As I thought, the Grand Cathedral is the final area of Vagrant Story. Today, I fought a few more bosses and finally reached the end credits. What an amazing game. I can’t wait to play it again in the New Game+ mode.Continue reading
The Lich that killed me the last time fell quickly on my second try. Vagrant Story really is all about being slow and methodical. The only reason I died was because I was rash and careless.Continue reading
We’ve already established how and why Acinent Summoner is a typical Skinner box. Regardless of that, I’m continuing to play it, though less and less as the days go by.
The game hooks you in the most basic way by giving you meaningless rewards for meaningless actions and wraps it all up in a collectible game.
It works on me. It doesn’t work as well as it used to because I have about 200 days of play time in World of Warcraft, but it still works to a degree. The game has kept me hooked for about 2 weeks now, with about an hour or two of play time per day.
The queue system might be broken. Sometimes it’s instant, sometimes you wait to infinity.
I’m not sure I should call it play time, though. I log in, quickly click through all the actions that are simple to do and offer decent rewards and then I start doing battles in auto-mode, where I let the computer just use cards at random. I lose often, but the only time investment I need is to click in every now and then to enter a different battle.
This worked all the way up to level 25 or so, but it’s not working as well as of lately. Due to that, my time spent playing Ancient Summoner is slowly, but surely dropping.
There’s no doubt in my mind about it now. For example, there was a special offer for gold buyers a few days ago. Buying a big enough pack would get you a Yumi Swiftshot. This character has the ability to do 3 ranged damage to any newly summoned creature. The ability outright destroys any chance to quickly summon in reinforcements and greatly weakens even your higher level card’s chances. To my knowledge, there is no other way than paying real money to get Yumi Swiftshot. If there is, it certainly isn’t remotely as easy as simply paying.
There are other, similarly powerful cards and most of them can be gotten easily with real money.
I get home from work, make myself a meal and start up my computer. I start browsing reddit or viewing YouTube as I eat (I have to watch or at least read something while eating, for some reason) and log in to Ancient Summoner. I queue up some arena or boss battles and put them on automatic while eating. Once I finish eating, I do a few of the quick and easy tasks to gain the various rewards and currencies, see if I have enough resources for a decent upgrade and then continue queuing for automatic battles, while doing other things on my computer. For instance, currently I’m working on a side-project for a developer conference I’m attending.
I don’t think I’ll aim to get all the cards. I’d probably have to pay to do that anyway.
Once I’m ready to actually play, I join a few tougher battles, which actually require my attention. Sometimes I win a few of those and sometimes I don’t. After all of that, I go to an expedition and log off. In the morning, before work, I log back in to get the expedition resources, since there’s a 12 hour maximum for any expedition, and then rejoin and expedition until after work, when the cycle repeats. That’s all there is to my playing of Ancient Summoner.
My mage character is level 28 and my deck power is at 4410. On its own, these numbers mean nothing to someone who isn’t playing the game, but basically, I’m at a high enough level to have unlocked all of the primary activities, or so I think.
As for deck power, I also have no idea what it means, but it increased by about 800 after my recent reassembling of my primary deck. Most of my cards are or rare (3) or higher rank. Against the computer, I don’t have much trouble winning unless their deck is weird on some way. Against players of my level, if they haven’t bought any cards, I have a fair chance.
I still have plenty of cards to unlock and higher levels also mean higher-leveled boss battles and special events, so I couldn’t say the game is completed in any way. What I can say is that I’m quickly growing tired of it and will soon probably have my fill of it all.
I also joined a guild, most for the personal benefits this gets me. Contributing silver and gold to the guild gives you contribution points, which you then spend on research. This research gives you building upgrade discounts, various bonuses and improves the odds in card and equipment crafting.
At level 25, the tower of challenge, or whatever the place is called, became available. I can’t really say I completely understand the place, but from what I can see, it’s just another source of another currency and set of rewards. You get a single free attempt at challenging the tower per day. You fight a set of increasingly more difficult battles on each floor of the tower and if you lose once, that’s it, unless you buy another attempt that day for 30 gold. The rewards can be decent, but attempts are expensive, so you are tempted to buy gold.
This deserves its own title. The further along I get, the slower the rewards are trickling in. It now takes a few days to get enough crystals for a single building upgrade and the gold shortcut is more and more obvious.
I won’t use it though. I can afford to buy gold, which is something I wouldn’t be able to say a few years ago, but I refuse to do so. I’ll play this game for as long as it keeps me interested, but I won’t buy progression.
No, you shouldn’t. It’s an MMO that works and manages to pull you in. It won’t give you anything meaningful, though, so you aren’t missing a thing if you aren’t playing Ancient Summoner. Don’t play it. Play something else instead.
As for me, I already got myself sucked in. Vagrant Story and Might and Magic Book Two suffer for it, but it won’t stay that way for long. Hopefully, I’ll get tired of Ancient Summoner sooner rather than later.
Last time, I wrote about how the pacing of difficulty has evened out, how Vagrant Story got slow and methodical. I guess the game reads this blog, because it decided to kick my ass for saying that.Continue reading
I realized I somehow completely forgot about Thundara and the Snowbeast, so I made it a point to go there next time.Continue reading
I’ll be honest. I’m being negligent with Vagrant Story, and I’m doing it in two ways. First of all, I play rarely because other things get in the way. Secondly, when I do play, I neglect taking notes, so it’s difficult to write about it. This time, I took some notes.
Well, yeah, I usually play Vagrant Story on a train ride, but the game itself certainly isn’t one. It seemed like a train ride at first, with the game and the story funneling you from one place into another, without much choice on the matter. Sometime after fighting Guildenstern at the Keep, though, and even more so after getting Teleportation, Vagrant Story really opened up.
The story this time involves a misunderstanding.
Suddenly, I get to go wherever I want and do whatever I want, without it even being completely clear where the next part of the story actually is. Vagrant Story actually feels more open than most Final Fantasy games, which contain a world map and far more open than those that don’t.
Back at the start, the bosses felt like a big challenge and the rest of the levels was just routine. Well, technically, you could easily die there as well, but there was a shift in challenge between bosses and regular enemies.
As of lately, though, everything became almost equally difficult. You fight a boss and then fight two of them as regular enemies a few rooms later.
Because of that shift, there’s a very methodical feel to how I play Vagrant Story. I prepare for every room and use all the tools I can to break through. The spells are the biggest part. I cast Heracles and Prostasio on myself and use Degenerate or Leadbones and Tarnish on my enemies, especially when they use Prostasio and Heracles themselves.
This guy is either Tiger or Tigger. I forgot, as usual.
The thing about buffs in Vagrant Story is that you can only have one stat and one equipment effect at a time. This means that casting Heracles (increases Strength) on yourself cancels out a Degenerate (reduces Strength) and vice-versa. In the same way, casting Tarnish (reduces equipment) on an enemy cancels out their Prostasio (increases equipment levels). This fact makes the effect of these spells more powerful and makes using them almost critical.
Similarly, the various elemental fusion spells are equally important against some enemies. The weapon fusion spells change the elemental type of your weapon attacks all on their own, so if you’re unlucky and your weapon’s elemental stat is wrong against the current enemy, a proper spell can shift the battle from you dealing 0 damage, to dealing 50 damage per hit.
With armor fusion spells, it’s not as pronounced, but it’s still a very noticeable effect.
This whole approach, even though it’s often very obvious, turns almost every battle which would feel like a chore in other RPGs into something extremely satisfying.
The same thing happens with the story. I love it how all the supernatural and undead events around Lea Monde aren’t just something the characters accept because it’s „that type of game world“. On the other hand, it’s not like a zombie movie, where the whole thing is so out of the ordinary that everyone is panicking and no one knows what to do.
Why indeed?
Instead, the game world has magic and supernatural things, but some of them have been long forgotten and are now reemerging. The characters accept that it’s happening, but they still react to the whole thing. There are also subtle difference between them, with some, like Rosencrantz embracing the whole thing and making use of it, other shunning away from it and others still trying to use it, but failing and getting hurt in the process. Grissom and his brother are good examples.
Also, Ashley often pushes the silent protagonist trope, keeping quiet when he should be talking quite often. It doesn’t really work out for him, though. Very often in the story, there are misunderstandings because of him staying silent, so he gets into trouble and needs to fight his way out.
Of course, it also adds to his character. It makes him look like the silent, but observant type, not acting rashly and taking time to plan things out, which fits very well with how Vagrant Story plays.
While I wasn’t playing, I did buy myself a nice notebook. Why? Because I hate managing a lot of printed papers on a train ride and a notebook can be used for both planning and taking notes while I play.
I listed all of the items in the game, ordered in quality levels and types, so I have it all on paper now. I also did research on how to combine equipment, though not with all of it yet. I only have the sword and great sword category for now.
I uploaded this picture because I thought it’s showing me casting Analyze. It isn’t.
With great swords, it looks like the best thing I can get from combining is a bastard sword. The best great sword in the game, holy win, can only be gotten as a drop. The next best one, the rune blade can be gotten by combining a wakizashi and a stiletto. While you can combine a wakizashi, it’s the highest combinable regular sword, so it would take a long time to do so.
The thing is, I think I already had a bastard sword in my possession, so I’m sure I can get another one.
As for regular swords, as I said, I can go all the way up to a wakizashi. For that, I need for falchions and for shamshirs. One of each of these combines into a khora, two khoras combine into a khopesh and two khopesh finally combine into a wakizashi. The strongest one-handed sword, the rhomphaia, can only be gotten as a drop, sadly.
The way the game plays also affected my approach with Vagrant Story. Slowly, but surely, I’m relearning all the things a lot of modern games made me unlearn. I’m thinking things through more often, making plans and reacting to events the way I should.
I got into the Limestone Quarry. The enemies there are phantoms, which are easy to kill, two rooms with two ogres each, which take a while but also aren’t a huge challenge, but most rooms contain gremlins, which are extremely annoying. They do a moderate amount of damage, can silence you had have resistance to physical damage and edged attacks. Since my Light’s Hope is a great sword, that means I do low damage to them, even though they are evil affinity monsters.
I got two time attack challenges. These are the easy ones.
I made a circle through the quarry, using Heracles and Prostasio to get through the tedious gremlin fights, but then I realized I took a wrong turn by not solving a puzzle and the level wrapped back around into the starting room. I paused the game here because I didn’t feel like fighting those gremlins again.
Then I thought, why am I not preparing more?
I cast analyze on one of the gremlins and learned they are weakest to water. I looked through my backpack, but couldn’t find a water gem. Then I looked at the stuff I picked up. One of the shields actually had two water gems. I put the strongest one into my last remaining slot on the Light’s Hope and suddenly, I’m doing 80-100 damage per hit, without any buffs on me. I went there from 30 damage per hit, fully buffed. Now the gremlins are no trouble at all.
Additionally, I realized I got a gem which increases physical damage of a weapon, so I put it on my Exorcist dagger, so I can kill phantoms in a single combo.
Limestone Quarry felt tedious at first, but with some planning and preparation, it’s a breeze to get through.
I didn’t do a lot of combining this time, but I did make some changes with my items.
I try to upgrade my armor to the highest possible level as often as I can, so there are some changes there. Also, I renamed my Exorcist axe, to avoid confusion with the Exorcist great sword type. My great axe for fighting humans will be called Beheader from now on.
I uploaded this picture because I thought it’s showing me casting Analyze. It isn’t.
Outside of that, I’m noticing I have a lot of unused grimoires in my inventory. I guess I still need to learn or relearn that part, because I keep forgetting to use them in fights, even though some of them seem very useful.
Also, I’m still looking for a decent crossbow, to replace the Exorcist dagger, which I’ve been using from the start of the game.
Titles are sort of like achievements in Vagrant Story. I didn’t realize this, but I actually got three of them already. Two involve hitting things over 500 times with specific weapon classes and one of them is for the Chest key I found last time. As it turns out, the chest key is an option, relatively hard to find item, so it seems I’ve been doing some very optional stuff without even realizing.
I also got two of the sigils for the locked Keep rooms. These rooms are actually time-attack boss battle challenges. One of them was with the Minotaur and the other with a dragon. I beat both in about 3 seconds, so it will be an interesting challenge to beat those times.
I did not expect the Chest key to be part of a title.
How did I do it so fast? It’s easy. Time is only running when you’re between attacks, moving around the map, so as long as in the menus, or executing a move, I have all the time in the world. This is actually how you get to do some of those timed requirements within the regular levels, such as the one I wrote about in the abandoned mines.
As for the story, I didn’t see much of it. I met a guy named Tiger, or Tigger, or something. He was accompanied by the woman whose name I forgot again, but she was seen already around Romeo and his girlfriend. They found Grissom’s body in a place it shouldn’t have been in and, since Ashley was nearby, blamed him for his death and attacked. Sure, it was technically Ashley’s fault, but the body still wasn’t supposed to be there.
Anyway, there was an easy boss battle and after that, Grissom stood up. He heard some voices in his head, went mad as the undead usually do and ran off, as the undead usually don’t. After that, I got to the Limestone Quarry, where I am right now.
On a side note, I’m amazed on how quickly Vagrant Story deals with loading, especially when teleporting across the game world. A lot of the time, there’s no loading at all. I just instantly appear at my destination. I’d be very interested on how the dev team managed to do it on such a limited piece of hardware.
I talk the talk, but I do not walk the walk. Ancient Summoner is everything I’m supposed to dislike about modern gaming. It’s predatory in its methods and it serves to steal your time and leach money out of you, instead of giving you actual, proper enjoyment. And yet, I’ve been playing it for hours over the past week.Continue reading
Middlegate, Sandsobar, Vulcania and Castle Pinehurst are now completely known to us, but two more towns and four more castles remain. Well, three and a half, so we might tackle the one half this time.
I am not a chronicler of events, nor a historian. I prefer to focus on things that matter to me, not things that might matter to others. Consider this a record of my thoughts, not a chronicle of events.
Lord Hoardall is far from a desirable ally, but we have been at his castle already and I do hate lose ends, so I’ve convinced the group to go back there next. We even took No Name and Harry Kari with us this time.
Woodhaven was even more cluttered than we remembered. I was slightly worried that the lord might be offended of the fact that we haven’t found his Sharp Sabre yet, but in all likelihood, he doesn’t even remember us being here. In any case, he and his men were distracted enough for us to explore the halls freely.
The Green Bishop of Battle managed to get himself captured again, but we also bought another copy of the Green Key, so we freed him once again. Hopefully, this won’t turn into a tradition.
I’m just trying to make fun of repeatable quests here.
Harry and No Name are nowhere near our level of skill, but it has always been my opinion that everyone can be useful with a ranged weapon, as longs as they never shoot over their allies.
The final map of Castle Woodhaven. I’m not sure if the treasure does anything.
We remained at Woodhaven for about a week. It was short, but not without events. I must say, we’ve probably misjudged Hoardall. We all have. He might have an issue with material things, but his treasury is so vast because of it, even I, a paladin, was tested. Of course, I resisted the temptation, but I’m certain Rax and Harry were a few stones heavier as we were leaving.
Outside of that, we found something labeled as M-27 Radicon. I’m not certain what it is, but it looks eerily similar to the J-26 Fluxer, so Lorelei concluded we should take it.
Over the past few months, we’ve been steadily improving our survival skills, hoping to one be able to push through even the densest of forests and steepest of mountains. It might seem arrogant to say we are at that level now, but we are.
We returned to some of the old areas we’ve been to and started scouring through parts we couldn’t get to before. As it were, if a place is difficult to get to, those that do are quite dangerous indeed, so it has been painful.
It paid off, though. We found a cavern or two, secret paths and roads and many other things. It has been extremely difficult for Harry and No Name, but they are slowly getting the hang of it.
Castle Hillstone has its own Zoo, which, apparently, is a place where rich folk keep wild and untamed animals for other rich people to look at. I could understand the attraction in this activity, were I not an adventurer who sees exotic beasts on a daily basis.
Caslte Hillstone also has a dungeon, which we will, naturally, have to explore.
There was also another strange item to be found, this one labeled N-19 Capitor. Our experience with the Inner Sanctum made us familiar with alien technology, so I can now safely say that these items are not from this world. Since there has been one in each of the three castles we visited, I will also assume there is one in every castle.
Lastly, since they are not of this world, I will assume Corak, or someone connected to Corak left the items there for someone like us to find. The lords certainly didn’t put any importance into these items, as they were just placed there as ornaments.
The castle Grand Hall describes the personality of Lord Slayer perfectly. His guests are exotic beasts and monsters from all over the world and his festivities include fighting these beasts, to the death. As for the throne room, the lord had a quest for me, but I couldn’t accept until I paid a visit to Hoardall and formally declined his tasks.
There’s actually a guy selling an Elixir of Remove Quest, or something along those lines at the castle, so that’s what I used. The thing is, the Lord Quests seem to be of the generic type. I picked the page’s quest because I wanted to start from the bottom (there are four quest levels) and I got a task to kill a swamp dog. Easy enough.
This lord somehow captured the Red Bishop of Battle, so we managed to free him with the Red Key. I also freed two more prisoners, claiming they were imprisoned for killing an Earth Wyrm by using Magic instead of Might. Since Lord Slayer gave us a task to kill a Swamp Dog, we should probably keep that information in mind.
In fact, this is exactly what we did as we stepped out of the castle into the swamp and charged into the first pack of dogs we’ve seen. It pays off to keep maps and notes.
The lord rewarded us and gave us another, slightly more difficult task. We are to kill a royal horseman.
Royal horseman? Do the lords have an issue with the queen? We should get to Luxus Palace Royale sooner rather than later.
I urged the party to retire Harry for now and give Sir Hyron a chance to grow for a while.
Our first intention was to go explore Hillstone’s dungeon, but after taking a short stroll through it, we decided against it. Lord Slayer is a peculiar collector of dangerous things. While is Zoo was manageable, his dungeon was way past his Zoo in the danger department.
Instead, we remembered an unremarkable mine close to castle Pinehurst.
Rax clearly hoped to find riches in this mine, but I overheard people talking. The mine was abandoned ages ago and all that was left of the gold once abundant here is fine dust, pretty to look at, but utterly worthless.
Instead, the mine was home to something far less preferable – it was haunted by a dead necromancer and his minions, Sarakin. It was also extremely unstable, with frequent cave-ins taking their toll on us.
This is the spirit you see at the central part of the level. I’m not sure if the “ore” is a type or a pun.
Sarakin’s shade was close to the entance of the mine, warning us to go back, but we chose to ignore it. With Alana and myself ready to turn any undead running, and Sir Hyron and No Name giving backup with their crossbows, we didn’t expect much trouble.
You can also free these two at the mine.
We even freed two adventurers that got trapped by a cave-in and they agreed to assist us in the future, for a symbolic fee.
The final map to Sarakin’s Mine.
Eventually, we found Sarakin’s tomb and fought the shade. It was a difficult battle, with Sarakin himself and some of his minions repelling any weapon attacks and spells, but nothing can fully resist Disintegration. Eventually, they fell and revealed a magical fountain, removing any unnatural aging the shades we fought inflicted upon us.
The ghosts and Sarakin are immune to weapons. The vampires do a lot of ranged damage.
Naturally, we did not clear the mine in one fell sweep. As usual, we went back and forth between this place and MIddlegate several times.
At one of these occasions, just as we were about to enter the mine, Robin heard a noise in the nearby mountains. There was a highlander hunting party camping there. They got their hands on an ornamental sword and offered it to us in exchange for some sparring.
Mountain folk are hard, but they were no match four our cumulative experience and abilities, so the sword was ours.
It is a useless trinket, strictly intended for decoration, but someone clearly lost it, so hoping we would find that someone, we decided to keep it.
I started training hirelings for the class quests ahead. The way I understand it, only the classes related to the quest, accompanied by robbers can go to class quest areas, so I need a group of high level guys to do this. Because of that, I was training No Name, the archer and have switched from Harry Kiri, the ninja, to Sir Hyron, the knight at first, but later on started switching in other potentially useful classes. I’m thinking the robber can be Rax herself, but I should probably have as many high level sorcerers, clerics, paladins, archers and nights as I can.
Well, technically, since I can only have two hirelings, I can also only have two of the required class.
These are the hirelings I managed to free until now. Some of them are at my current level.
I also spent some time going from town to town, taking all of the hirelings to Middlegate, since this is my base of operations, offering the cheapest services.
Here’s my usual party report. Lots of upgrades this time.
A level and a far better armor for Lorelei. Plate Mail +4 got upgraded to a Plate Armor +5.
Also a level and an armor upgrade, but Priscilla also replaced her Magic Charm for another pair of Might Gauntlets. She hits almost as hard as Lorelei now.
Either Rax is all maxed out, or she has really bad luck with item upgrades. She did get three levels, though.
Alana gained two levels and her spell level is now 8. She needs spells, though.
Robin replaced her Ice Sickle for a Speedy Sword, so she can start the battle first again. She also gained a level.
Aleen got nothing. Seriously, no level, no items.
So, just to recap what happened this time.
I explored Castle Woodhaven fully. There are treasure rooms, but I have no idea if there’s anything useful in there. Each castle has a bishop you can free by buying the key of the same color at one of the town’s locksmiths. Each bishop gives you experience for freeing him.
I also explored Castle Hillstone. The Lord is Lord Slayer and he seems to be thematically oriented towards might, but I’m not sure if it has an effect on the game. I freed a couple of hirelings from the castle to. I tried tackling the dungeon, but it’s too tough for now, in my opinion.
The Hillstone bishop apparently gives more experience if you do the arena champion thing I found some messages talking about.
I started training hirelings to make myself more ready for the later class quests, since you can only take characters of that class alongside with robbers on a class quest.
I explored Sarakin’s Mine. I thought the gold dust does something, but I couldn’t find out what. I killed Sarakin and was able to use the rejuvenation fountain behind him. I’m not absolutely sure it makes you younger, but I think it does.
I also got the Valor Sword from a fight in the nearby mountains. It doesn’t do anything, so my guess is that it’s a quest item.
I’ll explore some other place, basically. I have absolutely no idea what that place will be. I’ll also keep training hirelings.
With Pinehurst fully explored and Peabody’s son still missing, it was time to find information elsewhere. Maybe another castle would be a good idea, or maybe even a town dungeon?
Alana claims I have issues; that I’m too keen on shooting things. Why wouldn’t I be? Shooting things is fun.
Anyway, she’s starting to think I’m a bit on the crazy side (which is also fun), so she’s being a pain about me writing a journal. She says it would help with my “issues”. Yeah, right. I don’t have any issues.
Still, I can’t deny writing is a useful skill and I sure have been neglecting it since about forever.
We just got out of Pinehurst, where I had a lot of time to practice my shooting. We decided to go to the dungeon below Sandsobar next. Hopefully, there will be shooting there was well.
My bow is getting worn out, though. I’d like to get a new one soon.
We used a portal to get to Sandsobar, stopped by the blacksmith, bought a yellow ticked and then immediately used it to enter a battle at the monster bowl. We fought Vikings.
Vikings share sprites with dwarves.
Vikings are big, which makes them easy to hit. There’s something about hedgehogs that’s very attractive to me, but I prefer when there’s a challenge.
I knew we should’ve visited this dungeon ages ago. Everything in it is week. The only thing that hurts are the ankle traps and you can’t shoot ankle traps.
Well, you can, but it wouldn’t do you any good.
There was a thief who offered us training in thievery. Rax was being silly and accepted. The thief spoke a bunch of nonsense, confusing Rax even more, took the cash and ran away. I think Rax is even worse at disarming traps now.
Rax’s Thievery is down to 69% now, for some reason. I’m not sure if the thief died it, or if it happened some time before, but I did not like it.
There was a note about a spell around the Elemental Plane of Water. Aleen wanted to write it down, as usual, but then I reminded her we already have the spell, because I’m smart like that and I didn’t want to wait around when I could be shooting things.
We couldn’t find a way forward. We explored every path, but they were all dead ends. Then I remembered a fun game I played as a kid – “wall chicken”. Basically, you charge into walls and see who quits first.
As usual, one of the walls quit first, and we found the thief den.
We crashed our way in and soon found the guild boss, Rinaldo Junior. I wanted to shoot him, but Rax wanted to be a better robber. She sure could use some improvement, so I let the guy go. Apparently, we are more street smart now, whatever that means.
That’s what the game said – you feel more street smart. My thievery didn’t increase, and I didn’t have any slots for a new skill, so I’m not sure what happened there.
Orcs! I love shooting Orcs!
The entire southern half of the caves was filled with some type of orc-pig mutants. I love the way they squeal with an arrow in their behind.
A zombie gave us an Admit 8 Pass for Corak’s Cavern. I’ve seen it all now. My life is fulfilled.
This zombie underneath Sansobar gives you the Admit 8 Pass.
Some killer canine’s made themselves a den in the south eastern part of the dungeon. I turned the entire pack into pincushions and then Rax took the glory by finding a Dog Whistle in the remains. What good is a dog whistle anyway?
The final map of Sandsobar and the Thief’s Den below.
Not much good, actually. It gives a plus one to luck when worn and can be used to cast the Guard Dog spell. There are far better uses of inventory slots.
We are back in Middlegate and it took just over a week to explore the cave. See how much more efficient I am compared to Alana? Heck, we even have time to go to Corak’s Cavern.
We found Lloyd!
Now both Aleen and I can cast a beacon anywhere we want and then return to it later instantly.
I can’t believe I missed this, but the secret passage to where Lloyd was is behind the stairs out of the dungeon. I should’ve known, since I already knew the coordinates from a random message. In any case, I have the spell now. I just have to figure out how to use it.
Ghosts are no fun. Aleen and Priscilla just wave their hands and they go away, but my arrows fly through them. It’s not fair!
Some guy in the cavern only wants to talk to “clerics and their robber assistants” which means the rest of us will be staying in Middlegate, chilling. Oh well. I hope it isn’t too troublesome for them. I don’t want to miss out on the shooting.
Alana and Rax hired two adventurers of their own professions at the Inn and went for it. Alana said it’s a mentorship program, but if you ask me, they just needed cannon fodder.
I’ve been thinking about this mentorship program and it might not be a bad idea. Here’s my pitch:
We offload our spear gear on some poor sods at the Middlegate Inn and maybe even take them with us every once in a while. They get some experience and proficiency and when we need them for some menial task, they have to help us, because it says so in the contract.
I mean, what good is the money we get from selling our gear when a single leprechaun can take it all away? I call that an investment!
Alana and her gang god back during the night. It seems the keepers took our Admit 8 pass the last time we tried to get in, so we need to find that zombie and get another one. Oh well, there’s plenty of time for that later.
To be honest, I don’t think the four would’ve survived the inner crypt by themselves.
I’ve convinced the team to go to Vulcania.
Lava. Lots of bubbling lava. Aleen taught me how to cast levitate, though, so I’m not too worried.
Apparently, there are other heroes known throughout Cron and someone has been keeping track on their whereabouts on the walls of these volcanic caverns. Scribes are strange folk. Paper is so much more practical.
By the Divines, how I hate mazes. This whole cavern is one huge maze. There’s no change in hell this is natural. Nature is incapable of being so cruel. The design of these passages has intent, and it isn’t good intent.
Ogre’s sure have changed since Book One.
What the inferno kind of names are Thund R. and Sir Kill?
Some kind of weird floating head took a look at our Rax and he instantly turned to stone. Luckily, Alana had something to say about that, but it’s funny. Even when there are no traps, Rax, manages to find one.
Divines damn these tunnels! We’ve been navigating a section for two days only to find an out of tune giant singing a terrible song at the end of it.
Some monsters have interesting names.
And then we realized the passage simply circles back.
At the end of one more passage, we finally found something of minor, albeit very minor use. Two adventurers were tied up there, by whom, we weren’t able to find out. The ninja is completely insane, so there’s no information to get out of him, while the other one suffers from amnesia. He even introduced himself as No Name.
They agreed to be at our disposal in the future, so they are now official members of the Mentorship Program.
Unlocking hirelings apparently serves as a reward for exploration.
And with that, we couldn’t find any more passages to navigate through. The volcanic caves were fully mapped, or so it seems.
The caves below Vulcania are mostly one-way secret passage sections. There was a split in one of them, pointing at “Endurance” on one side and “Help” on the other. I was hoping for a stat increasing pool at the end of the Endurance section, but all that was there was a giant. I listened to it, but as was as I can tell, nothing happened.
The final map of Vulcania and the caverns below.
A fool remembers. Everyone else uses ink. I will write down any information I find into my personal notes.
The mystic Thaumaturge of Good can be freed if you enter Right 32 and Left 64.
Look in Castle Xabran at 6,2 and you will find the Earth disc.
Seek the N-19 capitor at 3,13 in Castle Hillstone.
Look by 0,6 in the Luxus Palace Royale for the A-1 Todilor.
Dead Eye and Red Duke are in Bozorc’s control in D1 at 14,1.
Unlucky Sir Kill and Jed I should not have eaten so much fatty food. They are trapped by a cave-in in Sarakin’s.
The Air Disc is at 15,15 in Xabran.
Star Burst is in the center of the Dead Zone
And finally, we have our usual party report. There have been levels and items this time.
Lorelei simply gained a level this time. She’s at 146 health.
Priscilla gained a level and a spell level, so she can cast level 4 clerical spells now. She upgraded her Iron Helm +2 to a Helm +6.
Rax didn’t get any upgrades, but she did gain two levels. Her thievery is at 70% now. It dropped to 69% for some reason, but it’s going up again, apparently.
Alana gained no levels this time, but she did at least upgraded her Helm from +4 to +6.
Robin also gained no levels, but she didn’t get any upgrades either.
Aleen gained now levels, but she did get one major upgrade. Her Defense Ring +2 is now a Defense Ring +7, so her armor class is finally starting to look decent.
White Knights are the bane of my existence. For some reason, the only thing that has even a remote chance to deal damage to them is Disintegration, and even then, not one has it been an instant kill. Basically, I’m better off just running away with white knights.
Outside of that, things have become much easier once I got Raise Dead and Stone to Flesh. I can now recover from almost anything, so the risk of losing progress is greatly reduced. This means I can stay away from town longer and thus explore much faster.
As for the writing, it’s probably as bad as ever, but at least I have something of a system now.
Three town dungeons are cleared. I assume the one under Atlantium is probably too difficult, but I might try clearing Thundara. There’s the snow beast there as well.
This weekend, GOG.com struck again. There was the usual weekend sale and Constructor was heavily discounted. I bought it.
It’s a simulation game built to frustrate you, to put it shortly. The frustration is of the type that makes you want to play more, though, so this isn’t exactly a bad thing.
It’s a game on a low scale, which means the city you build is nowhere near SimCity levels. Instead, you buy housing blocks with each having room for a few homes at a time. You focus on making your tenants happy, keeping their homes in working order and dealing with the enemy faction(s).
Constructor was released on the PC and the PlayStation and I actually owned the game on the PlayStation as a kid. I think I might even have the box somewhere. Back then, the concept of a PC was completely alien to me, but somehow, I understood Constructor would be easier to play with a mouse, so I kept nagging my big sister until she bought me one.
The thing is, you don’t have much room for a mouse when you’re gaming in front of a TV; so while the controls in Constructor definitely were better with a PlayStation mouse, the ergonomics of the whole thing was very questionable.
Eventually, if I remember correctly, I think I’ve completely given up on playing the game with the mouse. The thing I very clearly remember is that I played Constructor extensively, in spite of my lack of understanding or skill with the game.
While the game was downloading (my Internet isn’t great), I actually entertained the idea that it would be different this time; that it would be enjoyment of the easy kind, the one where you could just relax and play. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
It’s the exact same frustrating, but fun experience, boosted by the fact that the controls have aged badly and you know they can be done better these days.
Outside perhaps the first few minutes of the game, and even that part is questionable, there isn’t a moment of peace, especially if you play with computer players. There’s constantly some trouble going on. Your tenants are complaining, the opposing players are sabotaging you or your houses and buildings simply spontaneously combust.
Even when none of that happens, the council suddenly decided to give you an optional mission with the two options being “do the mission” and “game over”.
But the question is was how well Constructor aged, right? Well, it didn’t age too badly. The problem is, the resolution is fixed to a low value and low and the mouse behaves weirdly, probably because of the resolution. Once you get used to that, though, it plays great, as long as Constructor is the type of game you’d want to play.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
There’s no real campaign you progress through in Constructor.
At the start, you create a game. Based on difficulty, you have a selection of available maps, with only one map available in easy mode, which is the mode you should be playing at first.
The game creation scren.
So you pick a difficulty, a map and a victory condition. There are four victory condition and a fifth non-condition:
Keep in mind, I have yet to win a single game of Constructor. Heck, I have yet to even get remotely close.
So I picked my poison, and I started in the southeast, where the green player starts. The world map is a grid of estates. You buy estates from the council and then you get to build your buildings on your estates. There’s slightly more to it than that, but that’s what matters at the start.
The world map for the easy world.
Before building anything else, you need a saw mill to get wood, so I build that.
You need a work gang consisting of a foreman and workers at the site to actually build.
Once the saw mill is built, it’s time to build the first level of homes. Residential buildings are split into five levels, each intended to house the same level of tenants. You only start out with level one tenants and once the saw mill is built, you only get to build level one houses, so that’s that.
You can only build each one house a limited amount of times, so you are forced to progress up the ranks eventually.
Each level of tenants has two tenant types. One is usually meant for paying rent, while the other breeds faster.
Breeds? Yup! You start out with a bunch of tenants, but after about 2-3000 days of living in your house, they die. The only way to get more is to breed them. Basically, each level of tenants can do four things. One will always be to pay rent.
For level one tenants, the other three choices are to have a type of baby. Their babies can be set to become level one tenants, workers or level 2 tenants, provided you equip their house with a computer.
For the second level tenants, they can breed into more level 2 tenants (faster than the level 1 tenants would), police officers or level 3 tenants. The list progresses along the same line all the way to the top.
Higher level tenants pay more, but they have shorter life spans and they breed more slowly, so there’s always a reason to hold low level tenants.
So I built my saw mill, and I built two of the cheapest shacks, renting them to one of each of the two tenants. I take my time and then the computer builds a house on my estate.
Yup, they get to do that. If you buy an estate, you better be prepared to fill it up as quickly as possible, because the land will be taken over otherwise. Heck, even the council demands you have at least 90% of land coverage during their periodic inspections.
The thing is, you also better have tenants to fill those houses you’ve built, because if you don’t, bad things will happen. The empty homes can get infested, or they eventually burn down, in both of which cases the neighbors start complaining.
They can also be taken over by enemy undesirables which is another aspect of the game I’ll talk about in a moment.
So, you need to buy land to keep up with the enemy, you need to have money and workers to build homes on the land, and you need to breed enough tenants to fill empty houses, breed more tenants AND pay enough rent to keep you afloat.
That’s what I tried to do and failed.
I built the two cheapest shacks and made one of them into level one tenant breeders, while the other family was paying rent.
Then the computer took some of my land, so I had to buy another estate. There, I built the two other shacks, and this unlocked the cement factory. This is how you progress through the buildings.
The cement factory creates cement, which allows you to build level two buildings, including the gadget factory, for tools like the computer I already mentioned and decorations such as trees. As soon as the gadget factory became available for building, the complaints started pouring in.
As soon as you have the cement factory, the requests start coming.
The tenants want trees in their garden.
The complaints are another system that keeps you busy. Tenants complain about a lot of stuff, such as the above lack of trees, the wrong fence around their yard, the quality of their rooms, their rent, etc. Each of these needs to be handled, or you get black marks, which affect how the council deals with you and can make you outright lose the game.
Complaints vary and increase in frequency as you climb up the tiers.
So I built the cement factory and the gadget factory on the new estate and started delivering trees. I also bought a computer for one of the breeders and made them create a level 2 tenant, because I unlocked level 2 houses.
My money was going down and the computer opponent was doing just fine.
You have your workers and your foremen, who simply lead the workers, and then you have your repairmen. I didn’t figure out the repairmen properly. You can manually assign them to repair buildings, or you can send them on patrol, but I guess you need to somehow assign a patrol area, because my houses started catching fire faster than I could send staff to maintain them.
Also, the two repairmen you start with aren’t even close to being enough. The only way to get more is to convert three workers into a repairman, which means you need level one tenants to breed like rabbits.
Of course, this means more houses, more tenants, more complaints, more gadget delivery, more things to maintain and an even faster trip towards the game over screen.
But the complexity is far from over.
The computer started sending thieves at me, so I built a Pawn Shop of my own.
Undesirables are special buildings which the tenants don’t like, but allow you to do some evil stuff to your enemy. The first two are the Hippy Commune and the Pawn Shop.
Just to give an idea of how much the tenants don’t like it, building a Hippy Commune on an estate requires you to upgrade the bathrooms of every home on that estate within the time limit or bad things happen.
More often than not, you defend your own buldings instead of taking over the enemies’.
In any case, the Hippy Commune gives you a hippy and the Pawn Shop gives you a thief. The thief can, of course, steal stuff, while the hippy can do a variety of things.
For instance, you can start a house party, which causes everyone nearby to dance and not work. They can also take over empty houses, stopping the enemy from renting them or basically do anything but destroy them. They can picket production buildings, starving the enemy of resources. Lastly, they can deal with an enemy hippy.
In any case, the computer started sending it’s thief on me, so I got a mission to deal with him. At this point, I figured out how to take over buildings.
Your foreman can be sent to take over any enemy building by slowly removing the fence from it. Once it’s done, the building is yours and in case of the thief, the mission to get rid of him is completed, so that’s how I avoided the game over screen for the time being.
The thing is, the computer keeps sending the undesirables at you, so you have to build the police HQ eventually, which means you also need to devote level two tenants to breed police officers. Naturally, there are additional costs involved and even more micro-management, what with having to assign police to each estate individually.
I made the HQ and I bred a few officers, but the game got away from me, so I ran out of both tenants and officers after a while.
It’s difficult. There’s no denying it. It’s also fun and addictive, but it’s difficult and definitely not for everyone.
The residential house screen. Take a look at tenant happiness. That’s actually high for me.
I lost my first game after reaching level 3 tenants. Things got away from me, houses started burning down, and I got a few missions I wasn’t able to handle in time, so I got sacked. I’ve started a few more games since, and I do slightly better every time, but eventually, the game is simply too difficult to manage for me.
This is where you order in gadgets for a house. The tenant picks these up, but only if you have them in stock.
I even abandoned the game a few times, starting a new one.
The thing is, as I’m writing this right now, all I think about is when I’ll be able to play Constructor some more, so it’s definitely fun and engaging. I’d even compare it with the Dwarf Fortress type of hard, at least based on how Dwarf Fortress was described to me, since I never played it myself.
So I’m off to play some more Constructor.