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In my last session, I obliterated Ethiopia. In this one, I had a brief moment of peace before the war continued.

I started to build up my economy a bit, and managed to reach gunpowder units, before Russia decided to call me into a war with Montezuma. He only had one city left so, even though Catherine was completely useless, I managed to ruin him relatively fast.

Civilization V, Montezuma

It’s chieftain difficulty. Of course I dare.

I got his capital, which meant I now had two of Catherine’s cities surrounded on both sides. Since she started to really bug me by having her spies constantly stealing my technologies, I immediately moved on into a war against her. Thanks to a couple of cannons I’ve built in the meantime, the two cities she previously stole from Montezuma were mine in a couple of turns. Her capital lasted for a bit longer, but that to, was mine eventually.

Civilization V, Political Map

I said it was going to get greener.

Things are getting a lot greener now.

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I got the liquor Shani requested, so I brought it to her. She invited me to the party and told me to bring a friend, so I asked Zoltan if he would like to come. He really is my only friend in Vizima, as far as I can tell. At the party, I met a guy named Dandelion, who apparently hung out with me and Zoltan before I lost my memory.

Dandelion was extremely surprised to see me alive, claiming he saw me dead years ago. Since Zoltan was there at that point to, it’s a bit weird he didn’t say anything until now, but he did confirm Dandelion’s story, so I guess it must be true. I was also told I had a vampire and a dragon for a friend at one point, but the vampire got killed in some battle a while ago.

The Witcher, Dandelion

Dandelion seemed suspicious at first, but he might just be a lovable idiot.

Once all the partying was over, I started exploring the town again. I ran into Siegfried, who also came back from the swamp. He offered me membership in his order, but Geralt outright refused it with me having no choice in the matter.While we’re at the topic of people coming back to life, I forgot to mention that Siegfried heard something about Berenghar in the swamp. It seems he didn’t die, but the Salamandra have taken him prisoner. That’s another thing I’ll have to deal with when the time comes.

I realized the party related quest wasn’t over yet, so I bought some red roses for Shani and gave them to her. She was extremely grateful, if you know what I mean. Apart from the “gratitude” she also told me how she found out Thaler is actually a member of a secret police investigating the Salamandra. This was all the proof I needed that he wasn’t the one working with them, so I could now exclude him from the list of suspects.

Once I told him that, he agreed to get me into the town graveyard. I immediately went to see the grave keeper, who gave me the key to the gate. At the entrance, I also met a woman who was being haunted by her late husband’s ghost, so I agreed to help with that to.

The Witcher, Widow

The Widow is definitely hiding something.

The most important part of the graveyard, though, was a crypt. It was full of undead, including one of the alghouls I needed for a quest, as well as plenty of loot. It also contained something extremely important. In one of the rooms, I’ve found the body of Raymond, the private detective. For a moment, I thought I missed something, since I just spoke to Raymond recently, but once I spoke to the grave keeper about it, it was obvious what was going on. Some sort of creature, or maybe a mage, is using magic to pose as Raymond. He was probably deceiving me all along, sending me on wild goose chases.The graveyard was pretty much empty during the day, apart from some drowned dead. One peculiar thing I found was another relief, similar to the one at the sewer entrance in the temple district. When I click on it, I am able to put an item into the available slot, but I don’t have any items I can put in. It’s probably related to some quest I’m not on yet.

The Witcher, Raymond

The real Raymond, dead.

I’ll probably talk to “Raymond” soon, but I’ll try to solve some of the minor quests first, because I’m thinking the next chapter might be coming.

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I got the Gods & Kings expansion a few days ago from Amazon, so I decided to go for a round today. I set everything to random and got Gandhi as my leader.

Gandhi’s trait is “Population Growth”. This reduces the amount of unhappiness gained from city size by half, but doubles the unhapinness gained from extra cities. Naturally, this means I needed to build fewer cities, but plan to make them big as soon as possible, meaning my number one priority was to find places rich in food. The problem is, I was a bit rusty, so I was having some trouble spotting the perfect locations.

Civilization V, Starting Point

It took me a while to get the first settler ready.

In any case, I started the usual routine of training a scout and researching the techs needed to access the local resources. Soon, I met Montezuma, who I meet far to often in my games. I hated him back in Civ IV, so this hate sort of transferred to Civ V, but since all the AI opponents are very unpredictable in this game, I guess there really isn’t any reason to hate Monty any more than the rest of them.

Next up, I met Catherine of Russia, followed by Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. Ethiopia soon turned out to be my closest neighbor, but they didn’t give me much trouble. Both they and Russia took a liking for me, actually. Catherine was the strongest of my opponents, but luckily, she focused on taking down Montezuma, so I was left alone for most of the game.

Throughout the BC era, I didn’t go above three or four cities. Instead, I focused on building them up, researching my techs and improving the tiles. I managed to found a religion to, which is a new feature of Gods & Kings. I have to say, I love how religion is handled in the expansion. You basically build your own religion from various available traits. Based on how you build it, it can be an extremely powerful addition to your empire.

I decided to mix it up, but picked production bonuses mostly, since I wanted to focus on my cities and wonder building. The first wonder I built was the Great Library, which allowed me to pick Drama and Poetry as the bonus tech, which, in turn, got me into the classical era extremely early.

Civilization V - The Great Library

I always build far too many wonders.

Sometime during the renaissance, I entered a war against the Aztecs with Russia. I captured one of their cities and decided to hold it in spite of it being a bit to far into Catherine’s territory. After this war, the Aztecs were reduced to only their capitol, so they weren’t a threat any more.My next opponent, Boudicca of the Celts, I’ve met a bit later, but still well before I entered the medieval era at 125 BC. It was only after this that I finally met my last opponent – Lord Askia of Songhai. Both of these, I had very little dealings with.

With that out of the way, I decided to expand my territory a bit, at the cost of Ethiopia. Since I was playing on the chieftain difficulty, everyone was extremely far behind in tech, so the war didn’t last long and Ethiopia was destroyed.

It was getting late by now, so I decided to end my session here.

Civilization V - Political Map

I expect the map to be a lot greener next time.

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After some walking about, waiting for Shani to finally get to the hospital, I finally managed to get through the autopsy. The conclusion was that the victim died due to an alchemical poison, while the stab wounds were made post mortem, in an attempt to hide the true cause.

I was convinced it was Kalkstein, so I went and accused him. He got mad, so now I think I kind off killed all the quests I was doing for him. On the other hand, the Sephiroth quest is still available, so maybe there’s a chance to make amends, in case he actually isn’t to blame.

Since Shani helped a lot, I offered to return the favor, which got me on a bit of a weird quest. Apparently, she wants to throw a party in someone’s honor, so she needs liquor. I guess a mood change was in order, but the quest is still a bit out of the blue, in my opinion.

In any case, I got back to the swamp and went straight to the loggers. I gave the gnome his share of the money I got from the ferryman and continued to the north, to talk to the druids. I stumbled into Siegfried’s party on the way there, though. They were in the swamp to dispose of a group of Scoia’tael but he got injured, so he asked me to lead his men.

The Witcher, Siegfried in the Swamp

Siegfried is part of a choice between two sides, it seems.

I finally got to the druid camp and, as expected, they are able to create a storm for me. The problem was, they are also quite a greedy bunch. They wanted 500 oren for the favor! I tried to figure it out by myself by messing around with a group of pylons around the golem, but I just managed to hit myself with a bolt of lightning instead.I was a bit rash in accepting and this caused my fetch quest for the elf from the druid camp to fail. I guess he was part of the Scoia’tael. Instead, I solved this quest, which means I’ll now be able to buy stuff from the order’s armorers and merchants, since I’m a friend of Siegfried now.

I agreed to give away half of my current money and went back to the golem, with the storm now in full force.  I stuck a lightning rod into it and it came to life. The fight wasn’t really hard, but it was a golem, which meant it took me an extremely long time to kill it. It might be I could’ve used the pylons to hit him with lightning a few more times, but I couldn’t figure it out, so instead I just did it manually. I ran around, hitting him with my steel sword, which did slightly more damage than the silver one, for around ten minutes before it finally went down. I got his heart, which I can use to make an intellect potion, as well as one of the Sephirots. I only need one more.

The Witcher, Golem

The golem was hardy, but not hard.

For now, there was nothing else I could do at the swamp, so I decided to go back to town

.

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I’ve played some more of this game and, while it does get a bit better, it’s only a marginal improvement. The game is pretty, the boss battles are fun and the attempt to go for action controls instead of tab switching is commendable.

Outside of that, it’s a typical MMORPG consisting of fetch/kill/grind quests, a relatively weak story and maybe a slightly higher budget than the average. Someone new to MMORPGs might like it, but for someone who played these games extensively, it will just be more of the same. In any case, I’ll keep it on my hard drive for a while yet, but I’m not sure how long. It most definitely is not the next MMO for me.

Now, for some concrete info. I’ve played for another hour or two, continuing on the same line of quests I’ve started previously. The archaeologist I’ve been doing work for turned out to be a fraud. He abducted the real archaeologist and used me to get into possession of some powerful artifact. I defeated the boss he summoned before he escaped, which was another fun battle, and then returned to the home base, where I was sent to gather some items needed to finally defeat the enemy.

RaiderZ Boss Battle

The boss fight was relatively easy, but also quite fun.

The crab dropped special items I used to craft stronger gear, which I did immediately, and then it was time to get to the next zone. I was around level 8 when all of this ended.One of the quests made me change into some powerful creature, which was also sort of fun, but nothing I haven’t seen before in other games. Eventually, I got back to the base and went on the final push against the enemy band of pirates. It all ended up with a boss battle against a giant crab, and that was it.

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U returned to town and reported in on most of the tasks I was assigned by various people. The rewards alone got me back up to a nice sum of money, which I used to buy some upgrades and stock up on more potions.

Further investigation in town, combined with some information I gathered at the swamps brought me back to Raymond, the private detective, who was now also back in town. We concluded I should probably do an autopsy on the criminal who passed away at the hospital while I was away.

The Witcher, Crypt

It’s cool that computer-controlled characters have a routine, but it’s annoying when you can’t find them on a quest.

First, I went to the local shops to stock up on books about human anatomy as well as pathology. Then I went to talk to the guard captain, hoping he would have some useful knowledge to share, but he was his usual ignorant self, so there was no luck there. Finally, I went to the gravedigger, to get the body. I had to bribe him with some dwarven liquor, but he agreed eventually. The autopsy will be performed at the hospital, at first nightfall.Since Shani was trained in medicine, I decided to ask for her help. She was hesitant, but after some persuasion, she agreed to do it. In order to prepare everything, though, I still had some work to do.

Before I forget, I also talked to a few people about reviving one of the golems at the tower, in order to get one of the Sephiroths. I was told I needed electricity, so I had the blacksmith make me a lightning rod. All I need now is a storm, and I get the feeling that the druids might have a way of dealing with that part.

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It was morning, so I made my way to the docks, but the guard wouldn’t let me through the gate. I apparently needed permission from Vincent, the guard captain. The thing is, he tried to use me during a quest I did but didn’t write about, so I told him what I thought of him. There’s no way he’s giving me permission.

My two choices were to either wait for the merchant to come to the temple district, which he does rarely, or pay off the guard. I gave him 100 oren and he let me through. The merchant, Declan Leuvaarden, was easy to find. It took some convincing, but he eventually admitted he’s part of a secret society which is trying to destroy the Salamandra. Since our goals match, he agreed to provide help from time to time.

The Witcher, Deckan

Declan looks far too much like Odo.

The swamps were a huge area with a large number of new quests and new areas, so I didn’t manage to explore it all today. What I did do is take care of the annoying escort quest which was the last thing I did on my last attempt to play through this game. There’s this old guy called Gramps, who needed an escort to the local shrine. The problem is, the escort route leads me through the area where a really tough enemy that’s part of another quest is located.He also asked me to get rid of some drowners attacking the docks at night, to which I agreed. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure if he meant the docks on this side, in Vizima, or on the other side, in the swamp. In any case, I went to the swamp next, which cost me 5 oren for the ferry.

The Witcher, The Swamp

New area, new quests.

This time, I remembered what was going to happen, so I drank a few potions and sharpened my silver sword before I went there. This meant I only nearly died this time. I got to the shrine, Gramps thanked me and invited me to his hut later, saying he has books and knowledge he would be willing to share.

For now, that was it for me.

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Since it was still night when I reloaded the game today, I decided to visit the prisoner at the hospital. Sadly, he didn’t get a chance to say much, what with us being attacked by a group of thugs. He did manage to say one name, though – Kalkstein. The alchemist is definitely hiding something.

The thugs worked for Ramsmeat, though, so he was higher on my priority. Sadly, he’s either a really good liar, or completely innocent, because he simply said the thugs were there to get his lackey free and he had no idea I was going to be there to. The story makes sense, so again, I have nothing on him.

The Witcher, Rich Guy

“Rich” guy promised me money he didn’t have for the wine he didn’t have. I kept the wine.

The problem was, when I got the wine back to him, he wouldn’t pay. I decided to keep the wine for myself in that case, so I’ll get some value out of it. The experience was worth it anyway. The other newcomer to the inn was a messenger I already heard rumors about. Apparently, he’s working for some unknown rich guy who has him paying 10 oren per Salamandra insignia I bring. I sold him all of mine first, before I got him drunk and made him tell me the name of the rich guy. Apparently, it’s a merchant who’s working at the docks. I waited for the night to pass and decided to get there in the morning.There were some new people at the inn, though, so I didn’t walk all the way there for nothing. A noble from the trade district was there, looking for someone to “recover” some good wine from an abandoned house nearby. The problem was, the house was infested with the undead, so this was actually the first time I almost died. Thank god for tactical combat and pausing.

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I’ve been following RaiderZ for a while now, because it kind of, sort of, seemed like something that might be fun, because it does things a little differently.

You see, the biggest thing that turns me away from World of Warcraft these days is that, no matter how much stuff they add in, at its core, the game remains “more of the same, every day”. You level, you get to the cap, you get gear, you go for dungeons, you get more gear, more dungeons get added, more gear, etc.

RaiderZ - Crafting

I got something like a cut scene when I crafted my first item.

Well, RaiderZ has been advertised by some as an action MMORPG with elements of the Monster Hunter series. The action part is what interests me the most. I’m tired of the old “select monster, then select skill” mechanic. I want combat to either have impact, where I swing the weapon, or I want it to be different in some other way. Maybe you make it turn based, or more tactical.Sure, the pet battles of Pandaria can distract you, they made the talents extremely interesting and all that, but the core still remains the same.

The Monster Hunter elements also seem attractive, but they aren’t that important to me. Of course, the idea of gathering parts of monsters to make equipment is great, but it also has to be done well in order to work.

In any case, the game left closed beta, so I was able to download it and log in, albeit on US servers only. For now, I’m a bit underwhelmed. The game begins in a typical MMORPG manner. You get your first quest, which takes you to another set of quests consisting of killing a certain number of danger-free monsters and talking to a certain person. The next several quests are also similar, though they involve item crafting from monster parts.

The action controls aren’t really there. Yes, you use your left button to attack and do damage without really targeting, but it all looks like the game is just tricking you. It feels like it auto-targets for you and then, instead of auto-swinging, waits for you to click your mouse. The controls simply do not feel like true action controls. Don’t get me wrong, the attacking and dodging is a huge improvement compared to the classic system World of Warcraft uses, but it still isn’t it.

RaiderZ - Login Screen

At one point, I got disconnected from the server, but at least I was able to see the new gear on my login screen.

I might return to the game occasionally, but I don’t see myself playing it too much.Things got a bit better towards the end of my session. I got a quest to kill a boss type enemy and I have to say, that part was quite fun. I actually had to observe the boss, dodge attacks, retreat and advance when it was appropriate and take proper care of my health and stamina (which is used for dodging). That part really is fun and much better than the old raid battles I’m used to. I just wish the other parts were as good.

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Luckily, the game autosaves, so the last crash didn’t take me back to far. I reloaded at the point where I just entered the local hospital. It’s a good thing I did, because I forgot to write about that.

As I previously said, Kalkstein wants me to find the entrance to the tower in the swamp. By reading a book I got from Vivaldi, I discovered I need ten magical stones to enter it, called sephirots. I already got a few by various means, but there was one here that made me really proud to figure it out.

The Witcher, Novice Nun

The novice nun was extremely helpful.

Other than that, I tried to visit a wounded criminal being guarded at the hospital, but the guards wouldn’t let me talk to him. I managed to pay one off, so he told me to come back at night. Then I, again, tried to visit Kalkstein and this time avoided crashing. Kalkstein explained himself, so he wasn’t a suspect again, for now.There was a statue of a goddess at the hospital. The nun praying there helped me with a hint for one of the stones. Apparently, the stone required a sacrifice to the goddess, in the form of “nature’s harvest”. I didn’t even consider to actually try and make a sacrifice at the statue, but after a few minutes, it came to me. I could actually click at the statue and use an item on it. The nun told me “nature’s harvest” would be some sort of fruit or vegetable, so I used some blueberries and the sephiroth appeared in my inventory.

Next up, I explored the local slums, where I got a few more quests and talked to Ramsmeat, whose lackey is the criminal at the hospital. As you might guess, Ramsmeat is no man of the law either. Raymond linked him to the Salamandra as well, so I questioned him, but he wasn’t cooperative and I didn’t really have anything concrete on him.

The Witcher, Lady of the Night

The Salamandra, constantly harassing hard working citizens.

As was the case with the inn in the Outskirts, there was another fight club here. I beat the few of the toughest fighters there and that was it. I decided to go help the girls at the local brothel next. It seems they have problems with Salamandra thugs harassing them during the nights.