Today, I’ve completed Grandia. It required computer skills, the usage of a guide I wrote and quite a lot of time, but I did it. From now on, though, instead of converting my PlayStation games to EBOOT, I’m getting them from other sources.Continue reading
I was getting really close to the end of Grandia yesterday. However, before I go to Zil Padon and gain access to the final area, I had one more optional dungeon to clear – the Tower of Temptation.Continue reading
To get to Baa’s base of operations, I had to go through Luzet Mountains. This was a huge and extremely dull area with a low rate of experience gain. Pretty much the only worthwhile thing there was in the area were the Stat Up items I’m getting more and more off. With mana eggs not necessary any more, Stat Up items are pretty much only worthwhile thing to look for anywhere.
I mostly fought these guys and Yetis in Luzet Mountains.
It took me well over an hour to get through the area, which consisted of two sections, so it really sucks that I have nothing to write about, but that’s how it is. Luckily, there’s one thing that did happen I can write about.
There’s a ledge under a mountain you can jump off. It’s basically one of those one-way paths Grandia has plenty of. The issue here was, if you jump off it at the wrong spot, you can get stuck and you’re pretty much forced to reload the game. Since this is quite deep into the area, you can easily face losing a couple of hours of game time.
Liete’s Magic Art spell is pure genius.
Lucky for me, a few minutes before this happened, I had to use the “Pause Game” feature of the PSP Go to do something, so at this point, I was able to just “Quit” the game from the PSP menu and then reload the “Pause” state from before. This made me lose just a minute or two, instead of an hour I would have lost if I hadn’t done this.
Finally, I got to J Base and started fighting enemies actually worth the time. As I left Luzet Mountains, I was able to visit Laine before entering the base, so I did just that, cleared all of the clutter from the inventory, bought some upgrades and bought an Axe for Justin, even though it was a slight downgrade.
This was well worth the investment, because I was getting half an Ax level per battle in J base, so the extra strength I got quickly made up for a slightly lower speed I got from the axe. Pretty soon, I learned a new Skill to, the Aura, though I didn’t get around to using it yet.
Before J Base, I stopped by at Dorlin’s to see his reaction.
Feena also learned a new skill – the End of the World. She actually learned it back in Rainbow Mountains, but I didn’t have enough Level 3 mana to use it back then. Now I can and I can say it’s a great spell. It does around 1000 damage to all enemies.
Liete is still mostly useless, but thanks to all the Agility and Speed Up items I’ve been using on her, she acts more and more often in combat, so she started leveling her skills and spells for a bit.
No more mana eggs needed!
I realized each spell has a level of its own. I’m not sure what it affects, but I’m sure the casting speed is part of it, so I focused on using the lower level spells on all of my characters, to speed up their casting.
Finally, I got to Baal’s chambers and I was able to fight him again. This time, it was in his mutant for, so he was a lot tougher, but I also had my entire party with me, so it wasn’t much harder. I used Allhealer once with Feena, just in case, but I didn’t really need to in order to win. The amount of experience I got from the fight was astounding.
Baal went full on monster in the second battle, but he still wasn’t much of a challenge.
My victory didn’t matter, though. Gaia managed to grow and sprout, so the entire world was in danger now. You know what this means, right? Endgame!
I started to play Grandia again as soon as I got home from the train ride, so it was all still fresh for a change. I entered the Grandeur and started fighting lots and lots of Garyle soldiers. I’m not sure if it was the enemy type or something else, but the experience gain suddenly drastically decreased.
I’m not exactly sure what Garyle is, but for a General, Baal sure has a lot of power.
The random fighting didn’t last long, though. Soon, I got to a room with three Garyle generals – Nana, Saki and Mio. I could finally fight and beat them. The fight was easy and Justin pretty much dominated. I got hurt a bit, but I didn’t have to heal once. Of course, they tried to make it look like they last on purpose, because that’s the character role they need to fill, but that’s what makes the game charming.
Since I had to fight all three of them, they actually managed to squeeze in a few hits.
After that, I had to walk through a couple more rooms to get to Baal and Feena, but before that happened, Justin got separated from Rapp and Guido. I got to Baal’s room. He went completely bananas this time and I had to fight him alone with Justin. It was an easy fight, though, and I don’t think he even hit me once.
Baal was easy to beat. No challenge at all.
After that, he went even more banana’s, revealed to be a mutant freak with appendages and threw Justin and Feena off the ship. What happened next was a bit illogical. Feena being what she is, grew wings, but instead of just flying Justin into safety, they get saved by Rapp, Guido and the flying manta,
Next stop was Laine village, where the three wise men revealed to be “the guardians of Alent” and sent us to the Rainbow Mountains, where the entrance to Alent was. Rainbow Mountains are a big area designed “vertically”. This basically means I had to walk back and forth a lot to finally get through it. That was just the first part of the area, though. The second part was more straight-forward, with basically a direct route (albeit with a bit of a maze) to the end of it.
The Rainbow Bridge is more like a rainbow elevator.
Eventually, I got to the Rainbow Bridge, Guido said his goodbyes, finally, and I was able to finally get to Alent. Soon, I’ll get my final party member – Liete of Alent.
Alent was a city in the sky, or it might even be in space, I’m not sure. There weren’t any enemies to fight in there, but there were three bosses I had to deal with, one after another. I could go back to the save point and heal, though, so they weren’t an issue. All three of them were bosses I fought before, except they got a bit beefed up here.
Fighting boss battles is fun in Grandia. More fun than random battles, which are kind off fun to.
I finally got to the building where Liete was. I had to talk to illusions of Liete to figure out the story and finally, I got to talk to her. She said Baal survived Grandeur’s explosion and thus, revealed our primary goal. We need to stop him before he completely revives Gaia. Justin suddenly got extremely good with words, so he convinced Liete to join the team.
Liete was actually easy to convince to joining.
Right now, I expect Liete to be completely useless. All of her stats are low, she can only use staves (or maces) and she has yet to learn her more powerful spells. Eventually, I’d like to have her catch up to the rest of the group and more importantly, I’d like everyone to catch up to Justin before I complete the game.
Of course, this actually happening all depends on me finding an area where I can level at a decent rate before the game ends. I hope an area like that exists.
It’s been a while since I wrote about Grandia, but I’m definitely still playing it and I intend to play it more often for the next several days, since I won’t have access to Gothic for about a week.
Last time, I just cleared the Lower Laine Village and got Dorlin’s horn. He was now smart again, so he could tell me how to finally get to Alent. Apparently, I need to get the Medal of Wisdom, held by the Mogay and kept in the shrine under the city. Dorlin also made it pretty clear he has the hots for Liete, so there’s that.
“You must obtain {random symbol} or {randomness}.” It’s cliche, but it works.
I got to the shrine and, since Milda was out of the party, Guido decided to join in, at least for a while. I remember Guido as an extremely unmemorable character from my playthrough of Grandia as a kid, so I wasn’t thrilled, but I had a free spot so I didn’t really care.
No spells and just these moves. Luckily, Guido doesn’t stick around for long.
Guido can’t learn any spells, uses the sword, knife and bow and has a couple of mostly useless skills. That is, they might be useful, but he doesn’t stick around for long enough to prove it. I ended up mostly using his pickpocket skill because it raises his held weapon skill and can sometimes grant me a decent item.
As far as experience goes, Justin was still leveling up at a decent rate. I started focusing on his wind and water elements, since I still had a few spells in those elements to learn. His sword and mace skills area more than high enough to get his remaining moves, but I’ll have to get an axe somewhere, before I can finally learn those. The rest of the party doesn’t really get a chance to level, but this will probably be changing soon, since the monsters are definitely getting stronger.
The high level spells are looking pretty cool.
As far as the story goes, there was a run in with the Garyle troops at the shrine, Baal turned out to be a major asshole and Mullen turned out to be a relatively nice guy. Also, there was a very predictable revelation about Feena (HINT: she’s Leen’s Twin sister).
It’s amazing how the world is unexplored, I’m supposed to be the pioneer and yet these guys are always there.
Baal abducted Feena and flew off on his Grandeur airship, but Guido had a pet flying manta he brought with him “just in case”, so we could give chase. Yeah, the story really doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is fine.
There was a nice animated sequence before it all went down. I like it.
In any case, this is as far as I got during the train ride. I could have probably gotten further, but it was a nice wrap up, so I decided to stop here. As I said, I won’t have access to Gothic for the next few days, so I’ll try to complete Grandia instead.
I’m not sure if I’m just having a hard time remembering, but it feels like I haven’t advanced the story by much in Gothic today. Maybe my memory comes back to me as I write this, so let’s see.
Xardas told me to look for the orc shaman in a castle ruin to the east, but I somehow heard west, so I went in the wrong direction at first. I checked my journal soon, though, so I didn’t lose a lot of time. I actually already visited that castle ruin when I teamed up with Lester. I think I even put a screenshot here somewhere, saying there was nothing there.
The climb to the castle ruin provided some nice vistas. To bad I suck at taking screenshots.
Well, this time, the shaman was there and I had to save it from a bunch of orc temple warriors. He spoke human (or common, or English) poorly, but he was clear enough for me to understand where I’m going next. I need to enter the orc city and find my way underground, where they sealed the Sleeper’s temple. This is the only way to destroy the Sleeper, but I have no chance in getting inside what with a whole city full of orcs being on top of it, so I need a special item, called the ULU-MULU.
The graphical advancement was not kind to the shaman. ULU-MULU it is, then.
Apparently, the ULU-MULU is a mark of honor and/or friendship among the orcs, so holding it would make them not attack me at sight. The shaman said there’s a friend of his he left behind slaving in one of the “human mines” who’s able to make me one. Of course, I needed to figure out which mine it was and then find that friend.
At this point, I was kind of stuck, because none of my quests were telling me where to go next. I decided to just go back to the New Camp and check out the mine there, since it was taken over by the Old Camp anyway. I was right to do this, because a group of New Camp mercenaries, with Gorn leading them, was waiting at the path towards the Free Mine. Gorn told me to pay a visit to Wolf before we head out, so that’s what I did. Wolf gave me a job. If I get him enough minecrawler armor plates, he’ll make me a set of armor. That’s pretty much a no-brainer, so I don’t have to say what my response was.
I have a love-hate relationship with Gorn. I love that he can’t be killed and hits hard, but I hate that he’s an idiot.
The idea was that Gorn would be my companion for the mine mission, but with Gothic being the buggy game it is, this didn’t go according to plan. First, I managed to get myself stuck by trying to open a chest at the moment a cut scene with Gorn was about to start. He couldn’t find his way to me, so he just kept running in place and none of my controls would respond. I had to quit the game and reload.
I really started hating the Old Camp guards while in the mine.
On my second try, Gorn just got completely lost, but somehow, as I got to the mine, he just appeared out of nowhere and started the same cut scene. We got rid of the three guards outside and entered the mine. Inside, he immediately went rogue, fell down a level and started fighting random diggers and guards, while I was stuck on top, on my own.
This is where Gothic started to get annoying. The guards love to use their crossbows and fighting ranged enemies in this game plainly sucks. It’s hard to dodge the hits and if you get close, you just get yourself in even a bigger danger, since their shots start suddenly doing way more damage, way more often. There was one particular part where I had to use a ladder to climb down into a room with three crossbow wielding guards ready to “have at me”. It took me several tries before I could even survive the descent, and once I was down, the pain would only just begin.
Somehow, I managed to clear most of the mine, even with Gorn out of the picture and finally, I found the orc slave. He needed medicine he lost nearby, so after I found it, he told me what I needed to do. In case anyone googles their way to this article, the orc medicine is in the room with the orc, in a small alcove under the wooden area. You need to jump and climb into it.
The orc slave wanted medicine, which he lost nearby.
The orc told me he needs four items to make the ULU-MULU. I need to get him swampshark teeth, a shadowbeast horn, a fire lizard tongue and some troll skin. I guess that’s what I’ll be doing next time – hunting monsters! I love variety!
This is where I found the orc medicine, after making two laps around the mine.
Well, I guess I did do quite a bit in Gothic today. I found a plot NPC, freed the mine and got my next major quest.
I’m pretty sure I’m getting close to the end of Gothic, because a lot of stuff happened today.
First, I immediately went through the woods, towards the Old Camp. As I approached the bridge, I got attacked by the two guards there. For a moment, I thought I did something wrong so I’m going to have to reload my game. I was just about to do it, when I saw Milton across the bridge, so I went to talk to him.
Milton made it even more obvious that he, Lester, Gorn and Diego are buddies.
It turns out, the guards went nuts and killed all of the fire mages, so the bridge guards attacking me was supposed to happen. I like how this part of the story was introduced. The Old Mine collapsed, so Gomez and his goons decided they need to take over the Free Mine, belonging to the new camp. The mages disagreed, so Gomez had them killed. It’s not some prophecy, it wasn’t supposed to happen, it’s just bad timing. It makes the story feel more real.
Diego was on the other side of the Old Camp. He had more info on the mine collapse.
Again, the way Milton was talking made it even more obvious that he, Gorn, Lester, and now Diego are all good friends. He asked me to tell the other three to meet at their “usual place” and sent me to Diego, who was supposed to be lurking at the other entrance to the Old Camp.
Then the game crashed….
I reloaded and I was back at Saturas. I did the same thing all over again, except this time, I didn’t drink the dexterity potions, so I didn’t “waste” those. Also, I did some shopping and bought an awesome amulet with 20 extra strength, as well as a ring with a lot of resistances.
The sword I bought from Scorpio looks awesome.
This time, I also took the official route towards the Old Camp, through the two hunting camps. I saw Scorpio at Calvalorn’s camp. He disagreed with what the guards did, so he fled. He had some excellent weapons on him, so I bought an awesome new sword and got rid of some of the junk in my inventory. I also bought the strongest bow Calvalorn had, meaning I now had probably the strongest gear I could get at this point.
I went and spoke to Milton again and this time, I even managed to get to Diego. He gave me some more info about the Old Mine collapsing and told me there was a raid heading for the Free Mine. I immediately warped to the New Camp and told Saturas everything. The mine was already taken, though, so it was too late for that.
Since I was now officially exiled from the Old Camp, I was told to speak to Lee, who made me a mercenary of the New Camp. I was also immediately promoted all the way up, so I was able to buy the heavy mercenary armor, which is the equivalent of the heavy guard armor from the Old Camp. I’m not sure if I was ever able to actually get the heavy guard armor, which looked much nicer, but this will do.
And just like that, I’m now a high-ranking mercenary of the New Camp.
After that, I went and spoke to Saturas again, who also made me a water mage and got me my first robe. I thought the robe would be crap, but it’s actually almost as strong as the armor. The next robe will probably be an upgrade.
The character sheet is simple, but the change in stats matters a lot.
Finally, I got the next big story revelation. I need to find Xardas, the necromancer mage who left the Old Camp and built a tower for himself in the orc country. To get to him, I need to figure out how to get rid of his golem guards and for that, I can go to the water mages’ library.
The library did have a book about golems, but it seemed simple to figure out anyway. I mean, I already killed the stone golem in one of my previous “visits”. It was a good thing I did it to, because the book said it can only be damaged by blunt weapons, and I sold the mace I used to kill it. The book also said needed fire spells for the frost golem and wind, cold or lightning spells for the fire golem. I had plenty of scrolls, so I just teleported to the Sect Camp and made my way towards the tower.
With Fire Bolt, the frost golem wasn’t an issue.
The frost golem was easy to kill. Two fire bolts were enough to get rid of it. The problem was the fire golem. It turns out I only had an ice block spell in my inventory and I couldn’t even hit it with that one. I tried it a few times, but it just wouldn’t work. I then tried porting to the Sect Camp to buy a couple of Fist of Wind scrolls, but those wouldn’t work either. At least this time, I decided not to take a shortcut and instead opted to fight orcs and monsters along the way to the tower. This got me an extra level before I got back to the fire golem. Still, Fists of Wind wouldn’t do damage to it either.
It took me an hour before I finally got the correct spell and beat the fire golem.
I took the bite and ported to the New Camp as well, where I finally learned the first magic circle and bought myself the Ice Bolt rune. That one worked like a charm and the final golem was finally dead (pun not intended).
It was just in time to, because in the tower it was guarding, I met Xardas’ demon familiar, who wanted proof of me killing the three golems. I gave him the items I looted from the remains and he teleported me to the real tower of Xardas, which was nearby. Xardas spoke to me, said the ore plan would fail and revealed where I needed to go next. I need to find an exiled orc shaman and find out how to get rid of the Sleeper, which is actually a demon.
Is it just me, or does Xardas sound like Mel Brooks?
Next up, finding the shaman…
Last time in Gothic, I just got the third focus stone, meaning I had two more left to find. Before I did that, I stopped by at the Old Camp, so this is where I started now. Before I went anywhere, I had to sleep to heal and I had about 100 pieces of meat to grill. Once that was done, left out of the back gate and turned towards snapper country.
Took me a few minutes to grill all that meat.
The first stone was in an area I tried to get in before, but got beaten by snappers. This time, the snappers weren’t an issue, so I was looking forward to get there. I got across a bridge, killed a few snappers and then the same thing happened as with the other two focus stones – I met someone. This time, it was Gorn, from the New camp. It looks like the game is strongly hinting that Gorn, Milton and Lester’s friendship is somehow important, because every time I meet one of them, they say stuff like “my friend Lester” or “my good friend Milton”. It’s getting a bit weird.
Gorn is way more useful than Lester or Milton.
This “random person I met” was looking for some spells and treasures in an old monastery where the focus stone just happens to be. First, he led me to the caves bellow it, where we got a key. Then, he allowed me to lead him to the monastery, where the gate was shut and a puzzle was waiting.
The title said it all. In the caves bellow, other than the key, I also found a few “Transform into Meatbug” scrolls. Using one of them again made it obvious how buggy the game is. I couldn’t figure out how to transform back, so as I got through the wall, tried pulling the wheel of the gate while still transformed and I basically got stuck. I couldn’t move, so I had to reload the game. The second time, I managed to figure out the enter key reverses the transformation.
This is what happens when you try interacting with stuff while transformed. You get stuck.
After killing a few more snappers, I climbed a set of cliffs nearby, while Gorn kept killing snappers and giving me free experience. I love the fact that these three companions seem to be invulnerable while they’re following me. Anyway, I climbed to the top and saw a chest on a platform across a chasm, but the chasm was too wide to jump over. The obvious thing to do was to somehow knock down a pillar nearby which was obviously targetable, but I couldn’t figure out how to knock it down. I tried a fireball, I tried hitting it and “using” it, but nothing worked, so I gave up.
I didn’t figure out how to push that pillar over.
Instead, I went back down and took a different path. I am now positive I can safely kill a shadowbeast! I found one in a corridor. It wasn’t even that strong and it only gave me 400 experience. I guess they aren’t “the most powerful monsters in the game” as I previously said. I mean, even a fire lizard is worth 500 experience, not to mention a bridge troll.
I thought a shadowbeast would be worth more than 400 experience.
The shadowbeast was guarding the room where the focus was stored. I got it and went back outside, where a juvenile troll was waiting for me. I saved my game and crossed my fingers. Luckily, the troll was slow, so I killed him without getting hurt at all and got 1000 experience for it. Then I explored for a bit longer and triggered another bug.
Trolls are slow, so they’re easy to kill as long as you keep swinging.
Gorn and the player character started talking like they’ve just seen the juvenile troll, even though it was dead already. As soon as that conversation was over, they started another one, acting like they’ve just killed the troll. I’ll say it again, Gothic is a buggy game. It’s worth the annoyance, very much so, but it’s a buggy game.
On the way to the next focus, I stopped by the old camp to spend some of my skill points at Diego’s, but I could find him so I had Thorus increase my dexterity. I was a bit worried that Diego got killed in the orc dog raid, which would suck since he was probably the only truly decent guy at the camp, but I didn’t have time to find it.
Screw you, Diego, you really scared me!
The game apparently has a sense of irony, because Diego was waiting for me at the site of the final focus and the first thing he said to me was something in the lines of “I thought you died!” For a moment, I went stupid and thought it must be scripted, but then I remembered there’s nothing scripted about me leading a pack of orc dogs into the Old Camp.
Diego helped dispose of a huge gang of goblin warriors. I say he helped me, but in truth, I stood there for the most part, while he was sniping them with his bow. At 150 experience each, that was a lot I got for basically free. As soon as the goblins were gone, a troll appeared and this time, it wasn’t juvenile.
SARCASTIC: That was a tough puzzle to figure out!
Since adult trolls are supposed to be invulnerable, I had to figure out how to kill it, so this was basically another puzzle. The puzzles in Gothic are really obvious, though. Right next to me was a human skeleton with a torn page from a journal, a magic potion and a Shrink Monster scroll next to it. Well, if the scroll wasn’t obvious enough, the journal page made it absolutely clear. I used the “Shrink Monster” scroll on the troll and then killed it with a single hit. Boom! 2000 experience, just like that.
With the final focus in my hands, it was time to go back to Saturas.
Diego fixed a wheel mechanism for me and I was able to get to the platform with the focus, where a bunch of harpies were waiting. I led them to Diego, because fighting them on my own was too much of a headache and I had the final focus stone.
There was an area nearby I wanted to explore before I went to the New Camp to deliver the stones. It was filled with thugs dressed in New Camp uniforms. At first, I wanted to clear the camp, but then I realized how annoying it will be to fight a camp full of bow users, so I just ignored it and used the Teleport scroll Saturas gave me.
It turns out I was supposed to deliver each focus stone individually. Each of the stones advanced the quest further and was worth 3500 experience, with the last one being worth 4000, so I an extra level here and got quite a long way towards the next one.
Four focus stones, 3500 each and 4000 for the last one – 14500 experience in total.
Saturas also sent me to the local alchemist, who gave me a bunch of potions including some which increase my stats permanently. My first thought here was “why did you max your strength, you’re wasting points now?”, but it turns out potions can increase attributes beyond the maximum, so I have 107 strength now. My next thought here was “why didn’t you wait before you max out your dexterity, you just wasted a potion, you idiot”, so I guess I can’t win against myself. Saturas also sent me to Cronus, who gave me 1000 ore as an extra reward. If 1000 ore is just spare change for them, I guess the ore mound they’re sitting on must be huge.
With that out of the way, I got my next mission. Twelve mages created the barrier, so twelve are needed to destroy it, and the water mages don’t have the numbers. I have to convince the fire mages to help out, which is a problem, since they basically have it made. They trade with the outside world and they are in charge of the group who controls the only thing the outside world is interested – ore operations. I’m guessing I’ll have a few quests I’ll need to do once I get to the Old Camp. I’ll save that for another day, though. For today, this was enough.
Last time in Gothic, I was just about to leave the Old Camp with the first focus and the Almanac ready to be delivered to the New Camp. Today, I didn’t waste much time, making my way straight there.
Of course, it wasn’t exactly a direct route. As I said previously, monsters respawn in Gothic, so I was basically charging from scavenger to molerat, to a lizard, to a blood fly, to a black goblin, etc., along the way. Black goblin, you ask? Yup! With my new armor and my awesome Sword of Death, black goblins now die in a single hit, without even being able to touch me. I actually cleared a small cave with about a dozen of them along the way to the New Camp, but Fraps failed to load so I won’t be showing you many screenshots today.
I got to the new camp and a guy who was a friend of Lester from the Brotherhood, told me to talk to Cronos, the water mage walking on top of the shaft with the ore pile. I’m supposed to convince him to let me see Saturas, the water mage leader. I actually thought I’ll be forced to do fetch quests before I’m allowed to see the boss, but it turned out I just had to tell Cronus everything and that would be enough for him to give me the password I needed to enter the inner water mage area.
All this ruin had was one or warrior. I hoped for more.
This was basically a whole extra district of the New Camp with a merchant, some trainers and various other NPCs. The most important one, of course, was Saturas, the water mage leader. I told him what I have and described what happened at the Sect Camp. He told me what he needs to detonate the ore and hopefully, destroy the barrier.
Now, I head this plan at the start of the game and it seemed illogical to me. An explosion that’s able to destroy the barrier is bound to do damage to everything else as well, right? It turns out, the game actually considers this. Saturas tells me that the explosion would be of magical nature, so it would only destroy magical stuff. I still think there’s bound to be some unwanted consequences, but at least it sounds less dangerous than it did at the start. Basically, the ore would be destroyed, the magical items would be destroyed and the barrier would be destroyed.
There are five focus stones in total and unlike Y’Berion, Saturas needs all of them. He gave me a map, a scroll to teleport back to the New Camp and told me to go to their alchemist for more help. The alchemist gave me 20 potions and sent me on my way.
I thought jumping in the lake would be worth it, but it wasn’t, at all.
The map was basically the entire prison colony, with a pentagram drawn on top of it. The five corners of the pentagram are the locations of the focus stones. I already had one, so I could safely eliminate that one. It was time to get the other four.
The first focus was in that crypt with the undead I died in already earlier in the game. By following the map, I approached the crypt from the other side and stumbled into Milton, the fire mage from the Old Camp. He was also interested in the crypt, but for a different reason. Apparently, there’s an orc repelling talisman in there. We agreed to help each other and he did his part immediately, by giving me a scroll that was supposed to kill the zombie in there. Regular weapons can’t hurt it, so that’s why the scroll was needed.
There’s no story behind this one. It just looked nice.
I got inside the crypt, with Milton following and about 10 seconds later, I was running for my life. The skeletons are easy enough to kill one at a time, but like the goblins, they do love surrounding you, so pretty soon I was swarmed and I was dying. I’m not proud to say this, but I ran off and left Milton in there. Once I was able to recover for a bit, I charged back in and managed to kill a few before running back out. After a couple of these “brave” scenes, all the skeletons were finally dead and Milton was somehow still alive. I readied the spell from the scroll and targeted the zombie. He died in agony.
I got the focus and gave Milton the talisman. I made my way towards the next focus.
I made a wrong turn while on the way to the next focus, stumbling into a valley with a small pond, several orc statues and two orc warriors guarding the entrance to a temple of sorts. The temple was just one big room, but it had several potions arranged around an altar, as well as three chests I was able to loot. There was ore and arrows inside, as well as several lock picks per chest, so overall, even with the lock picks I broke, I came out ahead.
I corrected my heading by checking the map and started making my way to the next focus again.
The second focus was close to the Sect Camp, up the mountain with the huge waterfall. I remembered the place because a few quests ago, when I was still a shadow, I fought and defeated a bloodhound there and shortly after got killed by another one.
This was just a random tower I stumbled into while avoiding tough monsters.
I knew what to expect and I wasn’t wrong. The place was full of bloodhounds, with a few orcs here and there. It was a mountainous region, filled with ruins. I actually found a small room behind a door in one of the ruins. There was a chest inside, with the usual loot (potions, ore) and one unusual item – an orc hammer. This thing did 2 more damage than my Sword of Death, so I decided to try it out.
I was right to do it. A short distance past the room, there was a bridge with a golem on it. I can’t be sure because I haven’t tried it any other way, but I choose to believe the hammer did extra damage to the golem, because I killed it in a few hits and got 500 experience for it.
Right after the bridge, Lester of the Brotherhood was waiting for me. He didn’t really explain how he dodged the golem other than “the Brotherhood has it’s ways” or something like that, but he did mention he was there to find some documents that might be useful in the future, provided I destroy the barrier. The documents are supposed to be in the same place the focus is, so we decided to team up.
This time, I had to explore a ruin filled with harpies. I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but Gothic is a buggy game. It crashes a lot and everything feels clunky. This should say something about how good the game actually is, though, since I’m playing it in spite of those flaws.
The look of the bridge tells me I’m not supposed to be here.
In any case, the bugs reared their ugly head here. Harpies are flying enemies and the game doesn’t handle flying well. They kept flying over me, not being able to reach me, but also stopping me from hitting them because I couldn’t target them from directly below. I ended up spending a lot of time receiving unnecessary hits, running away from the harpies, letting Lester handle them and trying to squeeze in a bow shot or two every now and then. This made me burn through most of my grilled meat supply so I’ll have to find a frying pan as soon as I get to one of the camps.
Somehow, though, I did it. I cleared the ruin, found the documents Lester needed and all I needed to do was to get the focus. The problem was, it was out of my reach, on a platform I couldn’t get to. It was obvious what the game wanted me to do. Lester gave me a Telekinesis scroll and I could easily get to a ledge overlooking the platform with the focus on it. However, I didn’t have enough magic points to actually cast the spell.
For a moment, I actually thought about going back to a camp and investing some points into magic, but then I had a moment of inspiration. I tried to jump from the ledge to the platform, hoping to survive it and I just barely did it. Apparently, there was no need for telekinesis.
At this point, I realized Fraps wasn’t running, so I didn’t take any screenshots in this session. Because of that, you have these generic vistas with nothing on them. From this point on, though, I started taking them again.
I had the third focus, but I wanted to explore some more, so I decided to make my way towards a tower in the distance. This was a huge mistake, but it ended up creating a fun situation, so I don’t regret it.
This is the tower I decided to try and get to.
First, I went over a mountain and ran into a Stone Golem. I managed to beat it, but it had way more health than the Bridge Golem I already destroyed. It also gave me 1000 experience, so the increase in difficulty was justified. This is where it ended, though. A few meters away from the stone golem, there was an ice golem. This guy, I couldn’t even touch. It froze me with the first hit and killed me with the second.
Stone golem, meet orc hammer.
I loaded my game and killed the stone golem again, before turning around and heading in a different direction. I wasn’t out of danger yet. This was definitely orc country because the whole region was filled with orc warriors and fighters, biters and a new type of enemies called raptors. The raptors are colorized like biters, but have a different shape and are way stronger, so mistaking them for biters at first was the death of me in the beginning.
Ice golem, meet soon-to-be dead guy.
Eventually, I managed to squeeze between the huge groups of enemies and made my way in the direction of the Old Camp. After a while, I saw something I recognized. It was the gate towards “orc country” near the Old Camp, guarded by two Old Camp guards. I ran for it, and this is when the fun part happened.
I managed to aggro a pack of orc hounds. It was a huge pack with about 15 hounds in it. I could probably kill a few of them, but there was no way I could kill the entire pack. I ran for the gate and the guards charged in, but the pack just ignored them, staying on top of me. I ended up running towards the camp and I almost reached the main gate before the pack finally gave up the chase.
That’s a lot of puppies.
At this point, I thought “why not”, so I pulled out my bow and took a shot at one of the hounds. The entire pack aggroed again and continued the chase. I lured them all the way into the inner ring of the camp, so in a few seconds, anyone who’s anyone in the camp ended up fighting orc hounds. I probably wasted some experience by doing this, but what happened was absolutely worth it.
I wish I was able to capture the chaos better. It was awesome.
I looted and skinned the bodies and then decided to spend the 20 skill points I had. I tried to invest everything into Strength, but it turns out, 100 points is the maximum you can invest into an attribute. I love being able to max out stuff in RPGs, so this is a plus for me, but it did make me worry a bit. That Ice Golem wasn’t at all hurt by my attacks, so I’m wondering if I’ll at least get some stronger weapons later on, since I won’t be increasing my damage with pure strength any more.
One attribute is now maxed. Next up, dexterity? I’m not sure.
In any case, I got three of the five focus stones now, so I need two more. For now, I saved my game and decided to take a break. Tomorrow, I’ll get the last two stones.
Yesterday in Gothic, I was told that the almanac with instructions on how to use the focus stone was lost to a gang of black goblins. Today, I asked Talos to guide me to the place where he got mugged, even though I already knew where it was.
He led me to the bridge where I already cleared a small group of goblins. That was a while ago, though, so one of them respawned in the meantime. I killed it and then went inside the cave, where I was killed in seconds last time. This time, it was still quite risky, but I managed to survive long enough to heal between waves of goblins. It’s a small cave, but I must have killed at least twenty of them before I finally got some alone time. I got the almanac, as well as some random treasure and got out, taking Talos back to the Sect Camp.
It’s great that you can read the almanac, but the good stuff is left to the imagination, I guess.
Cor Kalom gave me another reward and told me to go to the courtyard in the evening, where the awakening of the Sleeper will take place. I crashed a random person’s shack and rested until midnight (gotta love sneaking), before going to the temple courtyard.
His quests are worth a lot of experience, but Cor Kalom is getting annoying.
Once there, a video started playing. Y’Berion started the ritual, there was a bunch of lights and everyone had the same vision – an Orc in a cave somewhere. Then, Y’Berion fell unconscious. Cor Kalom was seriously annoyed by this, but he still gave me my reward. I asked for ore this time and I got 300 of it. Cor Angar, on the other hand, gave me my next mission.
Cor Angar is down to earth, reasonable and far less condescending than Cor Kalom.
He recognized the cave from the vision and from his description, I recognized it to. It’s the cave I stumbled into when I first explored the area around the Sect Camp. It’s on the hill above the large waterfall, with a giant skull as the entrance. I had Talos lead me there, even though I didn’t have to and immediately fought some orc hunters at the entrance.
There was a lot of orcs in the cave, which turned out to be a cemetery. There was also a lot of dead templars as well as mummified orcs (again, cemetery). I looted the templars, killed the orcs and pillaged the mummified bodies for items, mostly scrolls, potions and jewelry. Killing the orcs wasn’t the toughest part, but it was still pretty tough. Taking on more than one at a time usually proved fatal, so I used the slow, but effective tactic of luring them one at a time and killing them in the previous room.
Eventually, I got to the point where I met a Baal who survived. Of course, I forgot his name again. He decided to follow me and help me figure out what I needed to do here, but he wasn’t much help. This brings me to the toughest part – figuring out what to do.
First, I found half of a scroll in one of the side caves. I gave it to the Ball and he told me it was an orc spell scroll and that I needed to find the other half. Then, I spent about twenty minutes in the room with a large amount of mummies, hoping the scroll would be there. It wasn’t, but I got a lot of valuable items, including some straight up upgrades for my rings and amulet.
Spoiler Alert! This guy goes crazy and tries to kill you.
However, figuring out there are hidden switches around the grave alcoves made me look for those switches in other places to, so I found one in the bottom room of the cemetery. This opened a steel gate and let me in a small room with more random treasure and the other half of the scroll. Combining the two gave me the spell scroll, but it still needed to be translated. The Ball did that part himself, as soon as I got him into the correct room, which was the one I met him in. It was a Teleport spell.
I then moved on and got into the large room where there used to be an orc warrior and a group of scouts or hunters. I used the scroll there, next to what was obviously a hidden door and the spell teleported me to the other side of it. From in there, I could open the door and let the Baal in.
A few rooms after that, I found a skeleton with an awesome sword next to it – The Sword of Death. That was about all I found, though. I equipped the sword and it turns out it was just in time. Not finding anything made the Baal go crazy and attack me. I took him down, but as usual, I didn’t kill him.
I returned to the Brotherhood and described what happened to Cor Angar. He was actually extremely understanding so I decided I like him. He said Cor Kalom went rogue and decided to awaken the Sleeper himself, but also asked me to get some healing herbs for Y’Berion. I already had them on me, so I just gave them to him. Unfortunately, it didn’t help and Y’Berion died. He did manage to say one thing before he was gone, though. The Sleeper was not who we think he is and we should not wake him up.
Jumping into the lake seems shorter, but it’s a long swim. Walking around might actually be faster.
This makes Cor Kalom a problem, but it also gives me a new mission. Cor Angar sent me to the New Camp, to try the water mages escape plan. He also instructed me to take the focus and the almanac from Cor Kalom’s laboratory and deliver them to the mages, so I went to the lab and took both of those.
Before I went to the New Camp, I decided to go to the Old Camp to report to Raven and spend the 20 skill points I had. I used those to increase my Strength by 15 and my Dexterity by 5 and then reported to Raven. This completed one of the quests and allowed me to buy a stronger guard armor, though I still wasn’t able to get the strongest one. In any case, I can now handle fire, weapons and arrows much better.
More quests done means better gear for me.
With my new gear, I decided to finally take down the strongest arena fighter – the one from the New Camp. He didn’t want to officially fight me, so I just took him down on the spot. He fell in two or three hits and this was worth 200 experience to Scatty. Underwhelming overall, but at least it was out of the way now. Tomorrow, I’ll be going to the New Camp.