[LP] Might and Magic 6, the Mandate of Heaven

Re: [LP] Might and Magic 6, You'd have figured 'Pirates', right?

Alright. Decisions noted, acted upon.

Unfortunately, the spears we have really aren't that great, so points or no Torg is still hefting that cutlass. Bonus to-hit chance is the deciding factor, though it's not like we intend to be in melee combat much.

Now since we're going to Bootleg Bay, we could go by boat. It's a travel time of three days. Unfortunately, the ship to that region doesn't set out until Tuesday, so we'd be cooling our heels a couple of days.

Walking takes five days.... so, it's not like either option gains us any time.

The deciding factor is the fact that gold is at this point still a resource we'll be feverishly clutching at for a while. Everything is so expensive at this level, and enemies drop so little....

We'll walk it.

Before we go, though, time has passed, and we're heading uphill anyway to buy disarm expertise, so we might as well check the shops, right?

And it's convenient we did.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/ynl7v8elb/2014_03_04_16_05_35_Greenshot.png[/img]

I buy this right up.

And it gives me an excuse to talk about Black Potions. They include a mystic brew which dispels all unnatural aging at a slight stat cost, powerful curatives of both health and mana, and a tonic which infuses your body with artificial levels, all three of which cause you to age before your time. Black potions are very nice, but at a cost.

What is most important about them, however, is that Black potions include Stat Essences. You can only get the effect once, but for the most part, drinking one of these will add a meaty fifteen points to a stat, but subtract five from its opposite. Personality, as you can see, opposes Speed, while Might opposes Intellect, and Accuracy is the rival of Luck. Endurance, however, is where there's a shift, as with seven stats there's going to be an odd one out. The essence of endurance adds fifteen to the stat, but subtracts one from every other.

If you drink all seven essences, you recieve a net gain of 15 to endurance and nine to every other stat. This may not be in your best interest! A Knight, for example, is better off drinking the essences of Might and Speed and completely ignoring their counterparts. They gain fifteen points in the stats they like, and lose a little in stats that have no application for them anyway.

It's not hard, if you remember the formulae, want to spend the time experimenting, or have access to the internet, to just take your initial payment from Potbello in new sorpigal, set up camp outside the general goods store, and brew all the black potions you could ever use right there.

I won't be doing that. In fact, in this play-through, I won't be brewing any essences at all. I may brew and use the other potions if I need them, though. But as far as Essences go, they're only fair game if found in a chest or shop.

I haven't decided who will drink this one, yet. The only one who might not want to is Selias, who needs the personality, and.... maybe Torg, but only because I can't recall if letting your stats get down to zero or below has bad effects.

We also buy everyone the Bow skill, if only because MP is still low and runs out, but arrows are infinite. We still sometimes don't want to profligately waste our caster's magic juice.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/kv6szlntr/2014_03_04_16_09_05_Greenshot.png[/img]

And like a flash, we're off through the depopulated Lizardman camp to Bootleg bay.

And tell the truth. With a name like that, you're thinking 'pirate cove', right?

Definitely pirates. It's gotta one hundred percent be pirates.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/72se3yx27/2014_03_04_16_09_45_Greenshot.png[/img]

Spoiler.

Not a single enemy pirate on this map.

But there's tons of extra ethnic Cannibals! .... for some reason, I'm noticing that a lot. It's, uh... I'm sure they don't mean anything by it?

In any case, I'll note that this is totally an ambush set up along the main road up here. I literally hit the 'Stop, turn based combat time' button the second the map loaded, and they were already right on top of me. Unfair.

In any case, Cannibals come in male and female but, unlike Peasant NPC's who have small but distinct differences in various things between the genders making the men flat out superior (Also Misogyny!?), the only notable difference here is whether the witch doctors are pelting you with bolts of fire or swarms of angry and stinging bees.

Not gonna venture onto the islands off the coast just now, but I'll kill a bunch of Cannibals before I'm through. We need cash for when we get to Free Haven anyway, it's no biggie.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/vxghbs7a7/2014_03_04_16_16_17_Greenshot.png[/img]

There's a town, with a few shops, but the bay contains a grand total of only two trainers, neither of them Masters. So the only notable thing...

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/636om07a7/2014_03_04_16_25_04_Greenshot.png[/img]

.... is that the inn is run by peaceful, completely inoffensive, slightly drunk goblins. Which means the whole Goblinwatch thing could theoretically have been handled diplomatically! Rather than with mass murder. The quest mechanics don't allow for it though. )

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We also make heavy use of this spring outside of town. For some reason, there's a rewarding sound and a shower of sparkles over your portrait the first time you drink from it. Interesting. It also restores 20mp per sip, so we keep coming back as we burn out the cannibal camps. Truly a fountain of magical power.

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Yeah.

That... really needed to be there. For sure. Just to remove all ambiguity that they might not be serious, I guess? In any case, doesn't look like the last people to walk up this road fared as well as we did.

There's some bones scattered around the ground that we could pick up I suppose and probably should have, but don't. Someone in Free Haven wants to buy bones. Like these. I can't, or rather don't want to, imagine why.

We can also get food from the cookpot.

Though. I'm not sure. Uh.

Probably shouldn't think about that too deeply.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/iyeo8rmjj/2014_03_04_16_35_15_Greenshot.png[/img]

Instead of thinking about it, we raid this camps mostly-negligible treasure and swing back east past the empty circus, I don't know why they decided 'SURROUNDED BY CANNIBALS' would be a good place to set up shop sometimes, and find an easy obelisk.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/jp7eejowv/2014_03_04_16_44_56_Greenshot.png[/img]

The message makes no sense at this point. Gotta find them all!

There's also a dungeon right next door.

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This is an interesting one.

Unless I'm mistaken, it's the sole dungeon in the game, unless you count the arena, that you don't get a quest-prompt from outside of it to go exploring. The only quest for the dungeon? You have to go inside to pick up.

It makes the dungeon easy to miss, or pass by.

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Also.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/jt17usue7/2014_03_04_16_47_31_Greenshot.png[/img]

The quest-giver?

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Also kind of easy to miss your first time.

Because he's a wall.

Well, technically speaking, a powerful elemental of hot and molten stone.... in the shape of a wall.

A freaking wall.

Nope. I'm out. For more reasons that one. That strange monster he's talking about? Will definitely wreck our shit at this level. And there's more than just goblins to contend with in here.

We can come back after a few other dungeons, maybe. For the time being, let's go kill another camp of cannibals.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/6rk4iovdr/2014_03_04_16_50_30_Greenshot.png[/img]

There's a bunch of them right south of the town.

And right after I take this screenshot, at least six Witch Doctors fired spells all at once, all of which hit way on the high end of possible damage, and I don't have time to take more pictures as I turn a complete 180 and run right back into town, going for the temple and heals. Little expensive, particularly when they're waking up unconscious people, but I don't have the time to stop and raise them to positive health just then.

I still kill them off, but it's a fight in the town and I can't use splash damage fireballs because they're going to kill the stupid damn peasants who have no qualms whatsoever about a couple doze cannibals pitching their campsite not a hundred feet outside of town!

Meteor shower would have been a great way to handle that. No shops sell it until Free Haven. Oh well.

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.... Hope they didn't plan to eat that.

And it's a little unnerving that in large part that's because she doesn't look at all preserved well. I mean, she's turning blue. That's just disgusting, full of rot and bacteria.

Should have let the damn cannibals die of horrible wasting diseases instead.

Disgusted for all the wrong reasons.

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Their treasure is pretty decent though. Directly increasing spell points isn't bad. Though, it's kind of debatable whether it's better or worse than increasing a stat that increases your mp.

Mostly depends on how high your stats already are. Low stats, where you can find a nice ring with a boost in the twenties and get a couple thresh-holds past by, stats are better, usually. Unless the equipment increases your mana by more than the stat would, but that's less likely.

Later on, though, when you could equip an artifact with +30 to a stat or more and still not cross a borderline, directly adding health or mp is usually better.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/ix9bt3a3j/2014_03_04_17_05_27_Greenshot.png[/img]

Especially when you get some nice increases. This doesn't sound like much, sure. But keep in mind, a fireball costs eight mp, and our biggest max mp is in the sixties, still. Altogether, eleven more mana is a nice increase.

Both go on Latrio, since his max mp has been lagging behind the other two a bit.

We also pick up some other stuff, but...

At this point, my patience with all these cannibals and lizardmen runs out, and we practice the time-honored art of ducking and weaving as we just ignore the rest of the enemies on the mainland, running past them to Free Haven.

This is a mistake! As you will soon see.

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Once again, land travel has obligingly left us right in aggravation range of a group of enemies on the other side. At least this time it takes pity and doesn't have them literally right on top of us.

You get the same ding and flash from getting here as you do from drinking from that Fountain of Magic earlier. At this point, you're judged worthy, and a wide new world is waiting for you.

We're not ready for it. Not by far. The game doesn't expect you to be here at this point, and the enemy spawns on the map completely stop pulling any punches.

Those dots to the north? Mages. "Oh, like the ones in New Sorpigal", you say? Well. Yes. But also no.

Around New Sorpigal, the odds were more likely you'd see apprentice mages than anything else. There were scattered Journeymen of course, but an actual full-blown mage is few and far between. Here, the encounter rate is almost reversed. I've never seen a single apprentice on this map, myself. With that said, while there's a fair number of Journeymen, most of what you'll find is Mages. And lightning bolts. Lots of them.

Leaving them aside, the map also contains Archers.

I don't get close enough to screenshot an archer. They come in groups, you see, and if there's a group then there's probably at least one Fire Archer. Possibly more.

The basic archer has 35 health, 14 ac, deals 1d6+1 damage per arrow, and has some basic elemental resistances to fire, cold, electric, and poison. In simpler terms, Archers, the weakest of that set of three, are equivalent in danger level to Lizard Wizards, the most dangerous of the lizardman set.

Master archers have 93 health, close to triple their basic comrades'. They also have 16 ac, more of all the resistances an archer has, and can choose between a normal arrow that does 2d6+2 damage, or a burning arrow that does 3d6.

A single Fire Archer, if you're fortunate enough to see just one at this level, has 171 health, 22 ac, more of all the resistances than Master Archers and a little bit of pure magic resistance besides, and can choose between firing a normal arrow dealing 3d6+3 damage or a burning arrow dealing 4d6.

As if that weren't enough, they can cast a fireball with a skill level of five. Which means 5d6 damage to everyone in the party. All at once. There's some random chance to it, but they seem to lean towards pitching fireballs more often than not.

And it goes without saying that, being talented archers, even if they don't fling spells at you they'll be hitting much more often than they miss.

We want to be in Free Haven. We really do! But we won't be dicking around a lot, here.

That said, as long as we don't draw the notice of things that can feasibly, alone, kill three out of four of our party in two castings.... we really do want to be in Free Haven. It's the adventurer's bottleneck, but it's also the 'Big City' of Enroth. There's a lot of spell guilds potentially containing every last spell for all of the possible magical disciplines we can have at this point, this is where you can feasibly start purchasing the nicer stuff though it'll be more expensive, there's a ton of skill trainers, 14 experts and three masters, there's two coach companies, which means four horseshoes, which I divide up between tim and Latrio (Air and WATER MAGIC)....

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And there's Osric Temper. Foremost Knight of the realm. Unlike Ironfist and Mist, which are very much geared towards Paladins and Sorcerors, the Lords really stop being super specific at this point. They can't afford to, in many cases. Osric lives here, in this castle.

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We are in NO hurry to do his council quest. The dude wants us to kick down the door to a single-room outpost filled with devils and charge in swinging. That's... not something we can feasibly survive at this level. Much less succeed at.

That aside, he offers Knights possibly the easiest initial promotion quest in the game, questionably tied with sorcerors. As long as you know what to do in both cases. It's uncertain, because the sorceror quest needs you to actually leave the region and almost definitely get in a fight.... but while it's unlikely you'll get in a fight for this one, and you don't have to go far, if you do get tangled up in battle along the way you're likely to die.

Still, easy rank.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/xmu5xlcdb/2014_03_04_17_13_08_Greenshot.png[/img]

We ignore all the other guilds after this to charge directly to the guild of WATER. Everything else aside, there's a spell we very much want.

And they have one in stock.

But here's where I realize my goof. I misremembered prices. The book is about twice as expensive as I was thinking it would be, and so while I thought Merchant was going to have us sitting comfortable on a little extra, we're actually short.

Now, we don't have to have Town Portal right now. We can't use it to its full potential until Latrio hits Master anyway. But we want it really bad.

Other things for the moment, so I set this down for a few minutes, and we carefully skirt the edges of getting-attention-of-deadly-arrows to reach a pub nearby.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/97lxwjdgf/2014_03_04_17_21_30_Greenshot.png[/img]

Is it really that easy? ... Can't be, right?

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/d5dszopnj/2014_03_04_17_25_22_Greenshot.png[/img]

It's absolutely that easy.

Welcome to being a Cavalier, Torg. You'll notice you just shot up by about thirty max hp. Also, while you don't get gold for this, you do get some hefty experience for this level. Unless my math is wrong, everyone could gain two levels right now, and are close to a third.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/fnzi0dbdr/2014_03_04_17_27_04_Greenshot.png[/img]

He also offers an advanced promotion quest, to Champions, buuut.... that's right up there on a list of 'thinges what arre goinge to gettte us gutted like fish forre ye market and no mestake'.

We'll come back to that one later. Much later.

For now, I've been running around off camera, and our merchant isn't near high enough to make a profit off of resale yet, but a skill of 7 in water means a seventy percent chance of successfully enchanting things, and some of the stuff we've been picking up is barely good enough to get an enchantment. If we didn't pay, then it's all profit, and a few extra gold.

Torg ends up swapping their armor with an identical set that instead buffs resistance through that.

Eventually, I give up and go kill those mages I mentioned on entering free haven. It's a painful fight.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/sgnm0amzj/2014_03_04_17_39_38_Greenshot.png[/img]

And in between, as I look for healing wells I miss by a bit. The one I want for health is on the green.

This one gives permanent Might increases.

Unfortunately, there's a maximum, and while I'm not sure where the cap is, Torg is above it. A shame, since they're the one who really wants it most. Additionally, you can only drink 8 times before the well runs dry. I spread the points out among the mages as best I can.

Then I go back, kill the last of the mages, loot the rest of the bodies, and buy that Town Portal spell.

Once Latrio hits mastery, that thing is going to be our big go-to for transportation. There's a hireling that can cast it at that level once a day.... but fuck them. They want a whopping five thousand gold in advance pay and half of everything you find.

Better to be able to cast it on our own, even if that currently leaves us with only slightly more than a hundred gold in spending cash.

Which is why we can't really level up just yet, even sitting on a heap of experience.

Now.

It's March. And the Shrine of Personality is in a place called Silver Cove. We can now get there by coach or boat, but when it comes down to it, actually getting to the shrine is gonna be....

Well, it can be done. But it's iffy. Getting back out again, alive, is even more iffy. Good thing death is cheap!

Maybe we don't want to probably throw our lives away on a pilgrimage only Selias benefits much from, though. And alternative option is that, if you haven't guessed, we've fulfilled the requisites for Sorcery Advancement. We just have to get ourselves back to Mist and talk to Al.

Or we could pick a quest you like and do that. Comes down to it, there's more than a couple available to pick up in Free Haven! They're pretty much beyond our ability, though, really. Pick from something we've already seen! ... Uh, that isn't the Fire Lord's place. Gonna need to hold off a bit on that one. ... Stupid Ogres. Stupid Fallen Defender, with its stupid scads of HP and powerful attacks and its stupid, stupid immunity to physical damage....

 

[X] Do the fucking Temple of Baa already

It's seriously not that bad. Like, just, everyone with arrows and it's a walkthrough.

 

[X] Advance the Sorcerors to Wizards, then Temple of Baa

 

[X] Advance the Sorcerors to Wizards, then Temple of Baa

 

[X]March to the Temple Of PErsonality.

 

Does the Temple of Personality have a Cult of Personality?

 

Re: [LP] Might and Magic 6, LETS GET EFFICIENT

The decision is to kill the temple of Baa and upgrade wizards, not necessarily in that order.

It gives me a sad face. The saddest of faces. But I couldn't put it off forever.

It's thursday today...

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/t8cydn3z3/2014_03_06_14_01_15_Greenshot.png[/img]

Which means the Free Haven ships go to both Mist and Silver cove, and we have enough gold for one trip.

I should go to Mist and get the wizard upgrade. But you know?

Either way, we're not going to have the cash to go anywhere else, and we're likely to die getting it, particularly since the overmap of mist is cleared. And when we die, we're going to teleport to New Sorpigal anyway.

So I'm going to stick to my guns and charge for the Shrine of Personality.

The problem is that it's in Silver Cove. And Silver cove has these guys.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/w3q1ki7z3/2014_03_06_14_05_59_Greenshot.png[/img]

We're heavy on casters, so they aren't so much of a problem. But if you're playing a heavily weapon focused party, you'll hate them. Almost as much as you'll hate oozes. Gargoyles of any sort start the trend of a bunch of dicks that have pure physical damage resistance. Diamond gargoyles in specific are immune to being hit with weapons, which... is not how diamond works. Thanks, magic!

The shrine is north of town, but we have a quick stop to make first.

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/6yz1738in/2014_03_06_14_06_57_Greenshot.png[/img]

Loretta Fleise is the Chancellor of the Treasury, and she has an... interesting council quest that we aren't even going to look at yet. A timer starts once you ask about it. More importantly...

[img width=600 height=450]http://s25.postimg.org/qi3mgg7a7/2014_03_06_14_07_51_Greenshot.png[/img]

... She's also head druid, and offers druid promotion quests.

The first one is a pain in the ass, because it's date specific. Four days in the year when it can be completed. March 20 is the first. Miss that one? I sure hope you can remember the rest! Write it down or something.

The circle of stones is actually really easy to get to, as long as you have Water Walk.

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It's just north of the town, on an island. Unfortunately, it does nothing for us today, and we can't afford to wait around a couple of weeks for it to hit the right date, in either time or the risk factor. We could sleep outside, when it gets too exhausting to remain awake, but that has the possibility of surprise enemy spawns that will murder us hard.

Now, you need to have water walk in order to get to the shrine at low levels. The only way is by sea. Try to come at the shrine by land, and the disorienting teleportations will twist and turn you around and make you an easy target for ALL THE DRUIDS that like to hang out there. The land route is a trap. By sea, and charging at full speed, you'll be running headlong into spells and trailing gargoyles behind you, but you can at least get there.

Usually.

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Through a lot of ducking and weaving, dancing around Harm spells, swarms of bees, and master level fireballs, and staying a few seconds ahead of the claws of angry gargoyles, we make it!

.... Roughly four seconds later....

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WE MEET AGAIN! Good to see you, chum. Help yourself to my pocket change.

Though, well, I knew this was coming and so I took all our armor and stuff off in advance so we don't have to repair it.

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We wake up outside new Sorpigal on.... hm. Only a week has passed, yes. In other words, since three days pass on the boat from here to mist, and another three days on the boat from Mist to Silver Cove, we could make it back in time for that quest.

Except for the fact that the boat for mist only leaves on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. This being Sunday... not happening, no.

We can still make it back in time, but it's much more down to chance.

For the time being, we'll go to the Temple of Baa.

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It starts out by nicely dumping a handful of GOD DAMN BATS right in your face.

Have I mentioned I don't like this place? I dont like it, no sir. It hosts all manner of vermin, every single enemy in here can either poison or inflict disease on you, and none of them ever drop any loot beyond the rare and shitty ring. There's some gold to be found, but aside from the one chest near the beginning with Potbello's stupid candlestick, it's all towards the end.

As in, after you've slogged through all the enemies. Which means you have to either have enough money to throw as curing disease and such, the spells for it, or just grit your teeth and fight with the inflictions. Not a good idea! Better still, they want you to come here first, and unless you have an archer, nobody is guaranteed to so much as have one bow! And the first guilds don't have cure disease or poison ever, so it's down to getting super lucky on a loot drop!

Fucking temple of Baa.

Well on the plus side, coming at it later, we do have bows. And better still, fireballs!

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We turn on some Torch Light so we can see better, and hello there! Small room right at the beginning with snakes already trying to get through the door from the other side when you come close? That's great. Candlestick's in the box there, so we have to open the door.

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Don't actually have to come this way, but fuck your snakes.

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Fuck your spiders.

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At the very least, after the start it stops being small rooms and opens up into caves, usually giving some distance for a while. It doesn't last.

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Little girl acquired! Don't go into cursed vermin warrens you stupid little shit.

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I'M SURE THIS IS A GREAT ROOM. There's a little bit of stuff in there. Not much. No gold.

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And then it starts doing fun things like dropping enemies in from around blind corners, close enough that even if you throw a fireball before they get to you, it blows up in your damn face. All kinds of fun.

Welp, time to go handle what we've got.

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I was mistaken about how much these guys cost! My bad. They're still not great, but we suddenly need this guy in order to get to Druid+ in time.

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Take your candlestick, lower our reputation, I don't give a shit. We need to hire that guy before the game decides to randomize the town populace like the items in the stores.

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Aaaaand I forget which direction the spider queen is.

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Protip: not left from there. let's try again.

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There's another fork. Now, we can continue on a levelish footing, or go down into a HOLE IN THE GROUND. With lots of snakes in it.

Guess which is the right way.

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YEP.

Also there's snake eggs. I pick these up but forget to sell them I think! Because I'm smart. And happy to be here.

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The spider queen is a unique enemy that's really just a recolor of a Huge Spider. When you're supposed to come here, she's a huge deal. Now that we're actually doing it, she drops like a pinata. We can't see her in the shadows in this shot, I guess. She's there.

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Blech. There's also a chest in a hidden-ish room beyond here. If you come this far in, then you better loot it, otherwise you come out with almost nothing of worth.

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Yes. And let's NEVER RETURN.

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Still not how spiders work!

At this point it's all better though. We rest a few days in the inn and cast town portal.

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We don't want to touch the next promotion yet. Place is actually hard.

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Pick up a trader because a few extra merchant points don't change much, but still helps. Particularly since we're soon gonna pay for a LOT of levels all at once.

Then wait and cast town portal again.

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Not touching that one either! Place is not nice. There's some stuff we want before touching it.

And then we level everyone up.

Six levels. And I confirm that after level ten, you start getting six points per level instead of five, so I'd assume that it increases by one for every ten levels!

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Walls of beef. Lots of points to spend.

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Plenty of druidic MP. We'll want expert perception eventually. Not immediately, though. Lots of options.

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Doing good. At this point, though, fire is comparatively low when stacked against Latrio's water. Lots of things to do with skills, though.

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And as I said, I'm dumping everything into water, here.

Latrio needs a total of 23 points for those last two skill levels... with 8 stored, six per level.... another three levels to mastery, unless I dump horseshoes in. We'll be dumping the Gate Master soon one way or the other, but it won't be too long before we can do everything he could and better.

But with ten points, that's one hundred percent enchantment odds... if the stuff is good enough to enchant. That's half of the breaking-the-economy equation, set!

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And it's April, the month of Endurance. This one is... again, in a place that's going to be pretty harsh to get to, but everyone likes more endurance. We might even be able to both get there and escape alive at this point!

Also, now, who should I use that Black Speed potion on?

 

Does Speed effect who gets to go first in a combat? If so, give it to Robotninja, because getting a fireball off before the enemy can act probably makes a big difference in the difficulty of encounters.

 

Just discovered what mastery in Shield does, and holy shit, put everything into that.

 

Question: does the little girl we've rescued from the Temple of Baa count as a Damsel in Distress? We earn bucketloads of XP from completing the advancement quests, even if we don't have members of that class in our party, right?

 

Man, that is a LOT of skill points. 2 levels to learning, 1 to Disarm Trap, 3 to Merchant, 2 levels to Earth Magic, and one level to... do we need Identify Item, since we died? You said we'd lose the Scholar if we died, right? If we can get another scholar, then add it to perception or meditation. Whichever would be more useful.

 

Maybe the druid should level her magic more and let the other magi pick up the slack with some skills.

And Torg Dont' for get the other parts of the Tank Equation.

 

I'm not, but I want that level 10 for when I have the opportunity to get mastery training.

 

Too young! Needs proper damsel-y attributes that haven't yet sprouted. Also, political importance. Humphrey is thinking of a very specific Damsel, none else count. Afraid there's no quest loopholes in here.

Well, on the one hand, you're currently sitting on a bunch of unidentified items. On the other, you can just pay money to get things identified back in town, and we can always pick up another Scholar. Once we find one I mean. Random peasant population has a lot of useful-hireling options to choose from, and it seems sometimes like even more completely useless ones. Even completely useless ones that you have to pick up for specific quests sometimes!

I think there's probably a set scholar or two in a house somewhere, like many hirelings, but I can't recall where. Just kicking down people's doors and asking what there job is until I find one, probably. Scholar and Banker are pretty darn good for the early game. ... might want to pick up a couple of spell masters instead at the late game, for meaty casting buffs. All depends.

 

Identify Item, then. Hopefully two levels in it will be enough, for now.

 

Upgrade fire magic to the max. Don't stop until mastered.

 

Alrighty, going to be a quick one. Everyone gets their points and you'll note...

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Between increasing merchant ranks and a mercantile hireling, the prices around Mist are starting to get pretty decent. One step closer to bending the economy over a table!

Hardly there yet, of course. Buying is one thing, but we need to be able to sell at close to true value in order to manage that. Maybe we could pull it off in New Sorpigal. Maybe not. Stuff in New Sorpigal isn't really worth pulling it on. In any case, merchant expertise is going on the list of things to pick up.

Some identification skill helps....

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But not too much. There's a little bit of a trick to figuring out if something is enchanted at this point even without enough skill, or a scholar, to identify it for free. If there's something nice on it, then the shopkeepers will offer unusually high amounts for it. They're canny, though, and I don't believe they'll ever offer more than an item's true value for an unidentified object.

With that being said, even with merchant scores starting to look good, she shouldn't be offering full price for a Lunar Ring.

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And a test bears that out. This ring offers a small MP increase! With that said, everything else looks like it's probably normal, though I'm going to keep the helmet so I have that checked anyway. I also identify, and equip, the bow and the amulet. Neither have enchantments on them, but they're the only two enchantment-grade items in the mess... even if you can find something on a fine ring, for example, it's not going to be very good and it's too shoddily crafted for you to enchant yourself.

The bow can't get anything on it until Mastery, so we're going to have to wait, but the amulet is in the clear right now. It winds up picking up a nice bonus to accuracy, or at least not a terrible one, and goes directly on Torg. Being as torg is the only one making a habit of hitting things and firing bows often, the bonus hit chance it pulls in on both sides is much appreciated.

And now it's April. So!

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We make use of our one/day Town Portal Master. It's not this good at expert rank... it's still only a quick escape from a dungeon at best. At Master, however, you can pick your target location from a handy stylized map of the continent.

You only have six fixed targets, of course, but you can't have everything. Between this and Lloyd's Beacon at master rank, you can set foot in most of the continent's regions in a single day. It's still not a perfect travel solution, but it makes things much simpler for the most part.

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We arrive in the Frozen Highlands.

This region is interesting in that it actually has two lords, castles, and towns, divided by a stretch of unclimbable mountains. You can pass them, but only with the flight spell.

We land in the northern town. Fortunately, it's where we want to go. Unfortunately, it's surrounded by Archers. Fortunately, between here and the castle we want it's only archers. Not a pleasant trek by any means, but proper dodging makes it a survivable one, even if you get to the castle-area walls to find archers already inside. Relatively speaking, however, the shrine is conveniently located inside the walls of the castle stromgard.

Meanwhile, you don't want to drink from these wells immediately. A portal drops you between them, and they will permanently raise either your Might or Endurance scores by a solid five points... at the cost of killing you stone dead. For now we'll pass, even if that is reversible.

Also important.

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This town holds, immediately behind us, the Initiate guild of Dark magic.

Dark and Light are the end-game spell skills. Don't get me wrong, for now, Fire is king. Dark and Light spells are expensive to cast, and so your other elements will likely remain your go-to spells for most of the game.

However, towards the end, you'll actually have the kind of mana to cast these things trivially, most of the biggest baddies are completely immune to Fire damage, which will be your likely choice of poison until you hit them, and nearly, or all, I can't recall which, of the buffing spells in the game are wrapped up into a few specific Light and Dark spells.

Counterbalancing this is the fact that you have to be a Pure caster to learn either. If you are a cleric or a sorceror, then they're yours for the taking. Which is slightly odd. You would think either of them would get one, right? Especially as the guildmasters themselves proclaim Light to be the magic 'of Good' and Dark the magic 'of Evil'.

Using them doesn't effect your reputation at all either way, either. Well, except for one spell. It hits everything, and it does mean everything, on the outside map when you cast it. This includes innocent peasants, who'll die from it even if you just bought both the skill and spell! This also includes you. Even so, it's really more of a byproduct of casting the spell, and the casting itself doesn't effect your reputation any more than, say, a fireball does.

Well, it's something to keep in mind. At the moment, just the membership fee to the guild of Dark is a meaty thousand gold.

And so, we charge through the snowy hills to the castle, aaand....

.... it turns out the shrine does need us to talk to the Seer after all. Whoops.

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Nipping off by the skin of our teeth, we get ourselves back to Ironfist.

While we're here, we also get Torg shield mastery. They've got trainers for all the armor skills, so why not... though, shield is twice as expensive as expertise in anything else.

Running back to the Highlands again and dodging the fireballs mostly again, we get plus ten endurance for everyone. At 25, y'alls HP scores are starting to look a little less anemic!

While we're here we might as well talk to the world's best Archer.

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Eric von Stromgard is a pretty swell, relaxed guy. The sort who can appreciate Latrio's current headgear for more than just the enchantment upon it. He's got a display of some of his favorite hunting trophies at his side, and he's got a council quest for us.

He's going to support us in the council. For sure! He just wants a little something in exchange, a bit of our time and effort, quid pro quo.

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No big deal.

He's just sick of the snow, and wants us to end Winter.

He also has archer promotion quests!

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We're going to take this one. Not now, because I'm not sure how we stack up to Ogres at the moment and there's a bunch of them. Also, we'd have to get to his keep and I don't think we can just yet.

But you need to clear his advancement quests in order to get Master bowmanship eventually.

We're in no hurry, though. The trainer is a pain in the ass to get to anyway.

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That done, we come out of the castle immediately dodging fireballs, sprint back to town, and set up shop in a spot conveniently just far enough from the archers on both sides that they aren't chasing us any more.

What I'm going to do, next time, is take a rest at the inn to recharge mister chinbeard's gate spell, get somewhere else, and then kick him right out.

What I do next is the question. There's nothing on our level in New Sorpigal, but there's a few places in Ironfist that could use our attention, and I think we miiiiight be just strong enough to squeak by the Silver Helms in Mist.

It's pretty much 'pick a dungeon you liked the look of' time.

 

How about the other Temple of Baa in Ironhead?

 

Why the abrupt stop? This was a good story!

 

Apologies, it just seemed odd that such a lively story would die so suddenly.