So, off I go.  Most shallow water can be walked across with no penalties. Standing in shallow water will make you permanently wet, at least until you leave it.  Across the shallow water is another small islet, and standing there is what appears to be an older woman carrying a mage’s staff. … An old woman mage…? Could it be…? : The woman traces glyphs in the air and you cringe, expecting a barrage of ice and fire. Instead, a bit of smoke sputters forth. She cries to the skies in frustration in a recognisable rail-thin rasp. : My Lord! I’ve loved you. I’ve obeyed you. What’s my sin? How long must I suffer?!: She sees you approach and punches her fist in your direction. Her face flushes red. It’s her – the one that destroyed the ship to Fort Joy. The one that stole your mask… She wavers for a moment and you see a flash of recognition in her pained eyes.: You? It is you, isn’t it? You can hide that skull all you want, but I see you. You’re the one who crafted this unholy contraption. Most artefacts like this mask are long lost, but you craft them anew. : I am Fane, and I’ll have your respect. I walked this earth before your species was even a thought.: My my. What a specimen. : What god were you just praying to?: The one true God. The God King of all Divinity. The one that will see those Seven imposters put in their place.: Not that you will live to see it.: She turns her head to the heavens once more.: I offer this sacrifice to you. Return me to your side. Make me whole! And then we don’t enter battle. I guess I’m standing in the Goldilocks zone where I’m close enough to trigger a conversation, but not close enough to trigger a battle. Well. Uh. I guess I better… attack?  : Combat Music 1: Windego The Witch  Turn 1 There’s only one enemy in this fight, and, including Attendant and Salem, there’s six of us. That said, Windego is an incredibly powerful mage and her wits are high enough that she gets to go first, and she spends her turn casting Laser Ray and Fireball – both mid-level Pyromancy spells, and both of which put my entire team to half, with Attendant in particular down to single digits. And also, we’re all on fire. Still. This is one-versus-six and I have more than a few methods of handling a single target.   Sebille deals with the fire situation with a simple water balloon. Its blast radius is large enough to put out everyone – except Ifan, who’s just outside of its range. Sorry, buddy. After that, she hurls another grenade – a bottle of Chloroform right at Windego’s face. That’ll buy me an extra turn to recover and reposition.   With everyone standing right next to each other, it’s a perfect opportunity to use Rallying Cry on Sebille, where it’s going to heal the most HP. 264 HP, as a matter of fact, putting her right back up to max. Then, as usual, he gives Fane the Think Fast combo.  Fane can’t do much of anything without waking up Windego (except Shackles of Pain, but I don’t intend to give Windego another turn to deal damage to Fane to make it worth it), so he just repositions next to her. He’ll have max AP to play with next turn.  Attendant uses Restoration on Ifan to put out the fire that he’s on, then, likewise, passes its turn.    And Ifan returns the favour with First Aid on Attendant, followed by Encourage on everyone but Fane. With his last two AP, he uses Tactical Retreat to get a different angle of attack on Windego, moving to the beach on the mainland.  And the last one to move is Salem, who positions himself next to Fane and Windego, ready to swipe at her with his claws. Turn 2 Windego spends her turn waking up, just in time to see a very up-close and very angry Fane holding a very large sword.     He uses all of his AP to hit Windego with Battle Stomp, Mosquito Swarm, Shackles of Pain (you know… just in case), and, with his last three AP, All-In, hitting her once and doing 125% of his normal damage.     Sebille approaches and, after a bit of finessing the movement markers to get as much distance out of as little AP as possible, gets close enough to hit Windego with Ruptured Chicken, after using Flesh Sacrifice. This was a bit of a misplay because now Windego has a ton of evasion, when Sebille could have delayed and do Ruptured Chicken after everyone else had gone, but it’s not a big deal.  Salem swings three times, and he actually lands his second and third swings. Good kitty.   There’s not a whole lot that Prince can do from where he is, so, he just gets up a bit closer – putting himself in the burning clouds that Laser Ray had put down and setting himself on fire – so he can breathe fire onto Windego. The intent is to force her to run through dangerous terrain without breathing fire on anyone else… but unfortunately, Salem was just close enough to get hit by the flames.  Attendant moves in and throws a glob of water at Windego, which hits. Despite chickens getting a huge evasion buff in Divinity: Unleashed, that Battle Stomp giving her such a massive evasion debuff is really putting in work.  Ifan has the AP to fire three times, and only the second shot lands.  Turn 3 Windego is an unusually smart AI – she knew not to run thanks to her ruptured ankles, so she stood totally still and let the chicken form run its course. Still, she doesn’t have the chicken’s huge evasion bonus now. She’s not going to survive this turn.  Fane hits her twice…   … and Sebille hits her twice more, taking her out and sending her back to whoever her God King is. : Magisters aren’t the only ones looking for me. But… who is it? And why?Alright, well, after that first turn, this was a pretty easy, one-sided fight. Windego was the reason why the Voidwoken attacked our ship bound for Fort Joy. She had the power to simply tug off her Source collar and, with a little bit of Source magic, she summoned a massive kraken to literally rip our ship in two. And she’s apparently on speaking terms with a god. She’s bound to have some good loot, right?   Hey, that’s my mask! The one that she stole from us at : Ah, my false faces. Not as fair as my true visage, but better than being seen as a monster.With this back in our possession, Fane can transform into any of four playable races of Divinity: Original Sin 2 (there are a number of other races in the setting of Rivellon, but only four are playable). And if I do, I gain each of their traits: humans are good at bartering and gain Encourage; elves can eat body parts for their memories and gain Flesh Sacrifice; lizards are good at being persuasive and gain Breathe Fire; and dwarves are sneaky and gain Petrifying Touch. Fane can access all of these just be putting them on. In exchange, the mask takes up his helmet slot, and it offers absolutely no armour or bonuses. That’s going to be a very hard sell later in the game, but there’s no risk to doing it outside of combat, and his current helmet, the bucket, only offers +1 physical armour and -1 Initiative anyway. For the rest of the loot: an unidentified amulet that I can’t identify because Lohse is our Loremaster (although vendors offer Loremaster services for a cost, so I don’t need one, strictly speaking); a one-handed mace for vendor trash; a Blood Sucker skillbook that’s vendor trash; a rune that I can’t do anything with yet; and new pants for Sebille. And you know what?  I don’t need to rip off more faces now that I have my mask back, but… this is for stealing it in the first place.   Now. There’s a rat that’s been wandering the little islet since before the fight started. Rats can sometimes be a valuable source of information; I wonder if this one has anything worthwhile to add.  : Truth be told, it’s been a very long time since I’ve felt much of anything. : Roses! There’s no finer flora among the flowers! The oils that can be wrung from them make for the finest baths, and I can only aspire to capture one tenth of their beauty upon a canvas! : In that case, I think you would appreciate the blackest of roses. Look deep in the earth to the southeast, where the revolting seeds the rapturous. : What makes these roses in particular so special?: Allow the figure within to guide you, traveller. Now go. Follow the wind.Sounds like a sidequest to me! Something to keep in mind while I’m exploring the island – ‘deep within the earth, to the southeast.’ I’m sure I’ll get there eventually.  It’s a bit hard to see in this screenshot, but there’s a bulging mound of sand just a bit north, at the edge of the islet. Which means there’s treasure to be had, of course.   Man, it’s just another dead guy. The Hollow Marshes are literally crawling with dead guys. I don’t need more dead guys to dig up.  A stiletto; a pearl; and… a bow, but it has a slot for a rune.  … Nah, those numbers aren’t worth it compared to Shadow’s Eye. I’ll be putting off explaining what slots do for the time.  In order to progress to where that treasure chest is buried, I need to dip back onto the mainland for a second to get around a break in the sandbar. And, would you look at that, there’s a whole bunch of dead Magisters waiting for me in the grass. The last time I saw something like this, it meant that there was an ambush of skeletons nearby. I have no reason to believe this isn’t still the case – as long as I don’t head straight south and deeper into the Hollow Marshes, I should be able to dodge whatever trap they have laid out for me. Not that I’m going to. I’m going to explore along the beach, and then I’ll be right back here to trip that trap and fight them for their delicious EXP.  Naturally, though, I’m looting their bodies. And it turns out that this one’s head is a bit loose. Rather than feed it to Sebille, I might as well actually feed it to Fane – maybe he’ll learn some interesting new skills. And for that matter, I’m actually lugging around a whole slew of dead body parts from earlier in the game that I was putting off from eating until I got the mask back.   Let’s dig in! : You’re floating a few inches above the ground. Your friends are impressed. You bask in their hoots and hollers. Your favourite party trick. Oh. That… Sebille really could have benefited from eating that one, actually. Whoops. It’d be fine on Fane if not for the fact that it requires one point in Polymorph to use. Which I could do, but it’s better to focus on maximizing your stats rather than spreading them out thin. I have a handful more body parts to eat, though. : Early memories are overshadowed by a terrifying death – a tempest of teeth, scales, and snarls. You never imagined it would end like this.: Looking around Fort Joy you feel… excited. A new environment to explore, new people to meet, new challenges to overcome. Who knows what could happen here?: You are ever-sodden, ever-sandy. The smell of guts and sea-waste cling to you like a ghost. You sought freedom, the life of a seaman, but you didn’t find it.: You cover your face with your hands. You’ve just heard the news: The elven homelands have been destroyed by Deathfog. It was your Order who did it. How can this be…?Fane learned First Aid from that one. A healing skill and therefore totally useless for him. I have one more body part to eat, but….  I got this from the ship that I met Daeyana on. Is it safe to eat? Well, I’m about to find out. : You curse as the knife lances into your thumb, deflected neatly off one of the rough-skinned spores you and Thews took from the prisoner.: A wet pop behind you. Thews on his knees, his spore cracked and smoking in his hand. Thin sprouts push from beneath his eyelids, his nose, his mouth – his screams choked beneath a single vibrant thistle blooming from his throat. You move to help your friend but stop short. It’s the elf woman, crouching behind Thews with her chains broken. She spits a phrase: ‘Chm’r doran!’: And you are choking, the spore boiling in your hand as gas blinds you. You feel something stir in your chest. Then shift. Then TEAR. I made a bit of progress with this quest upon eating that foot, and I learned a skill called Trigger Spores, which, according to its description, ‘causes all nearby Contamination Spores to explode, dealing damage and releasing a poisonous cloud.’ I currently don’t know anything about any ‘contamination spores’ so this skill is useless at the moment. I guess this means Fane might be locked into using the elven living armour set? Hopefully that’s not a bad thing.   Well, that’s over and done with. Time to move onward!  Just a bit to the east of the group of dead Magisters is what is probably their attack dog. I’m not sure why the dog was spared – maybe the skeletons of the Hollow Marshes like dogs? I mean, who doesn’t?  : Can you tell me what’s happened to your master and his companions? : You… may need to be prepared for the fact that he might not. Ever. : (All three of these bodies are sitting in pools of their own blood.) Sure. He might. But he also might not. : Might! Yes!: The dog’s tail wags frantically.: Yeah! Yeah. Yes. True! Maaaster. Master! Master! Wake up!Well… it turns out that Windego is the reason why the dog, Thulnir, isn’t dead. She’ll probably be fine, if she doesn’t go too far into the marshes.  Continuing my search along the coast, I come across this tiny little outcropping of sand with a pair of trees on it. According to my mini map, this is where the elf’s treasure is buried. I suppose the wood chips are meant to be a hint that something is nearby.  Lo and behold, there’s a big, fat mound of sand between the trees, ready to be excavated.    Another stiletto; a small fire rune; a crafting bible that teaches me how to make shivs and other makeshift weapons; and a medium Earth resistance potion. Not a lot that could be sold for money, but runes will eventually be a powerful thing to have, and I’m all for more runes. That was the thing that we had detoured all this way for: a chest that, honestly, wasn’t carrying as much as I had hoped it was. Still, treasure is treasure, and it’s not like I’m walking away poorer for it.  I might as well keep exploring along the northern coast while I’m here. The game’s not exactly being subtle about this sandbar under the shallows that’ll take me further north.   Eventually, I come across what’s probably an outpost, or maybe a lighthouse, but it’s been torn apart by time and there doesn’t seem to be a way in at the base.  I can see in through its cracked top, and it looks like the tower is permanently suffused with an electrified steam cloud – if I were to enter it, I’d want to make sure that I’m loaded up on air resistance first. Since it exists at all, it’s almost a certainty that that’s what’s going to happen. But there’s no way to enter the tower from the base, like I said, so… later, I guess.    The end of the beach is just past this outpost – and there’s the Magister ship, ready and ripe for the taking. The dock to it must not be very far from where I am, but we’re all deathly afraid of swimming and there’s no other way to access the boat from where I am. Well, at least it’s nice to have confirmation that the ship exists and is a thing that I can get access to. I just have to find the long way around.  Heading all the way back to the dead Magisters just off the beach, there’s only one more path to take, and it’s directly into the Hollow Marshes.  Panning the camera forward, I can count four more undead opponents, ready to jump me the second I try to approach. The last undead fight I had in the Hollow Marshes, though, one of them was a rogue and opened the fight invisible – there might be more for me to fight elsewhere. Nothing to do but to pick a fight!  : Combat Music 1: The Marsh Corridor  Turn 1 This Decomposing Marksman opens the fight with Ricochet on Fane, hitting Prince and Salem with the rebounds, before using a skill called Sky Shot on Fane. Sky Shot adds high ground advantage to your attack, regardless of the actual elevation differences – you could be standing at sea level attacking someone on a cliff, and you’d get the high ground bonus. Sebille goes next, but everyone is standing a far distance away from her. There are four enemies total (that I can see), and they’re all standing at the opposite end of this grassy corridor. She delays her turn so that everyone gets a bit closer.   The Markswoman, currently sitting on the high ground at the opposite end of the corridor, hits Fane with all three Searing Daggers before using Peace of Mind on Swashbuckler 1 right beside her.     Salem is next, and he does what he does: he leaps forward (it costs less AP than running) and gets right up next to the Marksman before swapping places with Fane. Now Fane’s in position to really mess him up, and it cost him no AP to get there. Unfortunately, Salem teleported right back onto the fire that the Searing Daggers put down, and now our kitty’s on fire    Swashbuckler 1, his mind freshly cleared, runs up to Fane and hits Prince with Chloroform. It’s really annoying when enemies use your own tricks against you. Swashbuckler 1 uses the rest of his AP to put himself right in the middle of my party. Fane takes a swing at him, but, you know. I still haven’t drilled any eyeholes into this bucket.   Finally, Swashbuckler 2 steps forward, breaks Fane’s knees, and takes his position behind Swashbuckler 1 in an effort to focus down most of my party. Fane’s not anywhere nearby to help defend.    Luckily, there are more people on my team than on theirs, and most of us get to go one right after the other. Ifan dips his arrowheads into the blood puddle left by one of the dead Magisters before he uses Tactical Approach – sorry, Retreat, to launch himself deep into the grass corridor, beside Fane and the two enemy archers. The goal is to put him on the Markswoman’s high ground. Rather than immediately do that, though, he puts his bloody arrows to good use by breaking Swashbuckler 2’s legs himself. A leg for a leg, and all that.   Thulnir the Magister attack dog is in the fight as well! She’s highlighted in yellow, meaning she’s a neutral party – as long as I don’t hurt her (directly or indirectly), she’ll be on our side of the fight. Maybe because we gave her hope that her master will wake up eventually. She runs right up to Swashbuckler 2 and bites him in the thigh. Dogs love bones, I’m told, and Swashbuckler 2 has a ton of them just out in the open and fully exposed. And she bit him for 71 damage, which is a pretty hefty amount.    After a bit of finagling with angles, Attendant manages to hit both of the Swashbucklers with one Battering Ram, knocking them both down. After, it uses Restoration on Swashbuckler 2, doing around 60 damage right now and another 60 for another two turns.   Fane takes his turn by using Mosquito Swarm on Swashbuckler 2 – remember, if you’re not actively crowd-controlling, always try to focus your targets down one-by-one if you can – before turning around and using Battering Ram on the Marksman. I deliberately put Fane deeper into the corridor than necessary so that he’s standing directly underneath the cliff that the Markswoman is standing on. That way, she can’t target him without climbing down from her high ground.   Sebille takes her delayed turn, and now that Swashbuckler 1 is right in front of her face, she can use Ruptured Chicken without having to spend any extra AP on movement.    Turn 2 Swashbuckler 1 goes first, thanks to Clear Mind. As the chicken, he wants to run as far away from the conflict as possible – it can’t run into the corridor because Attendant is in the way (it can just run past Attendant, but the chicken’s AI doesn’t have any reasoning other than ‘away’), and it can’t run towards the beach because Salem is that way, so it tries to run into the cliff – and it tries to find the deepest cranny in the cliff to hide in, all the while taking damage with every step it takes. Eventually, in its effort to find a safe place to hide, it succumbs to its bleeding tendons, and Swashbuckler 1 is down. Just like that. All it took was one Ruptured Chicken and a bit of lucky positioning, and Sebille Touch-Of-Death’d the guy.     Sebille gets to work controlling the rest of the enemy team: she uses Adrenaline for a quick kick, followed by Tentacle Lash on Swashbuckler 2 to ensure that he doesn’t start swinging that big, heavy axe in a direction I don’t want it to. With her last four AP, she repositions to roughly the center of the fight before lobbing a bottle of Chloroform onto the Marksman. Who goes next and is forced to spend his turn waking up. Salem’s turn is next, but… the fight is fairly well under control and I don’t expect he’d be much help. He passes his turn entirely, guaranteeing six AP for next, although he’s probably just done for the fight.  The Markswoman uses Ricochet on Ifan, which causes the arrow to bounce back onto Fane. Which was the one thing I was specifically hoping to avoid with Fane’s positioning. Honestly, that was well played, I wasn’t ready for that. She ends her turn with one more normal arrow into Ifan.  Prince spends two AP to move a little closer and then gets Fane with the Think Fast combo.   Swashbuckler 2 has the Chicken Claw ability, and he uses it on Thulnir, the poor thing. Afterward, he approaches Prince ever-so-slowly and takes an AoO from Attendant for it, but because he’s Atrophied, he can’t make any other attacks even if he wanted to.    Ifan climbs up to the nearby cliff, right beside the Markswoman, and it’s close enough that he doesn’t have to spend any AP to do it. From his new vantage point, he uses Encourage to get Fane and Sebille, and then he plugs the Marksman at the base of the cliff with Barrage, immediately putting him down to half. Thulnir is next, but she decides she’d rather stand her ground than run as a chicken, which is very atypical of the chicken’s AI behaviour. She passes her turn.   Attendant hits Swashbuckler 2 with its claws, but doesn’t finish him off – he’s still Restoring, and he only has about 17 HP remaining, so that’ll kill him off for me. No sense in wasting the AP. So, instead, Attendant chucks a glob of water at the Marksman. Swashbuckler 2 is as good as dead, so it’s time to shift focus.   Fane climbs the vines beside Ifan and, thanks to Haste, has enough AP to hit the Markswoman with a regular attack, followed by an All In strike. That shaves off about a quarter of her HP. And finally, Salem passes. The fight’s nowhere near him and he wouldn’t contribute enough to be worth putting into the fray.   Turn 3 The Marksman is standing next to a puddle of Ifan’s blood, which is good eatin’ for an archer with the Elemental Arrows spell. One shot into Prince – the one guy wearing the least amount of physical armour – does 102 HP worth of damage, just like that. One arrow with a little bit of blood can hit that hard. And on even footing!   Fane goes next, hitting the Markswoman with Mosquito Swarm and Battle Stomp. Mosquito Swarm was more to heal himself than anything, since skeletons can’t bleed.  The Markswoman probably knows she’s beat: her only way off the cliff is blocked by two men; she’s down to less than half her HP; and she’s been Knocked Down. So, she does her best to be annoying by hitting Fane and Ifan both with a frozen arrow – and getting herself in the blast as well.  Sebille only has three AP, thanks to Adrenaline, so she hits the Marksman with Backstab and takes a break.  As predicted, Swashbuckler 2 immediately succumbs to life and falls to pieces. It’s just the two archers now. Salem is next; he continues to do nothing. His one job is done.  Thulnir, now no longer a chicken and loaded with AP since she didn’t run, charges right up to the Marksman and bites him twice, putting him down to 20 HP. A stiff breeze will take him out now.   Prince could take out the Marksman… but that sounds like effort. Why do work when you can have servants do the work for you? He puts down a blood totem and leaves it at that. But, also, Salem’s been hurting a little bit for a while now – he has been on fire for all three turns so far – so Prince gives him Rallying Cry just to ensure that he doesn’t die before the fight is over.  The blood totem does its job as intended, and with one glob of stuff (probably blood), the Marksman dies his redeath, leaving only the Markswoman.  Shadow’s Eye is a really, really strong early-game weapon, and with just two more bolts, it does that job, and this fight is concluded.   : Her voice: it sounds so familiar somehow…One more fight in the Hollow Marshes concluded, complete with another disembodied voice asking us to step into some glowing water. I mean, it’s generally a good idea for most of my team… but it’d be nice if I could put some faces to these voices.  The only loot these bodies had on them was a bit of cash and a single crafting item. Disappointing, but the fight only lasted three turns and it was kind of a cakewalk, so I guess I can’t be too upset. With this, we’ve cleared out the entrance to the Hollow Marshes. We didn’t need to do this, but this is an RPG, where we’re incentivized to murder everyone for that sweet, sweet EXP. Leave no stone unturned!  Heading south from the fight we just had, we come across the ruins of the stone bridge that Zaleskar’s put himself next to. We still can’t see where it leads, and we don’t have the ups to reach the broken pieces from where we are, but at least we aren’t lost: the bridge makes for a good landmark.  Always a welcoming sight. Unlike the other dead Magisters, this one died all alone – I’m not inclined to think that there’s an ambush lying in wait for me nearby, and it’s more likely that he just got lost from his group and he paid for it.  ‘Great suffering’ lies ahead. I wonder for who. Whenever someone tries to make me suffer, I just bash them with my sword until they stop. Have they tried that? Lying half-obscured in the grass is a shimmering green puddle of some kind of liquid. This is Source – a thing that permeates all life in the world of Rivellon, distilled into a liquid form. Coming into contact with liquid Source will rejuvenate my own Source points and grant me strength for what lies ahead. Also, it looks really neat: it has the same graphical effect as Deathfog in that the sparkles inside the puddle remain stationary, no matter which way you pan the camera. Unfortunately, my collar prevents me from not only using Source, but from attaining it myself. Walking over this puddle would do absolutely nothing for me. However, the same cannot be said for summons, including Salem and Attendant.  In this screenshot, Salem is standing just beyond Prince, and in his pathing to follow Fane, he walks through the Source puddle and absorbs it for himself. In Salem’s character portrait in the corner, you can see a little gem underneath his health bar – this tells me that he has one Source point banked. Salem, by the way, cannot use any Source skills. Once the puddle’s been absorbed, it disappears, and you can’t take from the same puddle a second time. So. That’s good, that the Source, an invaluable resource that can decide the tide of a future battle, just went to my cat, who cannot use it and will likely die in the near future.  Anyway, there are some pigs nearby that are on fire, and yet are immune to fire damage. Fancy that.  : Put it out! Put it out! Put it ouuuuuuuuuuut! : Why… this isn’t fire! This is necrofire! You must have been burning for ages! : How did a lowly pig come to be so damned as to be set on an undying fire? : I’m not sure if I have any spells that can be of any use, but if I’m going to do anything at all, I need you to stay calm. : I’ve survived a kraken attack; I escaped the Fort Joy prison; and I’ve made it this far into the Hollow Marshes. I have a knack for doing things.: Persuasion Success! : Believe me when I say that I understand how it feels to be punished for something you’ve atoned for a long time ago. If you want to be saved, you need to trust me.: Persuasion Success! : How did this happen to you? Who could have put a curse of undying hellfire on a poor pig?: … It was Braccus Rex, wasn’t it.: It is the d-doing of Braccus Rex! K-k-k-kings will always come to see themselves as gods. I should n-n-never have spoken ill of him! : I was imprisoned for many eons for much the same reason. I can respect the sort of bravery it takes to stand up to someone bigger than you.: P-p-praise means nothing! I would reject it if it meant a chance to t-turn back the clock and worship Braccus Rex as he demanded. B-bring it to an end. I will trust you in this. P-p-please.There’s more than one pig in this area, and they’re all on fire with the same necrofire. Necrofire is basically fire, but cursed (and it’s possible to have a blessed fire, likewise); it can’t be put out with water or removed with other statuses, such as Chilled or Frozen. There is no way to deal with Necrofire as of yet, but the pigs are suffering in undying, eternal torment as we speak. An easy solution to this problem is to just kill them. What do you think? Should we kill the pigs and end their torment?  The pigs all surround some kind of encampment, and it looks like it’s been recently lived in: there’s crates used as tables for dishware and fresh food left lying around, waiting to be eaten. Barrels of oil and poison dot the place, and thick puddles of oil are difficult to avoid walking through. Hopefully the pigs don’t walk through the oil; their necrofire would set it all off, and the explosions would result in more necrofire.  Sitting in the center of the village is an ornate chest, just… in the middle of the road, waiting for someone to open it. That’s very definitely a trap if I’ve ever seen one. There was a less ornate chest sitting in the field with the heads on the pikes, and that place exploded as soon as I tried to open it. So, hell yeah, let’s open it.  … No explosions, no traps, no encounters. Interesting. The loot’s alright, I guess. 30bux; a Vitality potion; and a physical armour potion. Nothing to be excited about.  There’s a set of overgrown ivy vines leading me up to the broken bridge. It may be a bit difficult to see in this screenshot, but this section of the bridge is still intact, and there’s an offshoot leading north into what looks like another fortress that I can reach from here.  There are more puddles of Source strewn about to go with the massive quantity of spilt oil and ooze, and to my south is yet another beached ship skeleton. We’re a massive distance into the swamp; how the hell did a ship get stuck this far into the mainland? It’s been here for long enough that trees have fully grown through its carcass; how it the wood still sturdy enough to support a person?   Might as well loot the place. It’s not like the pigs are using anything here. The books found here are good for learning more crafting recipes, ranging from how to create magical pixie dust (seriously) to how to pull a feather from a chicken and saying you’ve invented the quill. There was a recent discussion in the thread about how potent crafting is in this game. The answer is that crafting is mostly good for creating scrolls; food (if you’re playing with Five Star Diner, and only in Divinity: Unleashed, and even then, eating food is pretty weak compared to just chugging a potion); grenades sometimes; lockpicks; and an item that we’ll see much later in the game. There are few and far opportunities to do something as useful and cool as combining boots and nails for something easy and practical. Crafting is fairly mundane because, in Divinity: Original Sin 1, Crafting was overpowered as hell. No joke: in one of my run-throughs with my closest friend, he loaded himself with as much Crafting and Blacksmithing as he could, and he took a regular dinner knife and turned it into a rapier with stats that were more than twice as good as what I had equipped at the time. With a bit of persistence and min/maxing, you could break the game over your knee with Crafting in that you could make equipment that was far stronger than any endgame drop, and if you didn’t want to use it, you could sell it for thousands of coins. So yeah, none of that in this game. Crafting is comparatively boring in D:OS2.  One of the chests in this hideout has a whole lot more money; an empty canister, good for making grenades; and… a pretty nice magician’s hat.  It gives +1 to Pyrokinetic. Would this go well on Prince?  Oh wow, it’s essentially split down the middle. They are both 100% comparable for Prince. … I guess I’ll stick with the helmet he has right now. Being a magician, and with the rest of his clothing currently being magician-focused, his magic armour is quite low, so he could use the physical armour that his current helmet provides. And thanks to Pet Pal, Attendant is nerfed pretty harshly; Prince could use more points in Summoning to help it out. Besides, his Pyrokinetic score is already higher than his Summoning score.   One final chest, in what appears to be this ship’s crow’s nest. More money; a two-handed mace that’s significantly worse than Scumkiller; more crafting recipes; and better sandals for Prince.  Looking further ahead, the Hollow Marshes opens up into a wider pit, surrounded on all sides with high ground and rotten, wooden platforms. My game sense tells me that there’s pretty good odds that there’s a fight right around here.  Heading up the southward ramp takes us back to the grassy elevated groves from a few updates ago – and Salem helps himself to yet more spilt Source. From my wandering around the area, Salem’s absorbed enough Source to max himself out, making him by far the most powerful Sourcerer in my team. If only he had a way to use it.  A short trek southward, and we’re back where we were two updates ago: the dilapidated shack that held the fight with the limitless waves of Source grubs that kept coming at me over and over.  This seems to be as good a place as any to wrap it up! We’ve essentially gone in a huge circle, covering about the first half of the Hollow Marshes and clearing it out of any baddies and all of its treasures. We have a few options available to us for what to do next: Do we continue exploring the Hollow Marshes? Or do we climb the vines and enter that fortress at the end of the bridge? Or do we stop delaying and go to the Seekers and their hideout? Do we kill the pigs? Also, do we want to swap anyone out? Let me know soon! Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 02:17 on May 21, 2021 |
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May 21, 2021 02:03
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Go to the Seekers. I dunno if it'll happen, but it'd be nice if advancing the plot a bit would get the source collars off. Ignore the pigs until you can get rid of the necrofire properly. Swap Ifan and Sebille for Lohse and Beast or whatever Dwarf-guy was called.
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May 21, 2021 08:20
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Continue exploring, we should see everything there is to see before we decide where to go next. Don't kill the pigs, there's probably a better reward for saving them. Our current party setup seems to be doing just fine.
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May 21, 2021 13:20
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Schwartzcough posted:Go to the Seekers. I dunno if it'll happen, but it'd be nice if advancing the plot a bit would get the source collars off. I'm seconding all of this.
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May 21, 2021 17:16
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Black Robe posted:Continue exploring, we should see everything there is to see before we decide where to go next. These are my votes too.
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May 21, 2021 18:30
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Keep exploring this area, and ignore the poor pigs for now. No point in ending their pitiful lives when we haven't tried something they didn't consider. Swap Ifan for Lohse. You seem to be doing fine with Red Prince and Sebille, but your lack of curative magic seems to be making your battles more difficult than they need to be.
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May 21, 2021 19:13
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Huh. To the extent I thought about the sorceress, I'd assume we'd figure out what's up with her before killing her.
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May 21, 2021 20:45
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Olive Branch posted:Keep exploring this area, and ignore the poor pigs for now. No point in ending their pitiful lives when we haven't tried something they didn't consider. I'll second this.
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May 21, 2021 21:15
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Going by the consensus in the thread, for this next update, we have three things to do: first, we will spare the pigs and leave them to their undying torment and eternal punishment for daring to defy Braccus Rex. Seems like the humanitarian thing to do! The second is to keep exploring the Hollow Marshes rather than make a beeline straight for the Seekers hideout. There’s a lot of swamp to cover still and, this being a RPG, the story can wait until we’re good and ready to progress with it. And the third was to swap Ifan with Lohse. There was a push to swap Beast with Sebille as well, but it was tied with otherwise keeping the party as-is. And… well, I don’t normally like influencing the vote like this, but, I’m glad it didn’t. I don’t like Beast. I don’t like his character, his storyline, or the playstyle I’ve given him (although that’s squarely on me, to be fair). So. That’s out there now. The first order of business, though, is to swap Ifan for Lohse. Wayfarers are difficult to keep alive because Finesse gear tries to strike a balance between physical and magical armour and winds up sucking at both, and they aren’t as mobile as rogues like Sebille. But in exchange, their damage output is nutty and their elemental arrows mean they can control a person and/or the environment effortlessly, once they find their perch. Still, I’d like to have my healer back, so, fair trade, if you ask me. Except…  This is where Lohse is supposed to be, but she’s not here. Two updates ago, we had just finished the fight with the grubs in the Hollow Marshes before we voted to swap Lohse for Ifan. And when we did…  She walked off towards the east. The Fort Joy ghetto was to the west of that position.    I look all over the ghetto – I check the shanty town, Griff’s kitchen, and Saheila’s cave – but Lohse isn’t anywhere to be seen. She just straight-up isn’t here. Hand to God, this was not a turn that I had expected, nor was I prepared for it. I can’t very well swap out Ifan for Lohse if Lohse isn’t anywhere to be found, and I’m certainly not about to boot him out and replace him with nobody. So… I guess what I’m doing is staying with the team that I have for now. I didn’t expect it to turn out this way! And while skills like Rallying Cry and First Aid are useful healing skills, neither of them are as potent as Restoration. Looks like Attendant is going to have to keep up his work as the party’s healer for the time being – at least until we can find out where Lohse disappeared to.  Anyway, after running to the ghetto and back, our next destination is: nowhere in particular. We voted to continue exploring the Hollow Marshes, and that is what we will do.  I mentioned towards the end of the previous update that the eastern side of the pigs opened into a large field with lots of high grounds and open edges. Odds are pretty good that there’s a fight here, just beyond this barrel next to Ifan. The Hollow Marshes aren’t especially open-ended, despite it being a swamp: there are lots of cliffs surrounding the swap to the south and there’s that giant fortress to the north. We had come from Fort Joy, which is to the west, meaning, if we want to explore the swamp, we’re being funnelled to the east, directly into this open field. There’s a set of vines growing on another skeletal ship right next to me, giving me the highest ground in the area right off the bat. I can use that to survey what’s ahead.     All of the high grounds surrounding the field are manmade and have either ladders or vines growing down them for quick and easy access – or a ramp, for slower-but-arguably-easier access. To the very farthest east of the arena is this cute and friendly fella that you see in the last screenshot. Look at him, he’s just so huggable, with those pointed claws; serrated antenna; unflinching, lipless grin; and his… four eyes? Six? Ten? There’s definitely at least four eyes on his head. This strapping, handsome young thing is called the Voidwoken Deep-Dweller, one of the major bosses of Act One. It has a reputation among players for being one of the hardest fights in the game – when you meet it, you’re at just the right, awkward sweet-spot where you’re beginning to understand the mechanics of the system of the game and how to utilize/manipulate/abuse them, but the Deep-Dweller is a surprise pop-quiz that’s going to test everything that you know so far and you’re not going to have enough strength, skills, or stats to utilize what you know as comfortably as you have been. All that to say: it’s not what I would call a fair fight… but the game openly and brazenly assumes that you know how to fight dirty, too. It’s hard, even if you know what you’re doing, but it’s far from impossible. First thing’s first: keeping your party grouped together is just you asking to be crowd-controlled, so the best move to open the fight is to split everyone up.  I want Sebille to move onto this platform with the barrel, but the only way onto it is via the ramp in the back, and that’s well within the Deep-Dweller’s eyesight, even with Sebille’s improved sneaking. So, the solution here is to climb onto the platform beside it, and then use Cloak And Dagger to jump onto the platform that I want.    This still isn’t ideal, though, since Sebille is within the red cone and will be spotted as soon as the invisibility that Cloak And Dagger gives her wears off. So I want to move her to the back of the platform, where the other two barrels are, and outside of the Deep-Dweller’s line of sight.  It’s like I’m not even there. Ifan’s next – as the Wayfarer, he wants to always have the high ground, if he can help it, and the game is ‘generous’ enough to give me the highest of grounds for this fight right off the bat (probably as a concession to make the fight easier, since they know it’s hard as hell). So, he doesn’t have to move very far – he just needs to tuck himself into the corner, as far away from the Deep-Dweller as he can, without interrupting his view of the battlefield. Right next to the vines ought to be a good enough spot.  Prince is a bit tougher to decide: as the magician, he should generally be fine anywhere, and his role will be more about support and control than straight-up offense. Keeping him on the high ground will guarantee that he always has positional advantage (at least versus opponents beneath the platform he’s on), while keeping him within eyesight of Fane and Ifan will ensure that he’s close enough to them to provide whatever support he can, whether it’s stat buffs or healing. And that he always has his two meat shields nearby. Having them sneak will give them a free action at the start of the fight, in exchange for being put last in the fight’s turn order – but only if they aren’t spotted, so, it’s more of a ‘but it could, so why not’ move than anything.  And finally, Fane, being the tankiest one in the group, is just going to run straight into the Deep-Dwellers field of vision and start waving his arms. Someone needs to open the fight somehow. Let’s do this, you ugly bastard.    : Combat Music 1: Boss Battle: The Voidwoken Deep-DwellerTurn 1 The game knows how difficult this fight is and does you the favour of autosaving as soon as it starts – that way, when you inevitably die, you won’t lose that much progress. There are six enemies, including the Deep-Dweller, and the fight opens with a Marksman that spawned up on the top platform with me running to a safe distance and shooting an arrow into Ifan’s hip.   It’s Salem’s turn, but Sebille gets a free action, since she isn’t technically in the fight. A Cryomancer spawned in front of Sebille and he’s going to go after Salem does – but not if Sebille knocks him out with a bottle of Chloroform first.   Salem takes his turn by jumping up right next to the now-sleeping Cryomancer, but he doesn’t attack – that would wake him up. Instead, Salem’s just going to sit there and wait. The Cryomancer’s turn is next, and, predictably, he spends it waking up.     Ifan heals himself and undoes the Crippled he was just given with First Aid; then, he uses Encourage, hitting everyone but Salem and Sebille and giving them all stat boosts; and then, there’s a Swashbuckler standing in the pit next to all of the high grounds: Ifan hits him with a boulder to Slow him down and guarantee that he won’t be a huge threat until at least the next turn.  An Aeromancer spawned next to Fane and manages to run past him without triggering his AoO because he’s standing too close to the vines, and AoO has a hard time activating when a target is on a different elevation. She hits Prince with Vacuum Touch – a spell that does air damage over time and applies Silenced for one turn, which is a serious problem for Prince.   Attendant is next: it helps out Ifan’s efforts by using Restoration on the Swashbuckler, and then it runs to help its master by hitting the Aeromancer with Battering Ram.     The Deep-Dweller has its turn, and, as is proper, opens it with a load of shittalking. The fact that it has five undead allies would be more than enough, but it itself is extremely strong. There are two heavily prevalent reasons why the Voidwoken Deep-Dweller is such a powerful adversary: the first is that it has access to a self-teleportation spell called Void Glide. Self-teleporting is already an incredibly useful skill, but Void Glide has a shorter cooldown than most (or, at least, it seems like it). The Divinity: Unleashed mod nerfed all teleportation skills, self or targeted, and Void Glide was no exception, making this fight marginally easier. The second thing is that Deep-Dweller is our first encounter with the Cursed status. Cursed applies debuffs to a character’s dodging, accuracy, and resistances, making them feeble and more spongy towards all forms of damage – but that’s only half of what makes it so awful. Similar to applying electricity to water to make it electrified, you can apply Cursed to surfaces to change their passive effects when you step onto them. Every Cursed surface does something different, and if a Cursed character walks over a surface, that surface will likewise become Cursed. If, for example, the Aeromancer made Prince bleed, and the Deep-Dweller then Cursed Prince, he would then pass the curse onto his own puddle of blood, which could give him a much nastier status effect than the Curse by itself can provide. On top of all of that, the Deep-Dweller also Curses people and objects just by standing near them. When it used Void Glide on the ground, it Cursed the barrels it landed next to. Fighting it directly is a risky move because of this. Curse is one of the most devastating statuses in this game, in a game already loaded with really nasty status effects. And it’s extraordinarily difficult to combat once it’s applied.   Prince doesn’t have a lot of options thanks to his Silenced, so he uses Battle Stomp on the two enemies beside him – and he whiffs on the Marksman, of course – and then he retreats back to the far edge of the platform to wait out his statuses. Silenced will wear off immediately, but Cursed, Suffocation, and Shocked will linger for another turn.    Swashbuckler 1 gets into the party by climbing the vines next to Fane, making his way to the topmost platform, and then using Whirlwind to hit Fane and Attendant before approaching Ifan. Two of my squishiest dudes are up there and that Swashbuckler is holding a very large axe; I need him gone, now.    Fane is holding some scrolls that can help him with handling the group of enemies on this platform, including a Teleportation scroll, but it’d cost him all of his AP to use it. So, instead, he moves in close; uses a Blinding Radiance scroll to at least try and prevent the Swashbuckler from doing any serious damage by blinding him (he’s a skeleton and thus does not have eyes; just go with it); and then he uses his Fortify scroll to give Prince a crapload of physical armour and to cure his Shocked.   Swashbuckler 2 manages to climb the vines and have enough AP left over to hit Ifan with Tentacle Lash. Using First Aid on himself was a bit pre-emptive; now he has to go through a turn without his crossbow.     Since Sebille joined the fight late, her turn was shuffled to the end of the order, and she takes it now. And she does what she does best: she leaps forward with Backlash; uses Flesh Sacrifice for a quick boost; and then hits the Cryomancer with Ruptured Chicken. Even if this doesn’t kill him, he’s at least good and controlled for another turn.   Turn 2 The Marksman is forced to reposition so that Fane’s radiance isn’t in his eyes, and then he hits Attendant and Fane with Ricochet, followed by Fossil Strike – which causes some friendly fire on the Aeromancer. Sebille delays her turn.   The Cryomancer, as a chicken, does its level best to run away from Sebille and Salem, nearly taking itself out in the process – he has just 25 HP remaining. Which –   – is just enough for Salem to get the killing blow after two paw swipes. It’s maybe not as impressive as killing a man in a full suit of armour like he could have two updates ago, but all the same, a kill is a kill!    The Aeromancer is surrounded; Slowed; and Blind. He wants to get away from Fane, but he wants to keep the high ground, so he runs into the platform and takes two AoOs for it. Once he’s comfortably far enough way, he performs a rain dance, soaking the entire platform. That’s not good – one lightning bolt and everyone up there is Stunned.    Ifan is Atrophied and he just used both First Aid and Fossil Strike, so he can’t do any actual damage. He instead uses Tactical Retreat onto the platform with Sebille, and then he uses Shadow Eye’s Chameleon Skin to hide from the Deep-Dweller.  The Deep-Dweller doesn’t have a lot of options – it just used Electric Discharge and Void Glide, and it can’t climb ladders or vines, so it does the one thing it can do: an attack called Void Shard, which, as far as I can tell, is similar to Attendant’s nameless long-range attack, in that the Deep-Dweller throws a glob of something at a target. Anyway, it hits Fane for 84 damage, so it doesn’t exactly tickle.   Attendant keeps the pressure up on the Aeromancer with the long-ranged attack, and then maneuvers right beside him, forcing him to move next turn.   Swashbuckler 1 and Prince trade blows with one-another. Which is kind of annoying because he’s still within Fane’s radiance, meaning that attack probably had something like a 30% chance of landing    Prince puts down a totem and then uses the sudden increase of allies within his vicinity to give himself a buffed Rallying Cry, putting his HP from ¼ near death to ¼ near full. With his last two AP, he gives Fane the Think Fast combo.  The totem decides to target Swashbuckler 2. There was a 50/50 chance it could target someone I was focusing on (the Aeromancer or Swashbuckler 1) and it came up tails. Sometimes, it be like that.   Swashbuckler 2, still Slowed from the earlier Fossil Strike, labours his way towards Prince and attempts to strike him with Crippling Blow, but whiffs thanks to Fane’s Blinding Radiance. Good. If that also hit despite him being Blind, I would have been tight.    Fane uses his Teleportation scroll to move Swashbuckler 1 off the platform, throwing him onto the Deep-Dweller, who, itself, was standing near an oil barrel, coating them both in the stuff and making them both Slow. Tooting my own horn a bit, but we in the business call that a ‘good move.’ With Fane’s last two AP, he uses Battle Stomp on the Aeromancer, which also clears up a bit of the water his rain put down. That’ll hamper whatever plan he had in mind.   Sebille uses Cloak And Dagger to move herself to the base of the vines leading to the high platform, but she can’t climb it just yet – Fane’s Radiance has worn off and she’ll be spotted as soon as she does. She passes her turn, saving two AP for next.   Turn 3 The Marksman uses Pin Down on Fane, but Haste counters it – Fane isn’t Crippled, but he also isn’t Hasted anymore. The Marksman then fires a Shocking Arrow onto Prince, which electrifies the water they’re standing on, doing additional damage to Fane as well and putting him down to near-death.   Fane tries to mitigate that a bit by using Mosquito Swarm on the Aeromancer, followed by Battering Ram. It was perhaps a bit of a misplay, since the Aeromancer has already been Knocked Down, but this at least gets Fane away from Swashbuckler 1 and the Marksman, and it provides some additional pressure on the Aeromancer.  The Aeromancer only has three AP to use – and he uses all three to teleport Fane back onto the electrified water, moving him back to where he started and Stunning him. Well played, honestly, that was a good move.      Sebille, as usual, has a rather busy turn: she climbs the vines right in front of her and, with her sudden high ground giving her a massive boost to her range, goes for the three-pointer with the Chloroform on the Deep-Dweller, and she nets it. After repositioning a bit, she hits Swashbuckler 2 with Tentacle Lash, forcing him to drop his axe. And finally, after a shot of Adrenaline, she throws a flask of poison onto Fane, giving him some much-needed healing. The Deep-Dweller’s turn is next, but he’s asleep. The longer he’s controlled, the better – I very much do not want that thing moving around, if I can help it.  The totem fires on Swashbuckler 2, and whiffs at point-blank, of course.    Swashbuckler 1, despite being Slowed, has enough AP to reposition, throw a Firestorm Grenade onto Prince and his totem, and then reposition again, a little closer.   Salem’s turn is next, but his utility is about used up at the moment – so he leaps straight at the Deep-Dweller and claws at it once, doing a solid 11 HP. It’s a suicide mission, but it’s not like cats only have the one life to spend.     Swashbuckler 2 – surrounded, on fire, his arms broken – retreats down the vines behind Sebille, taking an AoO from Prince, Attendant, and Sebille for it. And then he has the gall to turn around and threaten everyone he just ran away from.    I make a big misplay here: I use Barrage on Swashbuckler 2, and then I use Elemental Arrowheads on a puddle of blood directly behind Ifan. It was put there when Sebille used Flesh Sacrifice on herself. Barrage didn’t kill Swashbuckler 2 and the fire wasn’t going to be enough to take him out for good. If I had used Elemental Arrowheads first, it would definitely would have been enough, and Ifan would have had two AP remaining to fire on either the Aeromancer or on the Deep-Dweller. It is what it is, though, and Swashbuckler 2 is downed either way.   Attendant heals its master Prince with Restoration, and then turns around and claws at the Aeromancer once. Take that!   Prince lays down another totem on the blood that – actually, I forget who’s blood that is. Anyway, there’s blood up there, so he puts down a blood totem before casting Ignition and setting the Marksman on fire. The Aeromancer was wet and escaped the flames – for now.  The blood totem opens fire on Swashbuckler 1, which is good and cool and definitely what I wanted    Turn 4 The Marksman uses Tactical Retreat to get out of the corner, and then fires an arrow at Fane. It’s just barely not enough to kill him…  … but the fire he’s standing on is. Comeback Kid doesn’t trigger because of some very specific rules-lawyering in the game: Comeback Kid specifically says that it triggers “if an enemy lands a fatal blow.” Fane died from the fire he was on, not from a strike from his enemy. So, that’s a bummer. Also, I’d like to correct something I said a few updates ago: remember when Fane used Play Dead, which caused Salem to go Mad? I mistakenly said that that happened because of some changes that Divinity: Unleashed made to summons, that summons go Mad instead of disappearing once their summoner dies. What the mod actually does is they go Mad if their summoner isn’t in the fight with them – this way, you can’t just summon a guy, have him go into battle, and have him fight the fight without bringing any risk to the summoner. That’s a cheese tactic in the base game, and since it only costs a bit of time to summon again, you could, theoretically, just beat the entire game by summoning dudes and having them march into fights repeatedly without putting your player character in any personal jeopardy. Anyway, all this to say that Salem is un-summoned as soon as Fane died from the fire.   The Aeromancer, now modestly free of any major physical threats, turns around, takes an AoO from Attendant, and zaps Prince with Electric Discharge.  Sebille only has three AP to work with, but that’s just enough: she throws a Love Grenade onto the Deep-Dweller. Despite being a boss, the Deep-Dweller is vulnerable to Charmed. Charmed has any enemies afflicted with it become allies for a set number of turns: they’ll attack other enemies and they’ll heal/buff you, if they can. This is obviously an incredibly powerful status because not only are the enemies losing a player, but you’re gaining one as well. The Love Grenade in particular is especially powerful because it can hit more than one enemy at once – there’s a skill that summoners can learn later that does the same thing, but only one target at a time. The Divinity: Unleashed mod nerfed Charmed, but it was a bit creative about it: similar to how enemies no longer instantly become Frozen or Petrified, anyone hit with Charmed is first placed under a status called Succumbing To Charmed. While under this status, if the target doesn’t take any damage until after their next turn, then they become fully Charmed. Also, in the base game, you could wail on a Charmed target and they’d love you through all of the pain and punishment you give them; in Divinity: Unleashed, if the Charmed target takes any friendly fire at all (as in, in this case, damage from Sebille or anyone on her team), Charmed will wear off. Which kind of makes sense, if you think about it. To summarize: if Deep-Dweller doesn’t take any damage this turn, it’ll be on my side for another two, provided I do not damage it directly.   Deep-Dweller fires an Electric Discharge at Ifan, but the dude sidesteps a lightning bolt, which is hella impressive. But he couldn’t sidestep the Curse right after, unfortunately. And just like that: Deep-Dweller is on my side for the next two turns.  The blood totem fires a glob at Swashbuckler 1 again. You keep at it, buddy.    Swashbuckler 1 arduously climbs the vines; uses Blitz Attack on Prince and his blood totem, destroying the totem; and then heads right back to where he started. I guess he’s subscribing to a hit-and-run strategy.    Ifan currently has the lower ground compared to the Aeromancer and the Marksman, but Shadow’s Eye plus Bloody Arrows (plus a lucky crit) are more than enough to take down the Aeromancer. And with his last two AP, he Cripples the Marksman as well.   Attendant throws a glob of water at Swashbuckler 1 because he has less magic armour than the Marksman and it would do more damage, but it misses a 92% chance to hit. XCOM has nothing on this game.   Prince is moving last this turn, which is perfect timing to resurrect Fane and put down another fire turret to replace the one that Swashbuckler 1 broke.  It immediately opens fire (huhuhuh) on the Marksman.     : That voice again. Why does it keep speaking to me…?Similar to the last two fights with undead enemies we’ve had in this swamp, we’re given a puddle of Blessed water to heal ourselves in – and the disembodied voice tried to help us out further by putting down a puddle of poison for Fane, but it touched the fire that Prince had put down, and it winds up detonating instead. Oh well, it’s the thought that counts.   Turn 5 The Marksman takes aim at Ifan, which I’m thankful for since he’s not targeting Fane, and ensures that he’s not about to go anywhere with Pin Down and Fossil Strike. It’d be a shame if he were to use Tactical Retreat….   Sebille picks up on the Disembodied Voice’s slack and puts down her last poison flask on Fane before using Backlash on the Marksman.    The Deep-Dweller, fighting for us on this turn and the next, uses Void Glide to get a better angle of attack, and then Void Shard on Swashbuckler 1. It’s nice when one of the avatars of the unknowable is fighting for you. The fire totem’s turn is next, but the poison puddle that the voice put down had poisoned it, and it perished from that this turn. It’s made of… stones, I think. Stones that are made of fire. How did it get poisoned???   Swashbuckler 1 uses every last AP that he has to wade through a puddle of oil and traverse the entire battlefield to get behind Ifan. Which, like, I’m not okay with. It’d be great if he could piss off.   Unfortunately, Tactical Retreat needs one more turn to come off cooldown. Ifan uses First Aid on himself, which at least clears his Crippled, but he’s still in immediate danger and there’s no way off this platform without going past the Swashbuckler. He fires a knockdown arrow on him (which has a great sound effect – it sounds cartoonish, like there’s a boxing mitt on the end of his arrow), so that’ll at least cost the Swashbuckler some extra AP to do anything.   Attendant is next, and Restoration is off cooldown, so he gives Ifan a bit of extra juice. I’m confident that if I can’t get him out of there, he can at least survive one more turn. Attendant uses the remainder of its AP to wallop the Marksman twice, putting him to about a fifth of his HP remaining.    Prince does the same trick as before: a totem first, and then Rallying Cry on himself for a bigger boost, lifting him back up to half. He has one AP remaining, which isn’t enough for a Think Fast combo, but he can at least give Fane Haste. It’s Think Fast, but without thinking. Just run headfirst into the fight, what could go wrong?  The totem does its work on the Marksman.   Fane uses his turn summoning Salem back, and then he uses Mosquito Swarm on the Marksman. If he attempts to move on his turn, he’s guaranteed to bite it. He has one AP remaining, but he doesn’t go anywhere – Salem’s about to teleport him and it’d save him more AP to let his cat do the work.   And that’s exactly what Salem does. Teleporting Fane put Salem into the poison, though, so he repositions into the holy water to heal himself.   Turn 6 That’s exactly what the Marksman tries to do, and a prompt AoO from Attendant and Sebille puts an end to his chicanery. It’s down to just Swashbuckler 1 and the Deep-Dweller.    Chloroform and Cloak And Dagger are both off cooldown for Sebille. Despite her high-ground advantage, Swashbuckler 1 is just out of her range, so she leaps down and gets closer before putting him to sleep. Now Ifan isn’t being threatened at all.   The Deep-Dweller, still on my side, talks some mad poo poo (presumably at the Swashbuckler as he is my BFF for the next four seconds) and then approaches the Swashbuckler menacingly, but I guess the Deep-Dweller doesn’t have very good movement speed, because once it gets into position, it just glowers menacingly at him because he’s out of AP. Friendship ending with Deep-Dweller; now I am my own best friend.    Salem leaps from his perch and approaches Swashbuckler 1 from behind, getting in another swipe. The cat has better things to do than just wade around in some holy water!      Ifan could run away… and he will. Tactical Retreat only costs 1 AP, weirdly enough. But first, there’s some real potential to wreck some havoc here. He throws down a Fossil Strike onto the Deep-Dweller, and then he fires a Fire Arrow onto the poison barrel right next to the oil spill, igniting them both. That’s a whole lot of fire that the Deep-Dweller’s going to need to wade through if it wants to fight anyone. After that, with his job done, Ifan  Attendant’s also not doing much good just standing up there, so it uses every last AP it has saved up to charge straight at Swashbuckler 1 and the Deep-Dweller.   Prince completes the other half of the Think Fast combo on Fane and then puts down an oily totem where Ifan was standing.  Which immediately opens fire on the Deep-Dweller.    Fane caps the turn by running up close to the last two enemies remaining and using Battle Stomp on the Swashbuckler (I don’t expect the Swashbuckler to be doing much running, so Knocked Down is worth more to me than the fire), and ending with a Whirlwind that hits both targets. Turn 7 Sebille is first, but she delays.   The Deep-Dweller doesn’t fall for my master plan (surprised_pikachu.png) and instead uses Electric Discharge on Fane, followed by Curse. Electric Discharge would have done much more damage if he had used Curse first, but I’m not going to complain.    Fane uses Mosquito Swarm on the Deep-Dweller – it may be a horrible beast from an unimaginable hellworld beyond my comprehension, but it bleeds just as well as anything else made of flesh – and then, just in case either of them try anything funny, he uses Shackles Of Pain on Swashbuckler 1 before chugging a poison potion.    So, instead, Swashbuckler 1 uses All In… on Salem. The cat. I mean, he kills the hell out of the cat, so he’s got that going for him. Satisfied that he’s won the war, Swashbuckler 1 attempts to retreat, taking an AoO from Fane (which crits) and Attendant for it.  The oil totem takes another shot at the Deep-Dweller.    Ifan Encourages everyone but Fane and Attendant before plugging Swashbuckler 1 with two arrows, taking him out. By the way, if you’re curious: Swashbuckler 1 absolutely should have seen Sebille, no matter how clever her sneaking disguise is, but Cloak And Dagger made her invisible, and invisibility never reveals your hiding spot, no matter how close the enemy is to you.   There’s just the Deep-Dweller remaining in this long, drawn-out boss fight. Attendant can’t kill it this turn, but it can help the others ensure victory. After throwing a glob of water at the beast, Attendant uses Battering Ram on it, taking fire damage for every tick it travels. Attendant knocks down the Deep-Dweller successfully, at the cost of its own life. Rest in peace, hero.  Prince is obviously a bit upset about it, but all the same, he puts down another oil totem and takes some time off to grieve.  Which fires on the Deep-Dweller immediately.      Sebille can end this fight right here and now, but it’s going to hurt. Thanks to Mosquito Swarm, the Deep-Dweller is bleeding, and its blood is Cursed and it will Curse any other surface it touches, including the fire from Ifan’s arrow. Necrofire doesn’t do more damage, but it can’t be put out, and you need to wait for the flames to die off on their own. When Sebille wades through it, she’s put on Necrofire herself. But that’s alright: she’s in position to use Adrenaline followed by the Ruptured Chicken combo. The Deep-Dweller is on fire; it’s bleeding; and now it’s a chicken and its tendons have been ripped out. It’s not going to survive another turn.   Turn 8 Technically, Sebille moves first, but whatever, it’s not important. The Deep-Dweller attempts to run from Sebille and away from the fire, heading east, back towards where it came from. After a few steps, it succumbs to its status effects, and that’s the last target in this fight down. And I only used one Resurrect scroll! Make no mistake, though: I may have made that look easy, but it actually took me three hours, and that was the winning run I got. The primary reason why I won that fight was because of my positioning at the beginning; pulling everyone apart and giving them their own starting positions gives them their own advantages while also ensuring that they can’t be crowd controlled. Positioning is huge in this game. Never forget that.  After the gang pulls back together and a quick round of healing (particularly on Sir Lora, who took a ton of environmental damage that fight, but managed to tough it out) and bringing Salem back from the Hall of Echoes, we’re ready to move on from this harrowing fight scene. But not after we loot everyone clean, of course.  Most of the corpses have at least something on them – money, grenades, arrows, and wares – but the real prize is on the boss, the Deep-Dweller. 118 coins; pearls; and a Peace Of Mind skillbook, all good for money. A ring with +1 Summoning, which would go great on Prince; some heavy pants that require a point in Loremaster to ID; a unique Amulet called the ‘Amulet of the Deep’ that gives +1 Constitution and immunity to stunned, and it has a slot; and a fire staff, also requiring an ID. Lohse was our Loremaster of the group, so the pants and the staff will have to go unidentified for the time being, either until we find her or we go back to the ghetto and have a vendor ID them for us.  Heading back up to the top platform, where the holy water was put down, to resummon Attendant, and the family’s back together and ready for their next adventure.  Standing at the north-eastern passage of the battlefield (the only way forward) is a rat that watched the whole thing. Surely it’s filled with adrenaline and excitement at having witnessed such a spectacle and triumph of the human spirit. : What’s up with you? You look terrified. What a chicken! Bok! Bok! Chicken! Here chicken! You make me sick.Wow. Okay. Before the fight began, the Deep-Dweller was perched on the cliff to my immediate south, sitting in front of a statue of some old dude. Maybe that’s a Waypoint? Maybe the Deep-Dweller was trying to protect it? I should take a closer look.   A poison arrow and an amulet that gives some magic armour but otherwise does nothing. Meh, overall. This statue is listed as a ‘shrine to the Seven.’ Not too long ago, Windego said something about speaking to ‘the true God King of all Divinity,’ and that he would ‘see those Seven imposters put in their place.’ Fane and Prince aren’t particularly religious people, as they had discussed on the beach, but, hell, the reason why we’re here is because Windego was apparently on a mission from her God King to kill Fane specifically. And when the ship was ripped apart by the kraken, we would have drowned, if not for a voice pulling us back to the surface and telling us that they ‘had plans’ for us. It’s getting kind of hard to believe that there isn’t more to this. Offering a prayer certainly couldn’t hurt.  : Fane’s Theme: The eyes, stone grey, turn pale green. They mesmerise, then enchain, then lure you in…
Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 12:44 on Jun 2, 2021 |
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Jun 2, 2021 06:08
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 : What is this place? : Quercus… where are we? No leaves. No trees. No soil. This is horrific!According to the helpful little banister label, we’re in the Hall Of Echoes. It’s Rivellon’s Valhalla or Heaven – the afterlife. All we did was look at a statue, what the hell! For a place that’s supposed to be the final resting place of the dead, it doesn’t look… well… actually, I have no idea what the afterlife is supposed to look like. This just looks like a cave with some luminescent lichen growing between the cracks or something. I had expected more than this, at the very least.   The place is deliberately laid out, though. The rock formations make a stairway that lead us onward and hexagonal pillars rise around the rims of the pits to keep us from falling down.   There are some ghostly figures, mostly transparent, cloaked in a golden light, standing in a central floor of this afterlife – and, apparently, they’re fighting. I see… a lizard, a dwarf, an imp, and at least two humans, I think. And they’re each level 25, goodness gracious.  I can’t reach any of them from where I am, but… there’s another figure at the end of my path. The same ghostly figure cloaked in gold. I can nearly see right through her. Am I dead? Is she dead? Nothing to do but to ask some questions. : You walk towards the figure on the dais, but wisps of mist start to cloud your vision. With each step, the mist gets thicker, hiding the figure from sight. : You push through the fog, chasing the voice at breakneck speed. You trip and start to fall, but catch yourself against… a bookcase?: You look around in shock as the mist clears. You are standing in a library – your library. You hear a cough behind you and turn to see your assistant, Harina. She hands you a thick book, ‘Observations on the Universal Veil.’ You look at her in confusion as she explains. ‘You asked me to bring you your research, Master Fane. For your guest…’: As you walk through the library Harina expresses her condolences: it is a shame the King forbade further investigation into the Veil. It was a fascinating topic. : (Am I hallucinating? Is any of this real?): (… Maybe I should play along. See how this goes. If I try to break the illusion, then all of this comes to an end and I learn nothing.): It… is an honour to have you in my study, my Matron. I’m sorry I don’t have much in the way of accommodations. : Oh please, there is no need for ceremony or dusty titles. You may address me as Amadia.: I must say, you created quite a stir earlier, dear Fane. The other lords and I were quite impressed with your research. We believe the King’s decree that you should not investigate the Veil was… misguided. We would like to view more of your research. : … I…: The desk dissolves as you pass your hand through it, but the mist quickly reforms afterwards. You turn to see Lady Amadia staring at you curiously.: Are you feeling quite well, my boy? : The, uh… the King believes that the Veil is a dangerous thing that we shouldn’t disturb. My studies suggest that the Veil was created to hold something back, something powerful, and that it was put in place for a reason.: Yes, so we gathered. We found it strange that the King would refuse you the chance to explore something that could be so beneficial to our people…: But perhaps there are still paths we can walk. Perhaps-: There is a crash of timber behind you, and you can feel hands grabbing you. You are dragged backwards as Amadia screams. The screams fade to nothing, as does the scene before you. You’re standing on the cold, glowing stones once more, with Lady Amadia before you.: Fane. Darling Fane. I had to know. I had to be sure. : … Please, Lady Amadia. Where are the others? The other Eternals? I’ve searched and I’ve searched, but after all my years and all my efforts, all I have is a lead that might end up being nothing. Are we… are we gone? When? To where? Why was I spared?: Peace, my child. You will have your answers – but I may only give one at a time. : In my time in the ‘modern’ world, I’ve found these, these creatures. They have a roundabout intelligence, capable of speech, carpentry, and even study and philosophy. They each bare uncanny resemblances to lord Rhalic, lord Duna, and even lord Zorl-Stissa. These creatures worship them as gods!: Ah, but we are gods. We ascended beyond our previous forms. But we had no choice. Not after what we discovered…: We know why the King forbade your research. He already knew about the veil, Fane. He was draining its power – leaching from it to build up his own strength. : Having spent several eternities in a crypt only to emerge to a world unlike the one I had left behind, I had already come to the conclusion that our King was indeed quite mad. So yes, I can believe that that’s something he would do.: Just so – his madness for power knew no limits. We fought, of course. The King scorched our land, but by uniting we overcame his evil. He was banished beyond the Veil he had tried to subvert, but our victory was hollow. Our people – oh my child… : … Is that really true? My people… they’re…: … What do I do next? What can I do? I… I must do something. I need closure.: Excellent! It may well be within your grasp. For centuries the King has been searching for a way back into our world. And beyond the Veil he found the force that could help him do it: the Void.: The moment we discovered the Void, we understood the Veil was created to hold it at bay by powers even more ancient than us. But thanks to the King, that evil has been seeping through the cracks. : If something has changed, then it can be changed back. But what?: I fear we are no longer united. I fear- well…: Amadia turns and gestures to the scene behind her. Down below you can see the six other Gods fighting, clawing at each other, every one desperately trying to get the upper hand.: Over the centuries, the drip of Void into this world corrupted the others while they played with their mortal races. I fear it is too late for them – for us. But you, Fane. You have been untouched by it all! : I was once one of the most trusted scholars in the world, with near-limitless magical power crackling between my fingertips, and now, if I walk around the outside world without something covering my face, I’m liable to get my skull caved in. I don’t need reminding.: Of course not, my child. And you will feel whole again – I will help you. But first you must return to the world and escape from that island.: But you will return more powerful. As your first step towards righting the wrongs of this world, I grant you my blessing and give you the ability to bless in turn.: Amadia stretches her hand out, and you feel a warm glow spread through your bones. You feel… a sensation that you have not felt in a very, very long time.: You may have noticed I have tried to help you on your journey. That I can bless the very water beneath your feet. Now, you have that power for yourself.: …and this is only the beginning. More and greater powers await you, if only you will seek them, and seek them you must. : I have. Their habits and mannerisms are fascinating studies into the cultures and behaviours of the ‘modern’ world. And they provide good protection – not every creature out there is as amicable as the ones I’m with.: It is only natural, after so long spent alone. But you must be wary. Some of these creature are more dangerous than they seem. They are ‘Godwoken’, the chosen champions of the other six Gods.: And then there is the one you know as Lohse. She is… something else. Something wicked. You must beware of her above all others.: For they will all walk the same path as you, but they cannot be allowed to reach its end. You must be the one. Only one of our people can wield this power. Only you, Fane.: She lays her hand on your skull and you see it clearly – the others, the Gods, Amadia, and you. You are her chosen. You are her Godwoken.: So go forth into the world with my blessing, dear one. Heed my words and go… Huh. Wild nap. So, uh. Did… did any of you guys see that, or…?  Sir Lora and Sebille both of exclamation marks above their heads, but I imagine we all have something to say about what we just saw.  : What is this new name on your arm, Sebille?: Sebille. : I’m not certain I understand. (Nor can I relate.): Don’t read too much into it. Must be a celestial party game. Or maybe he wanted to teach me a lesson. If the latter, he has much to learn.Well, at the least, that confirms that Sebille had an encounter with the elven god, Tir-Cindelius. And he carved her own name into her arm. If I remember right, the names on her right arm were the ones she was forced to kill and swore to get vengeance for, and the ones on her left were the names of people she intends to find and murder in her quest for redemption. Conveniently, the game doesn’t say which arm her own name’s been written on. It’s been a very long time since Sir Lora had anything worthwhile to say. What’s up with him? : Blessed branches, we’ve returned! Every second we spent in that hellish place was a second the Great Acorn drew closer.: … Interesting? You thought it was ‘Interesting’, Quercus? Do you know what’s interesting? Watching an entire world be strangled by the roots of doom! Seeing the giant races fall like leaves in frost! Hearing the screams of- …I don’t know what you’re talking about – I’m perfectly calm. : (Is it possible that this ‘Great Acorn’ that Sir Lora keeps going on about is…?): You may need help in your mission to save the world, Sir Lora. How can I help?: It’s already helping more than it knows, Quercus. The fate of the world depends on our ability to research a spell to protect Rivellon. We need to travel across the land, gathering clues, experimenting with different magics, and coming up with a spell to shield Rivellon from its doom. : (Speaking of falling – being pushed from my heights… I can’t believe I’m about to beseech myself to a squirrel.): I was once a powerful mage myself, Sir Lora. I can do more than just kill some Voidwoken.: Ha! Quercus! Quercus, it thinks it can use magic at our level. I don’t know if that’s adorable or just sad.: …No I am not going to share our magic with it! I don’t care how much you like it, Quercus, I-: …Very well, I cannot give it magic, but I can teach it how to forge one spell if it will keep you happy. One.: The squirrel reaches out, touching your foot with a delicate paw, and you feel your mind open. You can see the forces of magic and see how to combine them in a new way.: There, maybe now your pet will have a fighting chance. Yes yes, you’re welcome, but can we please get on and save the world now? Lora taught us how to make the Erratic Wisp skillbook! Any target with the Erratic Wisp status will teleport to a random location within eyesight every time they’re struck. You need one point in Huntsman and one point in Aerothurge to cast it. We already knew how to combine skillbooks before, but now, at least, we know this one specific recipe. Prince. Remember that time that we both said we weren’t particularly religious people?  : I’m still reeling from it myself, but… I believe I just met with… what some people of the ‘modern’ age might call a god. : (Rhalic? Is Amadia not held with the same esteem as the others? Or… does he not know? Maybe I should roll with it.): Hah, yes, Rhalic, indeed. Rhalic isn’t, erm, what I would describe as slow, but Rhalic… wasn’t quite what I had expected him to be.: Quite so. I suppose you too met with somewhat of a disappointment. : The semantics aren’t important. What’s important is that I’m on a divine mission to get off this island.: You may have no interest in semantics, but clearly you’ve an interest in the promises of powers that were dangled in front of you. That much, I can appreciate.Know to play to your crowds, everyone. How about you, Ifan? Did you meet… uh… Rrrrrhalic?  : I… I think I just went to the Hall Of Echoes, and I think I just met with my god. : If they’re the ones reaching out to us, then that means they need us more than we need them. We’ve gotten this far, haven’t we?: Well, what can I say? Whatever we believe, we still need to live in the here and now. So… let’s get back to work. Right you are, Ifan. Going forward, everyone in our team now has access to an innate skill called Bless.  Bless: Bless a target or surface. Removes Diseased, Decaying, Petrified, Stunned, Frozen, Plague, Silenced and Atrophy.Bless is a direct counter to Curse and does everything Curse does, but beneficially. Blessing a surface will have it not only heal me and my party, but will also provide beneficial effects, such as increased resistances. I can apply Bless to a lake of fire and turn it into Blessed Fire, which not only heals me when I run through it and not only grants me a huge amount of fire resistance, but it also looks dope as hell. In the base game, Bless cost a Source point to use, meaning it’d be totally useless to me with these collars on. Source points were a rare thing to come by and even with the Larian Gift Bag mod that grants Source points on rest, you wouldn’t want to use Bless because, well, what if I wanted to use those Source points for a stronger skill? Some of them require more than one point to use. Bless is a powerful skill, but it’s not so strong as to justify using a Source point to use it – particularly since an enemy with Curse could just remove it as soon as it’s applied. Honestly, it kind of sucked. The Divinity: Unleashed mod removes the Source point requirement and has it heal Frozen, Plague, Silenced, and Atrophy, in exchange for one additional turn of cooldown. That’s an amazing deal, and now Bless is an extremely worthwhile skill that can be seamlessly integrated into my gameplay. Bless doesn’t scale with any stat or with any school of magic – having Fane bless something would be just as effective as having anyone else do it. It still costs one point of Memory to equip, though. So, yeah! I’m looking forward to cooking up some strategies involving Bless. It rarely saw any use in the base game and now it’s probably going to be a staple.  To end this update, I ask you once more: where next? Everything north and south of these yellow lines are places that we haven’t explored yet. North will take us to that fortress that we spotted earlier and towards that boat that we saw near the destroyed lighthouse; south will take us to the Seekers hideout, among some other locations of interest. Like I said before: that rat that made fun of us and called us a chicken was standing at a pinch-point between the two halves of the map. Do we want to head north? Or do we want to head south? Let me know by tomorrow! Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Jun 2, 2021 |
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Jun 2, 2021 06:09
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That fight is bullshit, I'm not surprised Lohse apparently wanted no part of it and hosed off somewhere. Can't say I'm sad you vetoed Beast either, he's so far been the least interesting of the group. North seems least likely to lead to immediate plot, we are protagonists and must therefore wander off to loot random places and avoid the story as much as possible.
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Jun 2, 2021 09:05
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Black Robe posted:North seems least likely to lead to immediate plot, we are protagonists and must therefore wander off to loot random places and avoid the story as much as possible. Agreed.
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Jun 2, 2021 11:49
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South because Lohse seems like the type to vacation in the south instead of the north
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Jun 2, 2021 11:57
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I have never done a skelly/fane run, meeting Amadia was... interesting. One thing I really like about Divinity II is the tag and custom character system. An excellent story combo is Custom Elf with the soldier tag and have Ifan in your party. We haven't gone too far into Ifan's story yet but I wanted to give it a shout-out because it has such good scenes associated with it. As for decisions... Head South. I'm betting you triggered a checkpoint and that is where we will find Lohse so you can switch to her. Best time to switch party members would be right after your lord tells you not to trust the person you add to your party!
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Jun 2, 2021 16:14
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North, so we can charge face first into whatever other monstrosities are out there.
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Jun 2, 2021 17:19
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Go south
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Jun 2, 2021 18:42
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Can you bless the pigs now and remove necrofire? else go South
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Jun 2, 2021 19:30
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TitanG posted:Can you bless the pigs now and remove necrofire? This would turn the necrofire into regular fire, which could then either be put out or just waited out, yes.
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Jun 2, 2021 21:05
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Donkringel posted:As for decisions... Head South. I'm betting you triggered a checkpoint and that is where we will find Lohse so you can switch to her. Best time to switch party members would be right after your lord tells you not to trust the person you add to your party! Exactly! Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. I vote South. Also, Save the Pigs. It seems like that Voidwoken boss was specifically poo poo-talking Ifan- was that just a randomly selected party member, or did the Voidwoken have a beef with Ifan in particular?
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Jun 3, 2021 00:22
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Go South, young man.
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Jun 3, 2021 05:04
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Good to see that mod did something to make Bless worthwhile. The sheer prevalence of cursed stuff is probably my biggest complaint with the game. Every other fight seemed to end up with half the battlefield covered in necrofire, and any attempt to do something about that felt futile. You could burn a bunch of source points trying to clean up the battlefield, and then a round of combat later everything would be cursed again.
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Jun 3, 2021 14:57
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Our vote, as of this writing, was six-to-three in favour of heading south. There’s only one thing that’s notable in that direction, and that’s the Seeker hideout – so, of course, I’ll be saving that for last as I fill out the map. But first!  Now that we have the Bless skill, we can help the pigs with their plight. Bless will undo their undying necrofire and allow the flames to finally be put out, ending their torment – aside from the fact that these people are still pigs, but seeing as they’ve been around since Braccus Rex’s time, and he died many hundreds of years ago, they’re probably used to that part.   Just like that, we have ourselves one holy, and decidedly-not-on-fire, pig, free to finally live her life as she likes without being on fire. But that’s just one pig. There’s still–    : Hmm. Yes.: The menacing skeletal guardian looks at you wearily, then yawns.Menacing? After the fight that I just had, I’m supposed to be afraid of this lizard woman skeleton?  : Speaking from experience, I would have thought that anyone brought back from the depths of nothingness to return to the world would show a bit more excitement about it.: I’ve enthusiasm for putting you back in the ground so I can return to my rest. : Have you been to the Hall of Echoes? I’ve, uh… never been. I’ve often wondered what it’s like.: I was raised immediately after my death; I never had the chance to see what wonders await the true dead. : Braccus Rex has been dead and gone for a long while. You don’t need to do this. You can go back to your sleep right now, if you wanted.: She moans impatiently and taps her bony foot. : And how’s a curse going to know if you looked the other way?: Persuasion Success!: It is as you say. In any case, no curse could possibly be worse than this droning drivel. Be on your… wwww… w…rrrrgh…: The guardian chokes on her words, as if strangled by an invisible hand. Well. That was easy. The game played up Scapor as being ‘menacing’ and intimidating, when I could only have gotten the Bless skill if I had already completed a challenge more imposing than herself. I wonder what sort of loot she’s got.  Seventeen bucks; an Impalement skillbook; a belt with +1 Thievery; a ring and a bow that need IDing; and a one-handed mace, but since nobody in my team uses maces, its vendor trash. Sebille’s current belt gives her +10% resistance to Earth and Poison; I give her the Thievery belt and I give her old belt to Ifan. Scapor was the only thing standing between these pigs and their salvation, and now that she’s dead for real, we can go around and save the others without having to worry about more attacks from unfriendly skeletons.         There. That’s one extinguished passel of pigs, each one worth 600 EXP. A fair amount, but that’s probably because they aren’t about to give me a material reward.  Once again we’re at the rundown shack that had the grub fight – it’s something of a hub in the Hollow Marshes, where it’s in the middle of all the closest landmarks and locations. The only directions we haven’t explored from here are southeast and southwest. Southwest will takes us to the Seeker’s hideout, according to the map, so, let’s not do that and head southeast instead.   Within spitting distance of the ramshackle shack is a set of vines growing down the side of this cliff face. According to my minimap, it looks like there’s a fair amount of construction just up this cliff.   A gate leading into some kind of walled-off area. It’s too small to be called a fortress….  : The stone gargoyle trains glistening agate eyes upon you. Its jaws creak open, raining dust as it begins to speak. : You caught me. Can I go inside anyway? : You may.: You may stay forever. Each locks open only with a soul. And how many of those does one mortal have? : Whether I have a soul to spare at all might not be up to either of us. : Wise.‘Each lock,’ as in, more than one, and apparently there might have been other adventurers to have come through here at some point. There’s a dead body next to the door….  Some money; a journal…  … and something called a Tormented Soul. It’s normally a crafting ingredient and it doubles as decent vendor trash, but the gargoyle just said that each lock opens with a soul. Maybe this is a freebie and I can use this dead guy’s Tormented Soul as a key. According to this guy’s journal, there’s a reasonable chance that Braccus’ personal vault is somewhere on the other side of this trial. And didn’t we hear something about a ‘aze being built somewhere on this island…? I won’t enter this place for now; there’s still more exploring to be done, but I can always come back later. After I’m done with exploring this area, what do YOU think? Should I explore Braccus’s ‘aze?  Back down the vines and a bit further southward, there’s a squirrel! Salem, get him!  : Fires that boom? Lightning that crashes? And they’re big? Sounds like a job for us. What’s the issue? : One moment, sun. The next, I feel darkness inside me. Then, noise. So much noise. Clank, moan, clink, groan. I hid in a stump. I’m not a stupid squirrel! I have much stowed away for hard times! : Any chance you could elaborate?: Shinies. Darkness left, then light again. Warm. Saw glints in sand and dirt. : Are you after the shinies for yourself?: Don’t eat shinies. But I like to look at them. They make happy!So, according to this squirrel, he was just minding their own business when there was a ton of noise that included fire and lightning. And he can’t go back to where it was because there are salamanders in the way. That doesn’t sound so bad. How difficult could a few salamanders be to handle?  Oh, they are very large. That changes things a bit.  There are a bunch of dead bodies all over the place – I count three humans and one elf, as well as three dead Voidwoken grubs and one dead green salamander off in the corner. It was five versus three and the three lost, but not without evening the numbers first. These salamanders on the beach are blocking my path forward, so, I guess that makes them targets. Luckily, going straight south from the shack gives me the high ground, so I don’t need to do a lot of repositioning for optimal performance.  It’s difficult to tell in this screenshot because their disguises are just too perfect, but Sebille is the rock off to the right, and the other three are bushes on the left. Fane’s going to approach directly while everyone else stays up high.   There’s that name again. The God King. It’s too early to say definitively, but maybe the God King is the king from Fane’s and Amadia’s backstory? A mad king, aware of the Veil, usurping it to gain access to untold powers from a dimension beyond our own, and is still around and is using his influence on Void creatures like the Deep-Dweller and these salamanders, as well as people like Windego, to hunt down Fane, the one guy that could have called him out before he was locked in a hole. The pieces are there, but… I don’t know, I feel like it’s missing something that turns it all from conjecture to concrete. Anyway. Let’s fight some big-rear end, glowing crocodiles.    : Combat Music 1: Some Very Large SalamandersTurn 1 The Green Salamander goes first and hits Ifan with Poison Dart and Poisonball. I’m not certain if Poisonball is a technique I can learn. Either way, Ifan’s poisoned and he’s already down a quarter of his max HP, so, not the greatest of starts.   Salem does what he does best: he jumps in, gets a better position, and then swaps places with Fane, putting him right in the middle of the fight.   Red Salamander 1 hits Fane with Burning Touch and Battering Ram – and it has some pretty amazing animations for doing them.    Fane only has three AP since he was Knocked Down, but hey! Bless only costs one AP to use (which is unchanged from the base game – it cost one AP plus one Source point to cast), and it’s time to see it in action in combat. He uses Bless on himself, which turns his On Fire status into On Holy Fire, which grants him a massive fire resistance bonus and essentially undoes a bunch of debuffs from Knocked Down. It also blesses the puddle that Fane was standing on and, like I promised, Holy Fire looks badass, especially when a guy is covered in it. Unfortunately, Blessed stuff will hurt Fane when he tries to walk through it, including Blessed Poison. Fortunately, Blessed statuses such as Blessed Fire don’t heal over time – only Restoration (and Poisoned, in Fane’s case) will do that, so as long as Fane doesn’t walk through the blessed puddle, he won’t lose any more HP. Fane uses his last two AP to hit the Green Salamander with Mosquito Swarm, since it has less physical armour than the red ones.     Red Salamander 2 waddles over to Fane and they exchange blows, but then it decides to focus on something else, and it walks through the holy water to do it, healing all of the damage Fane just did.  Prince isn’t in the fight because his disguise is immaculate, so he takes a free action by summoning a blood totem on the beach to help Fane.  Likewise, Sebille enters late by throwing a bottle of Chloroform at Red Salamander 2, knocking it asleep for its next turn.     Ifan is hurt pretty badly already, thanks to the focus fire and the poisoning from the Green Salamander. He coats his arrows in his own blood; he uses Encourage to get everyone in his party, including the blood totem; and then he uses Tactical Retreat to move next to Sebille – less because he needed a better vantage point and more because Tactical Retreat gives him Haste.   Prince hits Fane with the Think Fast combo, and then he uses Rallying Cry on Ifan, essentially putting him back to full.  The blood totem fires on the Green Salamander, which is good, but it misses at point blank, which is bad.      Sebille, not known for her small turns, uses Cloak And Dagger to jump down to the beach (the Green Salamander was just out of reach for Backlash), and then, with Adrenaline to refund that spent two AP and Flesh Sacrifice to spend another to move closer, she hits the Green Salamander with Ruptured Chicken. She’ll be pretty exhausted next turn, but she’s essentially ToD’d the Green Salamander already.   Turn 2 Or not. It runs into the water slightly, then decides it’s run far enough, leaving itself with roughly one-third of its HP remaining. It’s in real bad shape, but it’ll take more than one person this turn to kill it.    Fane’s on the case: before he leaves to focus the Green Salamander, he uses Battle Stomp on the two red ones right in front of him before charging in with Battering Ram. And if it tries anything funny, Fane uses Shackles of Pain, ensuring that it can’t attack him without seriously endangering itself.  Red Salamander 1 turns around and bites Salem once. Despite Salem having no armour, that bite attack did less damage than I was expecting.  Sebille has no armour and she doesn’t have the AP to do anything meaningful, so she uses Chameleon Skin to hide.   Red Salamander 2 wades through the holy water once more to bite Fane, doing 50 damage to both him and Green Salamander thanks to Shackles of Pain.  And the blood totem opens fire on the Green Salamander as well. This hasn’t been a great turn for it!  Salem proves to the world that crocodiles ain’t poo poo by slapping Red Salamander 1 twice. It amounts to 22 HP total, but hey, he’s not letting himself be bossed around, and that’s what matters.    Ifan fires once at Green Salamander, killing it, which might have been a misplay – Green Salamander realistically had two choices: either attack Fane (and therefore do damage to itself), or try to run from Fane and take an AoO for it. It only had 60 HP and would have died either way for it. Oh well, it’s not a big deal; especially compared to the Deep-Dweller, this fight isn’t much of a challenge and is practically already over. Ifan caps his turn with Fossil Strike on Red Salamander 2, making it slow.  Prince puts down another blood totem…  … and it’s only now that I realize that Attendant isn’t in the fight. It was just outside of the fight’s edge, similar to what happened with me and Windego when we fought. I try to get a free shot in with its long-range projectile, but Red Salamander 1 is just a smidge too far for it to reach.  Anyway, Prince uses Staff of Magus with his last two AP, and of course it misses.   Attendant uses its projectile on Red Salamander 1 now that it’s close enough, and then burns its last two AP by healing Salem and approaching to help the cat out.  And finally, the new blood totem finds its mark on Red Salamander 1.    Turn 3 Red Salamander 1 uses Heart of Steel on itself do give itself a massive boost to physical armour, and then, clearly intimidated by Salem’s refusal to stand down (art imitates life), tries to get around both Salem and Attendant to threaten Prince and Ifan but takes two AoOs for it.   Fane hits Red Salamander 2 with Mosquito Swarm and All In, taking it down to about ¾ max.   And Red Salamander 2 responds with Burning Touch – which is a good move, because Fane’s holy fire just went out – followed up with a regular attack.     Because Sebille is still bleeding from Flesh Sacrifice, she takes damage, which breaks her invisibility immediately. She has all four AP to use, so she Blesses Fane again to undo the fire status and throws a bottle of Chloroform all the way onto Red Salamander 1. And with her last AP, she uses Backlash on Red Salamander 2, why not.  Both of the blood totems open fire on Red Salamander 2, putting it down to about half. Second verse, same as the first, at this rate. Salem’s turn is next and he’s ready to gently caress up some crocodiles, but he delays.  Ifan has five AP to use and he uses them on Barrage and a regular attack on Red Salamander 2, shaving off another quarter. Like I keep saying: Wayfarer damage output is very much not a joke.    Prince continues the effort on Red Salamander 2 with another totem and a (successful) Staff of Magus. The newest blood totem chips in with another shot on the croc, too.  Attendant and Salem move next, but Red Salamander 1 is asleep, so they can’t attack it. So, Salem approaches, and they both pass, giving them both max AP next turn. Turn 4 Red Salamander 1 goes first and wakes up, as usual.   Two sword swings from Fane and Red Salamander 2 is down, its body cremated within the regular fire of Fane’s Scumkiller sword. Fane’s kill refunded him two AP with the Executioner perk, but all of his stuff is on cooldown and he’s not a very good runner, so he just spends it approaching leisurely. At this point, it’s just my whole team ganging up on Red Salamander 1; there isn’t really much more strategy for me to put in since all it can hope to do is maybe Burning Touch and Battering Ram, but it’s six-versus-one all the same, not including Prince’s totems.  The most exciting thing that happens is Red Salamander 1 uses Burning Touch on Attendant, which isn’t a bad move – being water-based, Attendant takes significantly more fire damage than other types.  Unfortunately, Salem isn’t the one to get the killing blow; Prince is, with a melee strike from his staff, cremating Red Salamander 1 on the spot. And that’s the end of that chapter.  : It wants me to find it…Another disembodied voice giving us some holy water to soak ourselves in to heal our wounds. It’s a nice gesture and all, but a sleeping bag is way more effective at healing my party than a bath is. That’s not Amadia’s voice, though. It’s a male’s voice, sounding awfully gravelly. Who could that be…? There are a ton of bodies to loot now that the fighting is over with; the last group of adventurers in the area managed to bring down a whole croc themselves and a number of grubs before being taken out.  This amulet would go amazingly on Ifan. And… that’s about it. Some crafting ingredients and some vendor trash. I probably shouldn’t have expected some salamanders to be carrying any worthwhile loot, but I also probably shouldn’t have found amazing loot on the Deep-Dweller, so, maybe I’m spoiled.  On the beach is an overturned, rotted ship with a small inlet sitting in where its deck would approximately be. If I were a guy trying to hide some treasure, it’d probably be around here.  Oh, nice.  This tiny islet has a barrel and a crate that’s primed for looting, but the only dry spot in the body is littered with traps. Traps are invisible until you approach, and even then, they only show themselves if your Wits is high enough to detect them – luckily, the game is being generous with this particular trap setup, and you only need the base 10 Wits to detect them all. But you also only detect them one at a time as you approach.    If you have a Trap Disarming Toolkit, safely disposing of any identified trap is as easy as right-clicking and choosing Disarm.  Unfortunately, I only have two toolkits on me, and, this being a videogame, every time to disarm a trap, it costs you one toolkit. There are three traps, so…  In that case, the safest way to dispose of them is to trigger them from a distance, such as with Ifan’s crossbow. Fane happened to not be standing far enough way, though, and that one trap took out half of his HP, just like that.  Nothing a nap won’t fix.  Sebille’s Wits stat is considerably higher than anyone else’s in the group, and she manages to find a raised dirt mound beneath the grass. Like I said: this would be a good place to bury some treasure, if you were looking for one.   Normally, these chests pop out of the ground when you dig them out, but not this time. I can still access it easily enough, though.  A lot of money; a silver bejewelled goblet, also worth a lot of money; a potion of Telekinesis; and… an epic-level breastplate! I described this before, but loot rarity has a colour-coded border for each bit of loot you find. Colourless is common; green is uncommon; blue is rare; purple is epic; pink is legendary; yellow is divine; and gold is unique (which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good). A loot’s rarity does not determine its stats, but it does determine how many bonuses it gives, and how powerful those bonuses are: green loot gives one bonus (such as +1 Warfare, etc); blue has two; and so forth. Because bonuses are almost always better than raw stats, this breastplate is practically guaranteed to be better than anything I have right now. It just needs a bit of identifying, and we’ll be able to upgrade somebody’s wardrobe.  There’s a bit of beach left to explore before we turn towards where Han marked the Seeker’s hideout on our map. And there’s a yellow flag on my minimap off in this direction – there’s something over here that I was told about before, but what?  It’s just a normal cave, near as I can tell–  … Or maybe it’s not so normal after all. The entrance to this cave is very, very shiny – is this what the squirrel from before was referring to? As inviting as that looks, I’m not about to go in there just yet: that’s a whole other thing in there waiting to happen, but I can come back once I’m done exploring this area. What do YOU think? Should I explore this cave? Actually, though, that reminds me:  We picked up this arm clear on the other side of the Hollow Marshes, and it was pointing in this general direction. We’ve wandered to the other side of the Seeker’s base; I wonder where it’ll point now?  … Huh.  There’s a treasure chest sitting at the base of a cliff off in that direction, but I sort of doubt that’s what the skeletal hand is referring to. The only other thing over there is open water, and there’s no way for me to even reach that part of the beach from where I am. How mysterious! I’ll have to revisit this later.  The very last thing for us to do is to finally make our way to the Seeker base. We’ve explored every last nook of this corner of the Hollow Marshes; the only thing left is to see what all the excitement is about.  A trail of dead bodies marks the way. You know what they say: if you meet adversity on the path that you’re on, you’re going the right way.    Traveling along the eastern coast of this pocket of beach, underneath the cliff face, we find an armed lizard standing at the top of an outcropping – she’s probably the lookout for the Seeker’s base. A rope of vines is coiled at her feet, meaning if we want to get up there, we’ll need to get onto her good side. Or we can take her out and Sebille can Cloak And Dagger up there, but, you know. : Up on the ledge before you a lone lizard woman overlooks the marshes. Her stare is as sharp as the bolt eyeing you from atop her crossbow. : I was told to come here by a human child named Han. I had rescued him from a pair of Magisters that were looking to ship him off to an orphanage.: Her eyes go wide with delight upon your mentioning Han. : May the goddess keep you for saving that little lion heart! Young Han told me the story of his rescue! Oh, you are most welcome indeed!: With one graceful motion, the lizard throws down a tangled mass of vines for you to climb.: Come, ascend to the sanctuary of Amadia. You’ll find you’re not the only guest here, but the Great Mother provides for all.  : What a pleasant little nest. A nice spot to pass the time, waiting for the end.The Sanctuary of Amadia, huh? I wonder if we’ll be able to meet with her again while we’re here – or if they aren’t just saying that this is Amadia’s house. If we hadn’t gone with Han when we escaped Fort Joy, we would have had to persuade Bahara that we weren’t a threat. The Seekers hideout is related to the main plot of the story, so it wouldn’t have been difficult, but us choosing to go with Han at least made this a little more streamlined. So, anyway… the game said your name was Bahara? Why does that sound familiar? : The Red Prince interrupts as you’re about to speak. : By all means. Hopefully you get a better answer out of this one than the last one.: You’re too kind.: Red Prince and the Dreamer exchange courteous pleasantries, as if they’re finding themselves in a palace hall instead of a death-ridden swamp. She introduces herself as Bahara. To your surprise they next lie down on the ground in a seemingly warm embrace and fall asleep.Hah, it’s just that easy. Life goals, right there. : What follows though is far from peaceful: they claw and thrash as if struggling for dear life, caught in the hold of some hideous nightmare. : Are you alright? It looked like the drudanae might have hit a bit different this time.: Praise the daylight: I am now! There was death in that dream, chasing me like a hundred hungry lions! But at least I’ve new directions. When we escape and find ourselves on the mainland once more, I must search for Brahmos the Wanderer.: Then I will finally know the truth. The very secret of my soul… And that about concludes Prince’s story arc for Fort Joy. The only thing left to do for him here is to escape, and once we make it onto the mainland, he’s good to keep going. Before we think about that, though, I think it’s about my turn to speak with Bahara.  : You speak like you might know something about this place. Is there anything you can tell me about the Hollow Marshes going forward?: It is the laboratory of a lunatic. A place removed from mercy and sanity where mad Braccus Rex would experiment to his dark heart’s content. There are ruins in the marshes: stonework vultures that perch about the king’s long buried treasure.Oh, that must have been the ‘aze that we found earlier!  : How can you know of these things? Have you seen them yourself? Her mistress Gratiana likes to talk about the ‘heydays’ of Braccus Rex? What, was she there? Was she present? … If she was, then wouldn’t that mean…? : Can you tell me anything more about the swamp?: Haunted quagmires is what they are, and what is mired in them is madness. Braccus Rex: he went too far. Source was never meant to be harnessed in weaponry. : I’m to be sharing the sanctuary with other guests, you mentioned. I assume they’re friends? : Perhaps a forgone answer given where we are and who occupies the nearby fort, but… who were the Seeker’s enemies?: Magisters, of course! Who else? The Seekers came here to rescue a Sourcerer from the fort. They failed. Many fell.She must be referring to… the elf, Verdas.  : Could one mortal man be worth the lives and efforts of so many soldiers?: They knew him to be Godwoken. They sought to kindle the divinity slumbering deep within his soul. But Alexander bears no rivals. Only the son can follow the father, or so he is convinced. For him: divinity. For the others: the dungeons. : What more can you tell me of the Shriekers? They sound like terrible things to avoid.: Have you never heard of them? From the tales they tell of Braccus Rex? They were living weapons: made of flesh and reared in torture. The pain they endured was so terrible their screams turned to solid lightning.Interesting adjective use.  : It’s remarkable that you’d be so calm and composed, given the horrors surrounding you and this sanctuary of yours.: To know one’s fate is to be fearless. I reside in Amadia’s palm. I am hers to shield or hers to crush, and in that knowledge I am content.: While we’re on that topic: what more can you tell me about yourself? : (The Matron Amadia that I knew is the same person that she speaks of, and yet they seem so very different.) I know little about Amadia; she doesn’t seem particularly popular among, uh, the Seven. I’ve only read a few snippets in some obscure tome somewhere.: Commendable. And yet she is the most mysterious of the Seven. Despite your perusals, no doubt that tome taught you little. So please allow me to enlighten you.: Amadia is the Great Mother. She is the goddess in whose womb magic was conceived; from whose sacred body immortal wizards were born. : (‘Sustained by Amadia’s love.’ There’s a more succinct explanation for this Gratiana woman’s longevity.): I would like to be introduced to this Gratiana woman, if possible.: I am forbidden to leave my watch, and there is no need for formality. Gratiana will receive you as you are. You’ll soon find her. She never strays far from the statue of our goddess.Okay, so, we know who’s in charge of this sanctuary and where we can find her. Easy enough.  This is Amadia’s Sanctuary, which doubles as the Seeker’s hideout, as Han had described to us. This is a new hub for us to make ourselves a home in now that we’ve escaped Fort Joy – which means there’s people to talk to and wares to be sold. Bahara, for instance, sells Marksman skillbooks, just like Butter did in Griff’s kitchen. She sells better stuff than Butter did, too, including some new skills altogether. That said, I’m going to save the shopping (and the “““““shopping”””””) for the next update rather than bog this one down any harder. Also: our current fence is the lizard soldier, Kalias, in Saheila’s cave back in Fort Joy. There isn’t really a reason to make another fence here in Amadia’s Sanctuary; everyone will give me the same price based on their attitude towards me and my Bartering skill, so when I’m ready to sell a bunch of stuff, I’ll just fast-travel back to the fort and come back here.  The first merchant to meet us in Amadia’s Sanctuary is this woman: Deidara of the Four Sisters. She’s actually from one of the Larian Gift Bag mods. : The young woman twists her hands together to warm them at the campfire, fingernails bitten to the quick. Noticing your attention, she looks up at you like a startled deer. : Sorry I’ve no welcome drink or anything, but the misery here… : Hmm… the curvature of your nose bares an uncanny resemblance to Jarbin Esthmyer, a magician and scholar of some repute. Is there any relation?: Yes! I’m his grand-daughter. My sisters and I followed in his footsteps. We set up a business making our own magical trinkets and travelling to sell them. I tagged along with the Seekers for safe passage. But I never knew how bad this situation could get. And now there’s nowhere for me to go. : Perhaps in a moment. You say you have sisters, and yet you have nowhere to go? Where are your sisters, then?: You’ll find Demira in Driftwood and Donna in Arx. Dagmare… well, I don’t quite know where she’s got herself perched these days. Maybe you’ll get to meet all of them on your travels! If you do see them… : Her brow furrows as she looks around the Shelter. When she looks back at you, her eyes are glassy and devoid of hope. : I’ll be sure to, if I ever see them.: Now, in the meantime, what’s this about your wares? You called them ‘Sourcerous Sundries?’: My sisters and I have been working on magical, alchemical and downright infernal trinkets for years. Thanks to Sourcerous Sundries, anyone with coin can have sharper weapon, stronger armour, and shinier equipment!: She clumsily proffers some paper. It slips through her fingers, but you manage to catch it mid-air. : You had my interest, and now, you have my attention. Let’s see what you have. There’s a fairly common complaint with how Divinity: Original Sin 2 handles equipment. I mentioned earlier, when I found that epic breastplate, that bonuses are often better than straight stats. It’s better to have a +1 in Warfare than it is to have armour that provides more protection. This fact is going to come up the further into the game we go: more and more often, we’ll find equipment that has better protection or does more damage, but doesn’t offer the same bonuses, and sometimes, whole builds can teeter on whether they have the bonuses available to them to utilize – for example, let’s say Sebille is equipped with an amulet that gives her +1 Hydrosophist, and she has a skill that requires it. As soon as she takes that equipment off, she can no longer use that skill. Now, let’s say she finds another amulet that has much better stats, but does not offer +1 Hydrosophist. You’re going to have to decide for yourself whether the cost/benefit is worth it to your build and how you play the game, and this is going to come up a lot. This is a big game, after all, and eventually, your old equipment is going to fall so far behind in terms of raw numbers that you’ll be forced to switch off if you want to keep up with the difficulty curve. The Sourcerous Sundries Gift Bag mod was designed to answer this: if you really, really want to keep that amulet with +1 Hydrosophist, but you can’t afford to not switch off, then you can buy a Quicksilver vial from Deidara or any of her sisters, apply it to that amulet, and then that amulet will upgrade to match your level – and have the increased stats to go with it without losing any of its bonuses. However, obviously, this system can be abused, and Larian would kinda sorta prefer that you change up your equipment every now and again. So:  Everything that they sell is prohibitively expensive. If you really want to keep that amulet, you better commit. And because they’re worth so much, they’re essentially impossible to steal.  : That’s… perhaps a little rich for my bones.: Oh! Oh! I know my wares are not cheap, but they are so very out-of-the-ordinary. But listen. My sisters and I have a little game to lighten the spirits in harsh times. : Answer a riddle, and save some coin? … If that’s all there really is to it, then, sure. I don’t see why not.: Oh! Oh! Listen carefully, now.: I stand tall in the morning, I shrink in the afternoon. I disappear at midnight, but I’ll be back very soon. Well, thread? Of the four options listed, which do YOU think is the correct answer? Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Jun 10, 2021 |
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Jun 10, 2021 07:18
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 While we stew on that, there’s still quite a bit of the hideout to explore. Right next to Deidara is an ensign looking over some maps and pouring over tomes – is he the one in charge of strategy here? : A young man in oversized armour paces around a table covered with a spread of maps, his face a tight scowl of frustration. : Every approach blocked… d-drat it, what good are battle tactics against those things anyway?: He glances up. In quick succession, he becomes aware of both your presence and the fact that you’re not a familiar face. : (Perhaps it’s some form of regional dialect?) I am called F-Fane.: Funny. On t-the run from Fort Joy, are you? : I was told by an elf named Verdas within the Fort that a group might ‘seek me out.’ I wager it’s not a stretch to assume he was talking about your group? : (I’ve already gathered the answer to this, but perhaps this man can shed some more light on the situation – from an ‘outside looking in’ perspective, at least.) Verdas mentioned that I was ‘the same as him’ when I last saw him. Could you know what he meant?: You, a Godwoken…? Surely not. Though if Verdas said so… : I, myself, have a vested interest in getting off this rock. The sooner, the better.: The young man anxiously fidgets with his curved bow. You’ve found a matter close to his heart, evidently.: That’s… easier said than done, I’m afraid. M-much easier said. : Having come this fair, I’ve learned that there are few, if any, things in this world that I’d be comfortable calling ‘invincible.’ There must be a way. : There’s weapons – ancient devices that can counter those things. Our leader, Sir Gareth, set out to find them, so we could break the Magister blockade and escape this island. : Tell me more about this leader of yours. Gareth, you said? : How did you come to the knowledge of these weapons that can counter the Shriekers?: The young man throws a furtive glance towards the shrine looming out of the water nearby, then leans in to whisper… : Well, my position hasn’t changed – getting off this island is a priority of mine. I will find Gareth and these weapons, if that’s what it’ll take.: Y-you… you’ll help us?: His shoulders visibly relax, the weighty armour upon them settling with a clink. : Before I leave, I need as much information as I can get. : What brought you to the island, before you were attacked and sent to this sanctuary? : And what, precisely, is a Godwoken? What am I, according to you?: Well… before there is a Divine, there must be a Godwoken. O-only a special few amongst Sourcerers have this potential… without them, a true successor to Lucian will never rise… : Do you have any idea, any whatsoever, of where Gareth could be? : What would happen if we managed to defeat the Magisters?: The Magister flagship, the Lady Vengeance… s-she’s anchored at the old harbour. Once the way is clear, we’re to take her, and get the hell out of here…: I see.So, according to Exter, the Seeker’s leader, Gareth, has vanished somewhere in search of weapons that can defeat the Shriekers that were created by Braccus Rex and the Magisters are using for themselves. He hasn’t returned, and the Seekers are a chicken without a head without him. If we want to escape the island, we’ll need to find him first. Sounds like another quest in our multi-part escape of Fort Joy! But it seems one of us has something prudent to add to the conversation.  : Ifan looks anxious, an unfamiliar look on the Lone Wolf. Stepping closer, he whispers urgently in your ear. : That must mean you’re as much a target for them as I am.: Yes. : If you know who’s doing it, then you must know more about the contract, correct?: It’s been making the lupine rounds for a while now. Big money for anyone who succeeds in taking out a Godwoken. : Who would have the motive, and the funds, to contract an entire band of mercenaries to kill a small group of people?: (That still doesn’t rule out Alexander, I suppose.): I intend to find out. I bet we can track down my old pack and ask some questions. Last I heard, they were camped out near Driftwood. In the meantime, let’s keep a lower profile…Man, lots and lots to do in Driftwood, at this rate! We’d better hurry up and escape, our to-do list isn’t getting any shorter. Exter is the Sanctuary’s Kalias – he sells weapons and armour, but he also sells Scoundrel and Polymorph skillbooks, meaning he’s about to be Sebille’s best friend. So I’ll be dealing with him quite a bit going forward, probably.  A bit ahead is a dwarf consoling a woman that seems pretty upset about something. : A dwarf stands by a young woman. He seems intensely focused on her, whispering and singing softly in her ear. She’s staring blankly into space. : Blood and bone. Fire and smoke. Death and… and worse. : Hush now, Leya. They’ll not hurt yeh again; you’re safe now. Once Gareth gets back, we’re goin’ home. You’ll see: it’ll be fine. : What’s gotten her so distraught?: The dwarf starts at the sound of your voice, gripping the woman’s arm for a moment before he relaxes.: New faces. Hope yeh weren’t bushwhacked by the Magisters too. This one’s seen a lot today. She were in the middle of it all when the Magisters unleashed their Shriekers.: Howling dogs and men. Friends, silently screaming through stitched mouths…: He puts his arm around her as she starts to sob.: She’s… delicate at the best of times. I asked Simone for somethin’ to help her relax, but Gareth’s the only one who truly keeps her calm. : She can remove Source collars, you said? That’s wonderful! Can she remove mine? Ours?: What do yeh think, Leya? Can yeh help?: She averts her eyes, staring at the ground. : If there’s anything that can be done to put her into better spirits and remove these drat things off our necks, I’d be more than willing to do it. Is there anything I can do?: I wish, friend. But there ain’t nothing you can do, and there ain’t nothing I can do. Gareth’s the only one that brings her out of herself. Without him she’s… well… : What makes Gareth so important to her?: We were part of a caravan headed to Fort Joy – shiny collars and all. Gareth and the Seekers ambushed the caravan and freed us. Saved every one of us from that hell. : I’ll see what I can do.: The dwarf starts to sing softly as the woman rocks slowly in her seat.And now, there’s a major incentive to finding and rescuing Gareth: if we can bring him back to the Sanctuary, then this Leya woman will be in a right enough state of mind that she can remove our Source collars. We’ll finally be able to use Source again, and we’ll be able to wear something different around our necks! Just a few steps to the west from Leya and Duggan is a massive statue of a crying woman – this marks the Sanctuary’s Waypoint, so now, travel between the Sanctuary and anywhere else is just a matter of a few clicks. And…  There are two women in magician’s robes here: the one on the left is Gratiana, I presume, and the one on the right is Lohse! We found her! I’ll swap her in for Ifan for a little bit so she can identify all of the goodies we’ve found in her absence, but first, I should probably introduce myself to the proprietor of the sanctuary proper. : Before you stands a figure, her body wreathed in cloth. All you can see of her eyes are two dark holes in an ornate mask. : I am a stranger that’s lost in a world he doesn’t recognize, wishing he could find a way to return to what he knows. : I sincerely believe you. Well stranger, you may always make a home here. You are most welcome in this place. : Having been through most of the swamp by now, the place is rotten to its core and feels like it’s been forgotten by the gods. How can a place as friendly as this sanctuary to Amadia even exist? : I’m told you know much about the villain known as Braccus Rex. What more can you tell me about him?: He is no more, thank the goddess. It has been many centuries since he walked Rivellon, although he still casts a shadow over this land. He ruled this realm as a tyrant and beast. He stole its Source and left only death. On this island he built and tested his weapons. : It seems you do, indeed, know much about the villainous Braccus Rex. Do you study history in your spare time?: I have been here for many years. It has given me a lot of time to… reflect on the past. And learn from it. In truth, the torments of Braccus and of these Magisters were not so different. Both purged Source from this land. Indeed, the Magisters have even taken Braccus’s worst tools. First the purging wands, and now those Shriekers… : I’ve heard much about their leader, Gareth, and it’s in my best interest to find where he’s gone. Would you know his last whereabouts? Or, at the least, the direction he went in?: The fool ran into the swamps. He pestered me for aid against the Shriekers, and when I finally told him of a cache of Braccus’s soulforged weapons, he rushed away to find it. : As I said, it’s in my interest to rescue Gareth, and I’ve been from one end of the swamp to the other by now. Which way has he gone? : I’ll do what I can to find this man. I’m not unfamiliar with the territory by now.: Walk ever in Amadia’s grace, child.: Before I leave, I have some more questions: what can you tell me about the M- the goddess Amadia?: Amadia is the blessed mother of magic. All that use it can trace their skill back to her grace. This is her shrine. She has sustained me here for many years – even when the evils of Braccus’s swamp threatened to drown me. : I’m fine. It’s just that… Amadia… reminds me of someone.: The hooded figure stares at you, holding your gaze. It feels as if she is about to say something, but she hesitates before bowing gently.: Very well. As you say.: Going back a moment – you’ve accepted a great deal of people into your sanctuary from the swamp, and here you are about to accept a handful more. What drives your altruism? : You, a priestess, have done wrong in the past?: Despite the mask, you can feel her expression harden.: Time is a river, ever slipping by. It does no good to mourn what’s gone before – only to appreciate where the current carries us. : (Dead, you say…): The woman freezes in place and starts to stutter. : Take it from someone that’s consciously choosing to wear a bucket on their head: it takes one to know one, Gratiana.: You know nothing! Nothing of my life. Nothing of the things I’ve seen. Nothing of the things I’ve done.: She turns away from you in a swirl of robes.She got awfully defensive all of a sudden. Whatever she’s done in the past must be serious if she’s trying to bury it that hard. Gratiana sells mostly Aerothurge spellbooks, but she also sells some high-end accessories – namely, rings and amulets. Most of them are a little rich for my blood and we don’t have a way to wear amulets right now anyway. But now that we’re done talking with Gratiana, at least at the moment – Ifan, I need you to take a walk.   Ifan doesn’t wander too far after I dismiss him – he parks himself right next to a salvager and passes the time staring into space and doing nothing at all. I imagine Amadia’s Sanctuary is where all of our companions will find themselves after we dismiss them, now. Lohse, please identify a bunch of garbage for me.  I’m carrying a handful of good stuff, including a new pair of pants for Fane and a new ring that gives +1 Hydrosophist for Lohse, but I’m also carrying a bunch of amulets that I can’t use yet and the rest of it is just vendor trash.  Like the bucket, Fane had been rocking a pair of muddy trousers since the ship that was torn apart by the kraken, so it’d nice to get him out of those and into something a bit more appropriate. It helps to complete the ensemble, too. The one I’m particularly interested in, though, is that breastplate…  Going by the bonuses, this breastplate would be amazing on Sebille. Sebille is already one of my stronger characters and giving her this would make her nutty-strong. Still, Ifan could still benefit from it – he’d get just as much from the Finesse and Warfare bonuses as Sebille would, and giving him some points in Scoundrel would mean he could move a bit of extra distance for free with The Pawn, which would be a nice thing for a Wayfarer to have.  While Ifan’s current suit isn’t exactly great for him, Sebille’s is actually worse. Hers has no bonuses and lower defensive numbers. So, it’ll go onto her.  It gives her some pauldrons and a flowing cape, which I imagine wouldn’t be very useful for stealthy movement, but it sure looks badass. If it works for Batman, it’ll work for her. Since we’re introducing ourselves with the Seekers, we might as well speak with this salvager.  : A bit of iron hardly even worth being called a ‘weapon,’ and it’s been splintered and damaged. Why do you bother keeping it?: He holds the damaged blade up to the light. : Which was?  : You’re welcome. : Just someone that understands the sentimentality to keeping something broken around.: He realizes, to his surprise, that he holds the weapon in his hand, ready for battle. He smiles to himself, tucks the weapon away, and gets back to work.This guy also sells weapons and armour, but he also deals in Necromancy and Summoner skillbooks, and he’s got a handful of new ones. He’s also got one or two helmets that might go well on Fane – finally swap the bucket for something else. But, like I said, I’ll leave the shopping for the next update. There isn’t a lot of the sanctuary left to explore: by now, we’ve explored the entire southern rim and spoken to everyone in it, and that just leaves the northern bend. As we come around the bend, we run into a familiar face.   : You’re certain it was Verdas…? : He said his name. Barely even knew that much, but still…: You tried your best, Han. I’m… I’m glad you’re safe now.: We aren’t really safe here, are we?: So long as Gareth returns, we will be…About that. : You’re alive! Wasn’t sure you would be. Samadel, this is the one I told you about…: The dishevelled lizard eyes you with hope, though her hope is tinged with mistrust. : It was the least I could do. : I understand he’s an important person in your operation. I’m afraid that I have not met this man.: He… he’ll be back, Samadel. I know he will. He has to. : I’ve been going around asking this same question to everyone that brings up Gareth, but, how could I help find him? Any information you have would be useful.: You’re kind to offer, but you’d best talk to Gareth’s squire Exter – he’ll know where your talents can most be used.: Now Han, let’s take a look at your nasty leg injury.: Catch you later, skipper. It… it’s good you’re here.Samadel sells Pyromancy stuff, which is great! We haven’t had a Pyromancer dealer since we let Sebille kill Stingtail. She has a bunch of stuff on her that could really help pad out Prince’s playbook.   The second last major landmark in this sanctuary is a makeshift, slapdash infirmary that’s currently holding three different people: an elf, a dwarf, and a lizard. None of them are in particularly good shape. They’re all overseen by a single woman that, frankly, doesn’t look like she’s much of a doctor. : The young woman chews her lower lip as she observes the injured before her… She bends to grab a rag, wiping her blood-smeared hands. She looks up and sees you. : It looks like you have a lot on your plate as it is.: The woman wrings the bloodstained rag in her hands anxiously. : There’s quite a lot of blood spilt here (and I understand the mortals prefer to keep it all inside themselves). What, exactly, happened to them? : The Magisters sank our ship… then we ran into more of them on the shore. They had these Shrieker monstrosities… : It was very compassionate of your army to rescue the wounded when they could have escaped without them. Is there anything more that can be done? : Prayer and water…? Maybe I could do better. : Have you tried magic? Realistically, there’s very little a bit of magic can’t do.: Magic? All I’ve got is my own two hands, and… and…: She trails off, and limply gestures to her paltry makeshift infirmary. : Perhaps a potion, then? Chemistry is like magic.: A few hours ago, that might have helped. Look at their pallor. Only magic can pull them back from the brink now.Well, in that case: I know just the guy. He even knows a spell that’s explicitly called First Aid.     : There’s still a job to do, soldier. Can you fight?: He lands a comradely slap on your back – his strength has definitely returned… : Describe to me what happened out there so that I can avoid it myself. : The Magisters attacked our camp back at the harbour… I caught one of their arrows right in my side. That would’ve been a slow death; I’ve seen it before…If you remember Dain the drunkard with Doctor Leste, the dwarven polymorph vendor, in Fort Joy, then it’s the same sort of story here: these three soldiers were near-death but they just needed a quick kick from any type of healing magic to get them back in ship-shape. If we had found Gareth before we found the sanctuary (i.e. if we had gone north at the fork with the Deep-Dweller), then, whenever we eventually got here, all three of them would be dead. You get a reward for saving them – a hybrid skillbook (Bleed Fire, in my case, which requires Pyrokinetic and Polymorph) and an amulet with nothing special about it. More importantly, though, each saved soldier was worth 1,500 EXP. Simone, by the way, sells Hydrosophist skillbooks – weird, for a woman claiming she doesn’t know how to cast magic.  There’s one last thing to see in this sanctuary – something kind of big and obvious that I only sort of glossed over initially. There’s an enormous statue of Amadia in the pool next to Gratiana, with water constantly pouring from its eyes. : Amidst the placid little pond, the face of a goddess lies half-submerged in the water. Rivulets stream from her deep-set eyes like endless cascades of sunlit tears. : As you gaze upon her loving face, you find yourself drawn into a trance-like state. : The voice grows stronger, like the breeze picking up. What were whispers become words. : A feeling of indescribable sadness assails you. It feels like your heart merges with the spirit’s, torn together by a coil of thorns. : …  : Fane, Fane… Fane the brave. Fane the saviour…: The intensity of the embrace deepens. Never since the unremembered days of childhood have you been so enveloped in maternal safety.: My child, my child… I love you. My own, my own… I will guard you. Wander where you will and cherish the kiss of Amadia.: You feel yourself shine with an inner light; rejuvenated and pure, as if born anew. Fane is suddenly Blessed for a whopping 20 turns – roughly two minutes, which is just long enough to get from here to the Deep-Dweller – and the pool of water in front of the statue blessed, sinking it into a cloud of blessed steam that heals everyone that walks through it. Except Fane. It’s quite painful for Fane to walk through it. Apparently the mother of witches and warlocks didn’t quite think that one all the way through.  : As I stared into the statue, I heard a voice from somewhere far away, and the next thing I knew, there was mist everywhere. : Receiving a blessing from a statue, believe it or not, likely doesn’t even make the top five for ‘most impressive things I’ve done this past week.’: Truly we are blessed to know you. If Amadia favours you, that is all I need to know. Go in peace, brother.Okay! Our tour of the sanctuary is finally complete and we’ve received our next mission objective several times over: find and rescue the leader of the Seekers, a man named Gareth.  Yellow flags denote locations of interest, usual for sidequests, but they can also be steps necessary to take to make progress with the red flags, which are plot-related. For example, Gareth is the yellow flag far to the north – he’s at that outpost that we had passed on our way to fight the Deep-Dweller. The southern flag is that glowing cave that the squirrel told us about, and the southeastern flag is the end spot for Braccus’ ‘aze that he had those severed heads ‘uild.  We have a number of locations available for us to visit for the next few updates! Where do YOU think we should go? Do we go north and search for Gareth? Do we go south into the shiny cave? Or do we go southeast and tackle Braccus’s la’rinth? Also, now that we know where our companions go when they’re dismissed, do you want to swap anyone out? And finally, what do you think is the answer to Deidara’s riddle? Let me know soon! Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Jun 10, 2021 |
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Jun 10, 2021 07:20
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Maple Leaf posted:We have a number of locations available for us to visit for the next few updates! Gareth first, let's get these collars off. Unless that locks us out of being able to explore the other places, I want to check them both out eventually too. Current party continues to be fine I think. The riddle is shadow.
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Jun 10, 2021 07:57
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Black Robe posted:Gareth first, let's get these collars off. Unless that locks us out of being able to explore the other places, I want to check them both out eventually too. My votes as well. Should probably prioritize the person we need to rescue over caves and mazes.
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Jun 10, 2021 15:24
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