What if Massacre Princess was real? Let's Play Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage Until It Breaks or I Do

[Timrod]

Summary

: After another few minutes of Godric looping, I buy a set of equipment for Becan as well as the Light and Shielding wands, which are 10,000 gold each.

: Wands are accessories that let you cast a specific spell - in this case, we get Starlight Shield, which is a better version of the Air Shield spell. In theory, we can only do this ten times before running out of charges.

: Of course, that would assume that any of the programmers at H2O knew what they were doing. The game doesn’t save wand charges, so you can save and reload to refill your wand.

: Now that we’ve got everything, it’s time to pick up Becan.

: “You’re not Mirari.”

: “Absolutely correct. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

: “How did you get here?”

: “How’d you?”

: “I came on the road.”

: “Well, what do you know? I came the same way. And what were you looking for in my shop today? Spice? I’m out of it. I do have some healing potions. A few restoratives…”

: “How do you know I’m from Gwernia?”

: “You’re wearing Phelan’s colors.”

: “You’re right. I do wear Phelan’s colors. So tell me, shopkeeper.. what else do you know about the knighthood?”

: “Then you know Phelan well! And Ramsay? Did you know him? Master Bowden?”

: “Does he still think he knows everything?”

: “YOU DO KNOW BOWDEN!!!”

: “Of course I know him. And the yard boy, Gabrion. And little Abrecan..”

: “Abrecan?!”

: “You know little Abrecan?”

: “LITTLE Abrecan?”

: Metal Gear!? A security camera!?

: “He was little when I knew him.”

: “I can’t picture him as ever being little. Who are you?”

: “My name is Becan.”

: “BATTLE OF LONELY MOUNTAIN!!!”

: “You know that?”

: I cut this off a bit, but Becan will join us if we replace Abrecan or Godric. I thought about taking him.. but we’re going to hold off for now.

: The reason is that I forgot something: unlike Rheda (who sucks), Godric gets a pretty major power spike right around this point in the game.

: Before we can get it, I need to grind Godric to level 5 wizard. This takes 36,000 EXP. We could camp grind, but there’s a slightly faster way.

: If we head to the far end of Erromon, past some broken geometry, we wind up on the path to the goblin camp.

: On the way there, we run into a cave bear. Cave bears are regular bears scaled to like 1.5x size with slightly better stats.

: At the end of the path is a goblin tent. Going in that tent respawns the bear outside. The bear is worth 1200 EXP. I spend a bit running back and forth on fast forward.

: Cave bears also hit pretty hard, which is why I made that huge stack of curing potions.

: Brenna gets thief 4, which lets her hit about as hard as Abrecan can if she attacks the enemy from behind.

: Alaron reaches 20 dexterity and warrior 5. He still doesn’t hit nearly as hard as Abrecan does, but he hits far more consistently than he did before and takes turns far more often.

: Abrecan gets warrior 6 and shield 4. Combine this with the shield wand, and he’s a dedicated tank.

: And finally, Godric gets wizard 5. It’s time for him to start powerspiking.

: Behind the house with the tunnel entrance in it, there’s a ladder we can take to get to a chest we want to open.

: This chest is absolute bullshit if you don’t know how it works.

: If you open this chest, there’s a good chance you get somewhere between 10 and 20 spices or gemstones and some gold. It’s also possible to get only gold.

: What isn’t at all obvious is that this chest has a 1 in 20 chance of dropping one of the best pieces of caster equipment in the game. The only way you could know this is there is if you either randomly found it or read the Prima guide.

: There is one other chest like this one in the game, but that one also has a 1/20 chance of dropping the item we want.

: We have a special place in Hell for people that do this shit. It’s designed to keep them away from game development.

: They did this to sell guides when the internet was widely accessible?

: The witch ring boosts wizard by 2. This is important because skills can only be trained to a maximum of 10, but actually scale to 15.

: We go back to the trader underground who sells the spices and gemstones, and ask her for training.

: She can train the fireball spell up to a maximum level of 8. Godric is the only character it’s useful on.

: If you feel like backtracking, you can get Godric’s wizard level even higher for free. Let’s do that because I have nothing better to do.

: If we go back to the crossroads, there’s a third road that goes to Talewok. Talewok is the third major town, but we can’t get there until after finishing Erromon.

: The reason I didn’t do this earlier is because there are some fights on the way that would’ve been too hard without the new armor and grinding, like this group of three cave bears.

: Or this one down the road, which is four regular bandits, two wolves, and a bandit boss.

: What we’re looking for is this lake, which takes probably 10 minutes to reach from Erromon on fast-forward.

: South of it is another group of ogres.

: This group has an ogre boss, which is a regular ogre with better stats and a throwing weapon.

: Thanks to our stockpile of potions, we survive the fight.

: The ogres are guarding this hole, which has the item we’re looking for inside.

: The wizard hat is the other 1/20 drop from the witch ring chest. This one is a guaranteed drop. The wizard hat provides 15 spell battery and adds 1 level of wizard.

: Now let’s head back to Erromon. Surely nothing bad will happen.

: This is why I’m not playing on real hardware. I also hadn’t saved since getting the witch ring.

: One reload later, we arrive back at Erromon near the king’s house.

: I will skip all of the dialogue here because it’s Alaron retelling the story of how he got bodied by goblins.

: Txomin offers to introduce Alaron to Cradawgh if we can kill the goblin king. This is much easier said than done.

: The mountains are a maze, because this game subscribes to the early Shin Megami Tensei school of getting people to grind by forcing them to get lost in mazes.

: What we want to do is head up as much as possible and skip the caves.

: Here we get introduced to the two flavors of goblin sergeant. There are two types - one has a bow and is barely different from a goblin scout, the other has a shield and way more HP.

: Goblin Sergeants have a chance to drop dragon leather armor.

: The main camp is patrolled by small armies of goblins and wolves. These are nothing now that we’ve grinded.

: At this point, because we’re overleveled, we start to see Brenna outscale Abrecan for damage.

: The reason has to do with the thief skill. The thief skill adds a bonus to hit (one person on GameFAQs claims it’s 10% per level) that applies all the time, but then adds a damage bonus when attacking from behind.

: This is why you want to replace Abrecan with Becan. Abrecan can’t learn thief, but Becan can, and so Becan will rapidly outscale Abrecan even with the same stats.

: The main area has some tents we can go in for EXP.

: One of them is full of wolves for some reason, including the dire wolf, which is a regular wolf scaled to 1.5x and given extra stats.

: The goblins must be hosting a furry con.

: The main encampment has a bridge that takes us to where the boss is.

: The game absolutely hurls encounters at you, some of which seem to respawn if you enter one of the goblin tents.

: By the end, we start running into goblin poisoners. They’re effectively goblin sergeants (the kind with the shield) who use throwing weapons that do minimal damage and poison on hit. Poison is a laughable status effect.

: The first bridge leads to two more bridges, which takes us directly to the boss room.

: Kitarak doesn’t attack unless we talk to him, so we’re free to loot the chest behind him first.

: The treasure is an acid wand, which.. I don’t think it does very much.

: That’s not what they all say. Most of them don’t say anything, they just try to kill you and hope you hear it at some point before you die.

: Kitarak is identical to a regular hobgoblin, except that he has a unique scissor-sword thing.

: How would you even hit with that thing? Those blades will shatter the second they hit anything harder than air.

: It looks like the pair of garden shears I got my wife for Christmas last year.

: We’ve grinded so much that Kitarak is a pushover. Abrecan and Alaron both get multiple turns before he’s able to shield himself.

: Godric’s fireball spell is useful if the AI decides to cluster, but in this case they didn’t.

: Kitarak drops his sword, which casts the lifesteal spell on hit. This goes on Brenna, and I shuffle equipment a bit.

: All the experience from the goblin camp let Abrecan hit warrior 7 and 25 strength, which is enough to let him use the chaos sword.

: Alaron then gets Trahern’s sword. My plan is that as soon as we’re done with Erromon, I’m going to go back to Gwernia and get him trained in thief.

: Speaking of which, have an early look at a piece I have Salty Vanilla working on. The chad Brenna vs. the virgin Alaron.

: Abrecan is at warrior 7 (and 25 strength) by this point, so I can probably use the chaos sword on him.

: We now get to walk all the way back to Erromon. Have I mentioned that more goblins spawn outside once Kitarak is dead?

: Several minutes of running (and one glitch that let me fall halfway down the mountain) later, we’re back where we started.

: A couple groups of goblins spawn near the entrance to Erromon, but Brenna takes them out pretty effectively. That’s 39 damage from a side hit, not a backstab.

: “Pleased we are with your courageous efforts and with your success.”

: “Thank you, Txomin. It was not an easy fight, but I’ve chased out the goblins. Their leader Kitarak is destroyed. They will not trouble you any longer.”

: “Still, they seem stronger. The next time we meet them they may be even more powerful.”

: This sounds dumb because all the goblins are dead, but it’s actually a reference to something I need to go all the way back to Kitarak’s tent for once we pick up Becan.

: “You must keep watch on the stronghold, sir. And if you see them rising again, don’t hesitate to act.”

: “Excellent! Eternal devotion and gratitude have you, young Alaron..”

: “Young Alaron…? This seems a bit flattering to me!”

: “Brenna, don’t interrupt the King!”

: “Watch out, Alaron. He’s being far too nice!”

: “Now tired you must be from fierce combat you have faced. Accept please the hospitality of my subjects at our inn, the Izaka. After a restful night, ready I’m sure you’ll be with your journey to continue.”

: I feel like at this point I’d tell Brenna to jam the pruning shears into him.

: “Your pardon, sir. I still need a healer. Before we sought out the goblins, you had agreed to help us find Master Cradawgh…”

: I’m going to summarize the rest.

: Txomin doesn’t know where Cradawgh is.

: Brenna reminds Txomin that Alaron asked for no pickles.

: Alaron threatens to settle in Erromon, which causes Txomin to point him to Talewok.

: We then meet these two guys from the forest, who tell us to find Gotzone and Zurene. The game gives you intricate directions on how to get to their house.

: We’re not going to do that just yet, because from what I understand there’s a possibility that if you haven’t picked up Becan by the time you leave Erromon that he disappears entirely, so I make sure to take him.

: I also want to make sure the teleporter works. As it turns out, I had its location wrong - it’s in the northernmost part of the tunnels.

: The game never gives you any indication that the teleporter is active, and I need to make sure this is active to save us a long walk near the end of the game.

: The teleporter works, so I take a quick trip to the shop in Gwernia to get thief on Alaron and Becan.

: I also took a trip back to the end of the goblin camp because there’s a sidequest there you can only do if you have Becan with you. We can’t do that because the game thinks we already did it.

: Because I needed to use the tunnels anyway, I took the backdoor to Gotzone and Zurene’s house. I’m going to cut about half of this conversation out because the developers did not know how to use flags.

: What happens is that you talk to them and the game behaves as if you haven’t already killed Kitarak. Once that dialog plays, you get the intended dialog.

: “Who is this sister, Zurene?”

: “Yeraza is the matriarch of all Mirari. While Txomin plays the King, she leads the kingdom, does its thinking, soothes disputes, and well instructs our Council. Al things come through her great wisdom.”

: Txomin’s dad probably sent him on a quest halfway across the world and was very disappointed when he came back.

: Can she help me?

: “Yeraza’s favor will go far indeed.”

: “You think she knows a healer?”

: “Yeraza sees what must be seen. You must meet her tonight before leaving Erromon.”

: There’s a tunnel entrance in the back of their house we can use to go right to the next cutscene.

: “Magnifica, guests we bring you, a humanboy.. flushed out goblin horde did he!”

: “Your magnificence, it is a great honor to be brought before you.”

: “So it is. Use your chance wisely. Plenty of food there is for every hungry mouth, humangirl..”

: “Take all you can fit in your pouch. Go on! Hungry you must be!”

: I don’t think food can fix a waist that’s maybe a third of your shoulder length. Where does she keep her internal organs?

: She’s like a mummy and keeps them in a canopic jar.

: “Just smell that! You won’t smell cooking like that outside of Erromon! Just roots and herbs and berries, isn’t it? But they seem to work magic with the stuff!”

: “Much braving this pup does for us, magnifica. And telling us he was of our pretty Txomin..”

: I think that might be a typo and they meant “petty”, or maybe Txomin is hot for a three foot tall green guy. Who knows?

: " Txomin! Hah! Searching are you not, pup, for the master namer? Want you not Cradawgh? Move closer. I would know a little more of you.."

: Isn’t that a medieval way of asking for sex?

: She’s stuck in a hick town full of little green guys.

: Like you?

: Very funny. You’re two inches taller than me.

: “Yeraza may be a curious one. But she alone may tell you of things you need be knowing.”

: “What’s this, humanboy? There be a burning in the air about you. An alien warmth you carry on you!”

: “You do carry much that tells of this human magic also.. and speaks its power through names.”

: “Oh no, magnifica! I’m no magician.”

: “What? Do not tell us this. Do you not weave spells, use charms and summon fire against the goblin foe?”

: That was mostly Godric. I don’t use magic because it’s less efficient than having warrior and thief and scoring 50 damage backstabs.

: “Why do you look so pale, magnifica?”

: “Say, Gotzone… what be this creature you have brought into our midst?”

: I’m going to cut a lot of this out because it’s Yeraza talking about how the Mirari were protected by a dragon who taught them magic and then died. Alaron also retells the “I got bodied by a goblin” story for the seventh time.

: She reiterates that we need go to Talewok and gives Alaron a magic tree branch we’ll use once we’re done with the Talewok area.

: Next time, we’ll go to Talewok before turning right around and going back up Mount Goblin to kill chaos. Speaking of which…

: There’s a sidequest of sorts in the goblin camp, but you have to have Becan with you to do it. The game thinks we’ve already done it.

: The sidequest involves going straight from the bridge leading to Kitarak’s tent instead of going down the ramp.

: There are more goblins inside who die without much of a problem.

: The reason I wanted to get these chests is because once you go to Talewok, this area gets taken over by chaos enemies and the chests refill.