Summary
: Now that we’re done with Erromon, we’re going into a long string of cutscenes because this is a well-designed game with no pacing issues whatsoever.
: I forgot something back in the castle at the end of the last update. Those end-game chests in the room with the teleporter? We can open those now because Brenna is at thief 7 (which boosts to 9 with the rope).
: The Persuasion wand charms enemies, but it requires 25 intelligence to use and that’s not really an investment I want to make on any of our characters. Godric could use it.
: The other has the Mace of Glory, which is one of the best weapons in the game.
: We’re not going to find anything better for a long time, so I start leveling Hafted on Alaron so he can use it. Becan can’t use it because he’s nocturnal.
: If you try to walk to Talewok from Gwernia, you run into these guys near Kendall’s house. These are Chaos Warriors, and they’re end-game enemies who have a chance of dropping a very good shield.
: Chaos Warriors have a ton of HP and have an incredibly bloated armor stat. Brenna is the only person who can consistently hit them because I was trying to hold off raising thief on Alaron and Becan.
: They come with a small army of Chaos Scouts, which are ranged attackers that cast haste on everything.
: I immediately train thief to ensure Alaron and Becan can continue to hit.
: We get one Chaos Shield, which is the best shield in the game. It not only adds 8 protection, but also adds 8 defense (which reduces damage taken) with zero dex penalty.
: Back on the road to Talewok, there’s a bridge not far from that hole we went into last update to get the wizard hat. We want to head to that raised area behind it.
: We get ambushed by some harpies, who cast the lifedrain spell but other than that are total pushovers at this point. Alaron can oneshot them with the Mace of Glory if he gets behind them.
: At the top of the raised area is this cave it looks like we shouldn’t be able to get into.
: There are a few new enemies in here. Gorgons are a non-threat because they’re slow and we can wipe them in a couple of hits.
: We also find some large scorpions. Not giant, just large. They’re similarly non-threatening at this point.
: There’s some other crap treasure in here, but the reason I came in is for this scroll. Mirror is this game’s equivalent of Reflect in Final Fantasy.
: After an uninteresting cutscene I’m not even going to bother to show, we arrive at Talewok. If you try to come here before finishing Erromon, the gate is locked.
: Talewok has a lot of stuff in it, including a new grind spot that introduces a new mechanic.
: The area isn’t big at all, and the wizard’s school is over to the right. This is part of a long, annoying questline.
: If we go to the entrance, we can find Godric again. This is helpful in case you need more potions - at this point, we have over 200,000 gold plus all the crap the goblins dropped to sell.
: The guard won’t let us in until we talk to a guy at the inn. This is pure busy work.
: This guy will tell us about how thirsty he is for Ardra, and will then give us a pass to get into the wizard school.
: This is part of a plotline that does not get explained very well.
: I remember when I played this the first time that Ryan told me to watch out for the door whore when I got to this part, and I’ve referred to any NPC who blocks shit as a door whore since.
: “The greatest school of wizardry anywhere on this entire plane!!! Are you prepared to pay the price of admission here?”
: This is how college admissions should work. There’s a dipshit at the front door and if you beat the shit out of him you can go in and take classes.
: “Come, come now.. step up, then! And speak truly!”
: I kinda glossed over this, but most humans in this game (apart from Godric) use what’s called naming magic, which is done by invoking their true name.
: The idea is that there’s a ceremony for casters where they get a true name, and people who can’t or don’t use magic (like Abrecan and Becan) don’t know theirs, so it’s considered a secret.
: “Truly spoken! Go right inside.”
: “That it does. Go right inside.”
: It’s weird that Brenna has one given that she doesn’t start with wizard. She can learn it, but right now her only utility is backstabbing people for 70 damage.
: “Thank you, miss. You may certainly go right in. Oh! Just one thing.”
: “Some of the resident wizards like to speak openly about certain wizardly affairs, and some of the guests like to pick up information. So.. as a little precaution, nothing serious, some of the words in there, words you may hear, have protective spells cast upon them.”
: “Repeat one of those words without permission and.. well, miss. I’m afraid that word would sear your tongue down to nothing but ash. Comprende?”
: I don’t know what this writing is and I don’t like it.
: Finally, Alaron steps up. None of these options work.
: “If you’re going to lie to me, boy, at least make it half convincing. I can smell the magic on you. Now answer truly or stop wasting my time!”
: “How strange…”
: “You wish? Well… that should count for something. Do you have the courage to seek real answers?”
: The wizard school is huge and empty like Gwernia’s castle is. There are a bunch of magic trainers here, but we don’t give a shit because there are exactly two good spells in the game.
: We have to show this doorwhore our magic stick to go see Ardra. Her door is the one right behind Alaron.
: I’m skipping around 10 lines of Ardra speaking gibberish.
: It also kind of makes no sense that Ardra apparently knew Alaron was coming and didn’t think to tell her door whore to fuck off. I’m going to skip some more dialog.
: The guide on GameFAQs claims that talking to Ardra the first time is what makes the chaos enemies spawn in Erromon. The guide is wrong.
: What we’re about to do is one of the worst parts of the game. The first time I played this, I assumed it was some kind of practical joke on the part of the developers.
: The dryad forest is directly behind the wizard school. It is not at all hard to find, but the game gives you a cutscene (that I will not show) that confirms you’re going the right way.
: The dryad forest has a respawning encounter with wolves in front of it. This is where the game goes from merely difficult due to being jank to outright bullshit if you don’t have a guide.
: These are “spirit wolves”. They are part of a class of enemies that possess a mechanic that is never explained anywhere in the game or the manual.
: Spirit wolves can only be hit by magic weapons. The game gives you no indication of this at any point. If you attack them with a non-magic weapon, you get the same “Spirit Wolf evades the attack” message you would if your attack missed.
: Does the game ever list which weapons are magic? Fuck no it doesn’t! For reference, there are only three magic weapons we could even have up to this point, and two of them are missable. Those are Trahern’s sword, the Chaos Sword, and Warfang.
: There’s a merchant in Talewok who sells Heartseeker Bows, which are also magic.
: The dryad forest is a small maze that we need to get to the end of to meet Pandara.
: Pandara isn’t particularly hard to find even without a map - she’s in one of the two Team Fortress 2 logos in the middle of the map.
: I’m going to transcribe most of her dialog even though it’s completely pointless, because I honestly forgot this part of the game existed and.. well, you’ll see.
: “Some of them. They are not easy to get to know.. they’re far too busy to enter the forest and when they do come here they die so quickly!”
: “Oh, that. I know about it. You’ve been to Ardra. Now you’re here to find the cure. If you humans used your heads you’d have more herbs and forests of you (sic) own. Instead you just go on and on with trade and war.”
: Personally, I can’t wait for Aidyn Chronicles: The Way of Water and Aidyn Chronicles: Fire and Ash. I’m sure they’ll be announced any day now.
: Ignoring the fact that half of these are METAL GEAR?!, we’ll skip most of it and go to the last option.
: California and Mexico, mostly.
: “The flower is everywhere. I will order some to grow and blossom but finding it will take some skill…”
: She tells Alaron to look in the north-eastern corner of the forest. Let’s do that.
: We’re here. Can you spot what we’re looking for?
: If you said “that flower that looks like a random background object and blends in with the drab-colored scenery”, you’re right.
: If we try to leave, a fairy will stop us and warp us to Pandara. This is the point at which the developers play their practical joke.
: “And were you successful?”
: “And what?”
: I thought you were a GEP gun.
: “You are almost a knight. You must have nobler sentiments than these. Do you have no Troubadour skill? Have you been taught nothing?”
: “Just look on me in all my radiance.. and breathe this in and savor it! Become inspired! Feel your true emotions and desires!”
: “Next send this feeling back to me in rhymes so sweet their rhythm will enchant my soul and win me over to your honeyed words. This is the tender strategy.”
: The chicken tender strategy.
: “No! Nothing more! I must be off and find some rippling brook or birdsong to relieve this strain! You murder verse! You’re not fair-spoken!”
: Murderverse sounds like a setting for another indie animation that will flame out before reaching a satisfying conclusion.
: At this point, a couple of trainers open up in the dryad forest who will train troubadour up to 10. You might think we’d need to do this, but you’re wrong. It’s actually completely random.
: This can take one try, or it can take half an hour of mashing through dialog (or if you’re smart, using save states).
: I got it on the second attempt with Alaron at 1 troubadour. I wasn’t even using the gloves that give +2 to it.
: “That’s very good!”
: You know that scene at the start of Parasite Eve where Eve melts everyone in the opera house? That’s how I feel right now.
: Pandara takes Alaron to her secret grove, so I’ll skip a bit of this.
: “What an aura of magic surrounds you! You must get better at playing an instrument, though. But for me, your charm outshines all else..”
: Metal Gear?!
: “A special type of magical self. A wildling cannot be held to the Mundane Plane. You are free to learn all four schools of magic!”
: We’re also free to ignore them, because there are maybe two good spells in the game and one of them exists solely to cheese bosses with range.
: So yes, she has just told Alaron that he is in fact a Very Special Boy and will save the world from chaos. Jack Garland did that without being a Very Special Boy.
: And now I hope you’re ready, because this conversation is about to take a turn.
: This is how you get Ah! My Goddess. Do you want Ah! My Goddess? No you don’t. I don’t even know how it got 45 volumes when it was rehashing itself maybe three years in.
: “Alaron, the warmth of your words would melt the coldest heart..”
: “Now I give you a special amulet. There! You have its magic. But.. you can use its powers only once. It will let you communicate directly to me so I can help you. Which I would like to do!”
: Alaron can travel through time, but only once! Truly, this is the Jolteon of Let’s Plays.
: Yeah so that’s enough of that. I hope it was just as awkward for you to read as it was for me to transcribe.
: We then need to go back to Ardra with the flower. I’m going to skip most of this because I think you, like me, have probably had enough of this game’s dialog for one lifetime.
: Ardra sends Alaron on a vision quest where he meets Master Willem from Bloodborne and a Chaos Trooper (the crab-like thing the camera never really lets you see).
: The door whore enters the Chaos Dimension for some reason.
: Then Oriana shows up and begs Ardra to heal Alaron.
: She tells us that she can’t do anything and we need to find Cradawgh.
: She also confirms that Alaron is a Very Special Boy who is effectively NieR from NieR - Alaron is the replicant and the ghost we’ve been seeing is his soul.
: Now that we’re done with the awkward cutscenes, let’s ignore Port Saiid and instead go get a weapon for Becan. We’ll probably fight some chaos enemies on the way.
: By the way, if you want to crash the game, one of the trainers in the wizard school teaches Immolation. It’s meant to be a damage-over-time spell but all it does is crash the game.
: What we want to do is head over this bridge, which leads to the second half of the game.
: Not far from the bridge is another crossroads. We could head to Port Saiid, but let’s head to Terminor (the path ahead) instead. Terminor won’t open until after we’ve done a few other areas.
: Almost immediately, we get ambushed by Chaos Troopers. These are supposed to be the next tier up from the Chaos Warriors we fought at the start of the update.
: On one hand, they’re a lot easier to hit because they lack shields. They also can’t use shield spells. Instead, they get a spell that drops rocks people and can kill Brenna in two hits.
: Chaos Troopers have a chance of dropping a magic axe that Becan can use. This is the preferred option, because the other magic axe sucks.
: The Blood Axe does more damage than what Becan had before, but has slightly less accuracy. Accuracy shouldn’t be as much of a problem now that he has thief.
: At least now we have something that can hit ghosts, which is important because we’re about to enter an area that is nothing but ghosts. I still want to keep going down the road to Terminor, though.
: The road ends here. This is Darkling Bog, home to a dungeon called Shamsuk’s Tower that isn’t available until much later in the game. I don’t think I ever got that far the first time I played.
: Ryan told me last night he wants to get a wood carving that reads “Shamsuk Deez Nuts”. Guess what I’m going to title the update where I do Shamsuk’s Tower.
: The only reason I bothered to come out here is to show this off. This is mostly if you’re building Alaron as a wizard for some reason.
: The hill is guarded by a troll, which is effectively a stronger ogre that can take half of Abrecan’s HP in one hit and can potentially oneshot Brenna.
: Wall of Bones is a single-target spell that stops a target from moving. It’s a necromancy spell, so only Alaron can learn it permanently. You can use this to cheese bosses, but I never got it to work on my first run.
: The other axe we could get is really deep into Darkling Bog. It sucks because it gives -5 to dexterity, has a damage rating of 4, and is less accurate than the Blood Axe.
: With that done, we can head to Port Saiid. The path is, as always, long and empty.
: Near the end is this guy, who we can talk to for a sidequest.
: The gist of it is that there’s a big idiot guarding the bridge to Port Saiid.
: And here is said idiot.
: This is Arturo. Arturo is effectively a second Abrecan - he starts with a maxed strength stat, more HP than Abrecan has, and some decent weapon skills. Like Abrecan, he can’t learn thief and therefore has little use outside of being very tanky.
: He also starts with a really low dexterity, so if you plan on using him for some reason you’d have to grind that up.
: And this is Keelin. Keelin is what the game kind of expects you to replace Brenna with in the likely event that Brenna has died before this point. I’ve actually had Brenna die off-screen a few times.
: Keelin starts with nearly double Brenna’s max HP and has better skill access (she can use bows, Brenna can’t). The downside is she starts without warrior and can’t use shields. The bow access isn’t as much of an upside as you’d think because bows don’t get bonus damage from thief as far as I know.
: The other, non-mechanical downside is that she is VERY horny for Alaron and has a couple of extra cutscenes if you have both her and Brenna where they fight over Alaron.
: We then get a dialog puzzle where we can recruit Arturo. We’re not going to because we’d ultimately be trading Abrecan for a slightly different Abrecan.
: Port Saiid is about as far as I got the first time I played this game. It has a grind spot, and I’m probably going to use it to up Brenna’s HP somewhat.
: Right before the gate is a group of chaos enemies. Chaos Sorcerers are really annoying to fight because they can cast shield spells that give them something like 80% damage resistance.
: This would also be our first encounter with Chaos Warriors if we hadn’t fought them outside Gwernia. They’re a lot less annoying now that Alaron and Becan have thief leveled.
: Chaos Sorcerers drop robes, which are technically better than the dragon leather we’ve been wearing but cost 2 max HP to equip and have a small dex penalty.
: Port Saiid has a lot of trainers in it, but we’re going to skip most of them because we don’t really need them. Let’s head into that first building on the right.
: This building is a shop, but it has a hidden basement accessed by hitting A on this stack of boxes.
: The bandit down here can train thief up to 8. My initial plan had been to wait to train thief until we got here to save on EXP, since training with a trainer costs slightly less EXP.
: Right where Alaron is looking is a hidden chest we’re going to want to pick up.
: The chest has Tinker’s Gloves, which increase Mechanic by 2. These are useful for disarming trapped chests, which we’re going to run into a lot.
: Now I’m going to show you the part that almost made me quit the game the first time. When I played the first time, I didn’t know how thief worked.
: This house has a wand hidden in the fireplace for some reason.
: If you pick up the wand, you get ambushed outside by a wraith. Wraiths are like Spirit Wolves - they’re immune to non-magic weapons.
: This fight is inescapable and the wraith has a pretty high evasion rate (high enough that warrior is not enough to hit it and you need the bonus hit from thief).
: Good thing we picked up that blood axe. When I did this on my first run, I only had Warfang and the Chaos Sword and couldn’t hit this thing because no one had thief.
: My party at this point was Alaron, Becan, Arturo and Keelin.
: Fortunately, our party is well equipped and we send it to.. Hell, I guess.
: There’s a big building near the wraith house that has a boat captain in it. I’m going to paraphrase.
: Basically, the lighthouse is out and also occupied by evil and we need to re-light it for him to take us to Cradawgh. This is another thing that is absolute bullshit without a guide.
: To re-light the lighthouse, we need a magic scroll. Can you see where the scroll is on this screen, which is right next to the building with the hidden bandit trainer?
: Trick question, you need to walk around a very hard to spot corner to a hidden path.
: This is Shamsuk (Deez Nuts)'s journal. I’m not going to transcribe it.
: The journal is basically “I know there’s a very special boy somewhere who is going to kill chaos, but my friends Bowden and Ardra won’t help!”
: The reason I’m not transcribing it is because it’s meant to be part of a sequel hook. Rabisat is the “chaos mistress” and was intended to be the final boss of a sequel that never came to fruition for a very good reason.
: This is the lighthouse scroll, which we need to re-light the lighthouse. We’ll do that next update.
: This bag has Shamsuk’s Amulet in it, which is best-in-slot if you’re a caster because most of the amulets in this game are a joke.
: I imagine it’s probably a locket that opens up to reveal that one side reads “Shamsuk” and the other side reads “Deez Nuts”.
: Next time we’ll re-light the lighthouse and visit Chaos Island, home to the dungeon that made me quit the game the first time.