The reign of Empress Shirley the First of Avalon
Ooooooh, tips, much appreciated; the game's been pretty fun so far, and is a completely different feeling beast from both RS1 and 3, so the new information is quite welcome. :D The encounter part in particular is quite interesting, as I avoid encounters in RS1, 3, and Frontier for most of the entire game, making this the first in quite some time for me where they are actively beneficial.
On that front, Empress Shirley's reign has also proven beneficial for all, as I commissioned the planting of an orchard and diverted some monies over to the blacksmiths for the development of super sweet helmets. Following that I checked to see if any new formations were available, but none were, and went about assembling my new team: 1 heavy infantry on point, 1 air mage in the back, and 1 monk and light infantry on either side. I don't know damage formulas for this game, particularly regarding fist damage, so I assumed RS3 rules weren't in play and loaded everyone down in heavy armor except for my mage, who I gave double necklaces. Following that I took everyone to the magic research center and, after seeing I unlocked no new spells last generation, decided to focus everyone down on two schools this time instead of spreading, giving everyone fire and light magic. I also passed the Elder bow I picked up to my mage and the Splash sword to my light infantryman, and with general preparations complete my team traveled south to where we helped the bison herders earlier.
Unfortunately, they were all gone when we arrived, but I did remember the leader mentioning their seasonal migration and noticed another path to the south on the map, which I took in the hopes of getting more quests from them. This path is another one like the plateau before where you have to actually cross it to change map areas, so I found myself skating along a frozen lake in a very simple puzzle before reaching the tribe again in their second settlement. Sadly, talking to people here didn't reveal any new quests, per se, but the leader did mention a nearby location the tribe didn't screw around with, so of course that was to be my next destination. ;)
Returning to the map, I found the area marked with a red X, which was a first and I assume meant I wasn't supposed to go there, not that that stopped me. Have to say though, how much this place looked like the Ice Palace from RS1 almost did, because that dungeon is absolutely obnoxious and I had no intention of putting myself through a place like that this early in the game. Fortunately, I quickly discovered this was the shortest dungeon yet, being 1 main screen and five sub screens with chests in them. Two of the chests were traps that got me mugged by skelebros, but the other two contained phat lootz, and the last room contained a simple switch puzzle, two more chests, and one unmistakable staple of the series strutting in the back. I picked up the Grim Reaper bow from the first chest and gave it to my mage, then saved and rammed my face into the Giant in the offhand chance it wouldn't be as powerful in this game as it is in the rest of the series.
Spoiler: it is.
With my characters hovering around 200 hp the giant was a guaranteed OHKO on anyone in my party it decided to hit, it attacked twice per turn, and it was impervious to my instagib attacks and paralysis. I clearly was not winning this fight. However, I did notice this enemy had an incredibly high spark value, so I decided to grind-and-run against it for a bit and walked away with the Reaper bow's AoE death attack, Marionette for Shirley, an AoE slash for my heavy infantry, corkscrew for my monk, and fillet for my light infantry, acquisitions I considered generally worth the lp price I paid. I also discovered that the giant was NOT immune to the stun status from my epee, so I formulated a plan to remove everyone's armor and give them epees with feint to see if that would work. Of course, to do this I would have to leave and travel back to Avalon, which I decided to do since it would be a good time to check up on things there.
Returning home I immediately checked to see if I had unlocked any new spells, which I had not, nor did I receive a status update on the orchard when I sat on the throne -- seems planting was going to take longer than I expected. Helmet was done though, so I got that at least. It was promptly deposited into my armory while collecting the epees. :D After loading everyone up with feint and more balms, I decided to hit the royal bedroom for some much needed WP/JP restoration before heading out.
And failed to fall asleep. :0
It turns out, sleeping in my bed allowed me to walk around and after exploring the town for a bit I met up with one of the thieves people were talking about, who had a secret room in my own castle! :mad2: After helping her out I got a quest from the guild proper, which led to the brutal murder of a poor squidman, and now I have the help Wolf mentioned for the canal quest once I decide to finally do it, which would be right about . . .
not now. Instead I returned to the ice dungeon to attempt to clear out the giant there, which, after a few attempts and removing everyone's armor, actually did work! Turns out all I needed to do was run at him naked with my weapons flailing. :roll2 My reward for this arguably unfair win was a pretty sweet axe, though without a dedicated axe user it doesn't have much of a home in my party at the moment -- it'll find a home for sure later.
Wrapping up that dungeon I returned to the village to tell the elder, but it would seem they have migrated again, so I went back to their first location and met them there, only to learn that one of their kids and baby yak wandered off. Interestingly, they didn't ask me for help this time, but I think they know by now that Empress Shirley is on the job, so things are covered. :D
The new location on the map was actually stupid annoying, with a lot of false routes, and I had to follow the kid's voice to find where he was, one time even wandering around lost until I found a false wall I had to walk through. It wasn't Crowley bad, but even still, y u do this, Japan? :mad2: The worst was yet to come though, because once I found him he somehow managed to be behind one of the game's main bosses, and I wasn't interested in picking that fight just yet, so I reloaded my save to exit the cave -- I'll be back for him later when I am ready to progress to the next generation.
Without any other clear destinations besides the canal I set to talking to people again and someone in the starving village opened a new location for me to explore, so I went there next. The town was nice enough and seemed problem free, so I suspect a volcano is going to erupt on them later, but until that point all I really learned from the town was about another town that used to have mermaids, so off I sailed to there.
Much like the previous town, this location was relatively uneventful, but I did find a dancer in the bar at night who won't talk to me and I can't follow, because I appear to open doors so hard it wakes up the sun. :shobon: Again, I think I'll come back here after I finish exploring. Speaking with more of the town's folk revealed the location of a nearby witch who sells love potions, and since poor Shirley seems lacking in her love life I decided to adventure that direction, finding yet another short dungeon and meeting said witch, who took all my monies in exchange for THE most garbage LP potion. :stare: She made up for it by telling my about the desert though, so that was fine, and off I went to the land of sun in my metal suits.
Fortunately, this desert is far, FAR less annoying than RS1's, because while the sandstream gimmick is the same you can at least see them here, so you aren't being wildly tossed around out of nowhere while you are trying to navigate the place. I didn't spend much time here, as I generally dislike deserts in this series, but knowing RPGs in general something cool is hidden here, and though I immediately left to explore the town I found on its south-eastern end, I'm sure I'll be back here at some point.
Said town is at the base of some monster filled towers which I was going to explore, but some of the town's folk told me one of the Heroes is doing something in there, so much like the guy with the kid I'll worry about this more after I'm done exploring. Other people I talked to told me about mirages in the desert and an oasis out there the men in the village had gone to find because it would, in some unclear way, help them with the boss in the tower, so the call to the desert was much closer than I expected and the game clearly wants me to head that way. Shirley bravely took a boat to Japan instead.
Turns out Japan was much less interesting than I expected and most of the houses were empty, but I did manage to find two men talking about the strangest locations they had seen, one telling me about the desert I had just come from and the other mentioning a jungle to the north, which became my next destination.
The jungle here is, fortunately, NOTHING like the one in RS3 and can be navigated normally, and through my exploration I stumbled upon . . . another monster filled tower with a town at the base, just like in the desert. More of the Heroes' handiwork, I assume. :shrug: Talking to the people revealed that something was definitely up with the town, because they were all talking about their queen and how all the women in the town left due to jealousy. They also mentioned something about a guardian and that their queen had entered the tower, so I went in after her, bopping mobs up and down the tower along the way and actually winning an upgraded epee for the Empress. :score: Unfortunately, while I did find the Queen at the bottom of the tower, she was being guarded by a large plant boss, which, after saving-and-fishing with a bit I learned the following about: it is of poor temperment, kills me dead, has more than 1500 health, and is immune/highly resistant to stun, paralysis, instant death, and/or general shenanigans. As a general rule in the series axes take care of plants like this quite well, but as I didn't train up anyone to use that axe I found earlier I sadly had to leave her in its thorny plant clutches for now -- hopefully she and it won't be magically petrified by the time I come back. On the plus side, someone knocked a hole in the wall nearby, so I was able to walk out of the dungeon without backtracking, which was pleasing, and it brought me to the street outside.
Without much else to do in that town, I went back to explore the jungle some more and found a path to the east that led me to a woman being attacked by some wild dogs, who, of course, I saved. She then thanked me and led me to her village, which was filled with Amazons! And not only that, but the women from that town with the tower too! :0 Talking to people it turns out the queen is, in fact, one of the Heroes, and a master of charms to boot, so it is probably good that I didn't succeed in freeing her with my mostly male party. I also, from speaking with the town leader, appear to have unlocked the Amazon as a recruitable class now, which is awesome since she says they are good with bows and bows are a pretty top tier weapon class in RS3. :D I also told her I'd help get rid of the lady in the tower, cause Empress Shirley is awesome that way. :3
Annnnnd that . . . is where I am at currently.
The reign of Empress Shirley the Pioneer
Turns out, Empress Shirley did a whole lot of walking on this day. X_X
After leaving the Amazon village I decided to check out the jungle more and exited from the northeastern path, finding another small village. Talking to the people here revealed no new quests, but I did learn a few interesting things, notably that the people in the town with that tower are stone masons and that some really slow person had passed through the town, though that information didn't mean much at the time. I also ran into people that offered to heal me, but did silly things instead. Much MP was not regained from this visit. With nothing else of note in this town I continued my exploration to the north via boat.
And I ended up on a small island with volcano problems. :-/ Guess I called it right before, just in the wrong place, though there are a LOT of elements in this game I'm recognizing from RS1, so I was less surprised to find this than I should have been. Speaking to the people in town revealed that a wizard was out to help them, as well as some people living on the other side of the volcano they traded with, so I popped outside and visited those people on the other side of the volcano.
Or, at least I attempted to. I met a super chill lizardbro at the entrance to their town, but the place was covered in lava and he informed me I'd need a stone boat like the trader in the previous town if I wanted to traverse this place. Hrm. Oh well. I returned to the first town to speak with this trader to see if he had the boat still, but it turns out that someone broke it so he couldn't lend it to me, and that he had found it in the jungle I just came from and had drug it all the way here, which he had no intention of doing again. Amusingly, this also likely made him the slow man the kid in that town had seen. :3:
Putting the boat mission aside for the moment, I decided to pay that wizard a visit, annnnnd he lives in a skull covered tower, which is super legit and inviting and in no way evil at all. Speaking to him, he told me he had an ice seed to plant in the volcano that would save the town, so I told him I'd deliver it to the peak and went for a short climb, plopping it in the top. When I did it completely stopped the lava flow from the volcano and I immediately came to the realization that I . . . probably totally just boned those poor salamanders. I immediately checked on them after climbing down the mountain and, sure enough, their entire lava lake was gone, though now I could explore the village. To my surprise, none of them, not even the elder, seemed angry about the situation, or even noticed it, which was a bit odd, and there were no quests being offered. I did, however, stumble upon their library, where I found out that wizard had been studying their stuff and apparently stole some of their slabs, which is pretty lame. I also pieced together that the volcano had formed a new nearby island in the recent past and that I probably shouldn't have stopped it up, something everyone here telling me the wizard was untrustworthy in no way reinforced.
Done with that area I returned to the first town and spoke with the mayor, who had the wizard oddly close to his side. Nothing negative really happened from the exchange and the mage left without any indication that he was evil, not to mention the town joined my empire, but I was pretty unsatisfied with this outcome and attempted to pay said wizard a second visit only to find he is nowhere in his tower now and I can't climb to the top due to magic. I was also taunted by unobtainable chests and decided to reload from before I took the ice seed quest in an attempt to reach the 'manders before meeting him.
Unfortunately, this did require that stone boat, so I went back to the jungle and couldn't find anyone in either the tower town or the amazon village that offered any information about it. I did discover that guardian people mentioned the queen having problems with earlier though, and picking a fight with it I saw it was a reskinned Giant from that ice dungeon earlier. It also did a lot more damage, but also only attacked once per turn, so I figured I'd play around a bit and see if I could cheese it with ye olde feint spam.
Turns out, uh . . . yes. Yes you can.
Also turns out the devs may have been aware of this exploity behavior and decided to include a bonus middle finger to anyone attempting this method as well, because the guardian randomly decides it has priority, even when you have been going first for the past 10+ turns, and chucks out a poison attack that does over 300 hp of damage to everyone and insta-wipes my party. I do not know for certain that this a hard programmed thing, and it certainly could just be terrible luck on my end, but at over 20 attempts and a 100% rate of occurrence, it certainly felt intentional enough for me to give up. Upon deciding I was unable to kill this boss I decided to further explore the jungle in case there was another town of stone masons I could snag a boat from, but all that turned up was an empty hidden cave and another path to the northwest that led out onto the savannah, which I decided to explore.
This area was fairly uninteresting from what little I saw of it, and, after stumbling into the rather unexpected find along the eastern edge of a town completely overridden with insects, I turned along another northwesten path onto the steppes, which, in RS1, was where Aisha and the nomads lived. Let's see if the trend continues and we find them here too! :D
Actually, I did not find them, but I did find the absolute hilarity of what appeared to be a ship crashed dead in the middle of the place, which begs the real question of how the hell that happened. Since I couldn't interact with it, I kept wandering around until I found some exits to a great wall in the north, which were quite locked, and another exit to the west to a town.
The town itself was pretty uneventful, one of the people themselves telling me it was a just a boring town, which likely meant it was not at all and filled with mages in hiding. I didn't pick up any new quests, though I did find out some new information: this is yet another place where people were talking about moongazing, Matild -- er, Cumberland is behind the northern wall, and someone mentioned a lake to the south with a forgotten path to it or something? Hrm. I also found an empty warehouse next to some docks, which immediately made me question if I had stumbled onto the Dophore Firm's "Moving" operation from RS3, but no one in the town was getting mugged, so likely not. Oh, someone also mentioned that nomads USED to live on the steppes, so there's the RS1 reference I was waiting for. :D With little more to do I spoke to the man at the docks to see where he could take me and two destinations popped up, one I had never seen before and the other being the town next to Avalon. You know, the one I couldn't sail from due to pirate activity. Figured I should see what happened if I tried to take that trip. :shifty:
Yeah, nothing actually, I just ended up back near Avalon and when I tried to head back I was told by the dockhand I couldn't sail out due to pirates from the canal fort. Seems legit, seeing how good they got me on the way in. :shobon: This seemed like a good time to check up on things back in town though, so I used to opportunity to do just that. Sadly no new spells had been unlocked, nor was my orchard completed, so I'm fairly certain now those are going to require some form of time advancement to unlock. I also pulled my axe out of storage, not because I had someone to give it to yet, but because my light infantryman was down to 1 LP and I figured it might be time to purposely kill him off for a replacement -- I also removed all of my monk's gear too for similar reasons, only not because he was at 1 LP, but because his remarkably poor performance had somehow managed to instill some rather murderous designs into my head. :stare: And no, after testing, this game does not use RS3's martial arts formula, as naked monk damage is the same as fully-loaded-up-in-metal suit monk. I also hooked Shirley up with the LP potion we had in storage, because she was down to 2 LP at the time and I'm not quite ready to pass on to the next generation yet; there's still so much to see!
:bounce:
Following our brief return we set back out along the rather long and circuitous route back to the desert, whereupon I quickly learned somethings I did not notice before -- you only have half your HP in this place, and red snakes are bad and randomly barf up earthquakes. Also, lightinfantryman died. Fell down a barfquake hole. Monk, however, was still at full LP despite having no armor and being on point in the formation. . _. Anyway, I popped back into Avalon to pick up a replacement, and seeing no one that said they were good with axes I picked up the burly chick that kind of reminded me of Sif and gave her the amethyst axe. She made good use of it by immediately matching my monk's damage in the desert. Not that we were fighting a lot there, mind you, since the half HP and quakesnakes made it extremely dangerous for our 3 LP Empress, and instead I focused on exploration of the area instead. I did manage to find one of the mirages the people in that town mentioned, then I found the exit to the south that led to an empty map -- clearly I needed someone to mention locations down here before I could do anything with the area.
Heading back into the desert I found that same mirage again, only this time it was the Wandering Lake and let me in. The people here revealed that this place had a cursed water supply that fully restored your LP, but reduced it to 1 the instant you left, and I seriously -- and I do mean SERIOUSLY -- considered partaking of the curse just to rid myself of that monk who somehow STILL was at full LP despite my best efforts to murder his lazy ass. :mad2: I was a bit confused about how this place was supposed to help people with that tower in town though, because nothing here would make anyone stronger, so I explored more and found I could swim in the lake and made my way into the building where I learned about some ruins from that southern exit I found earlier. Still no idea how that would help the townsfolk, though. :-/ This means there is either another oasis I haven't found or people are looking for something in the revealed ruins, so I decided to head there next.
This place popped up as another red X, which I'm going to assume just means ruins from here on out, and inside were some monsters and a fairly simply teleporter puzzle, ultimately leading to some money and a . . . phantom sword, I think it was? This thing is on par with my axe damage wise, which is super nice, though unfortunately my inftantryman died, so . . . now I'm in the opposite boat I was in earlier and have a strong sword and no one using swords. :jess:
Back to exploring the desert, my search for another oasis instead led me to another town on the north end where people kindly informed me of the half hp in the desert thing, which kind of makes me think I was supposed to come into the desert through here first? Probably? I dunno, either way there were no new quests to be found here and the right exit just took me back to the savannah from earlier, so I decided to check out the lake above instead. You get a boat to sail around with in here like the dragon lake in RS1, and I found a giant fish underwater I can't interact with and an empty cave along the western shore. werd. Taking the eastern exit from the lake brought me back to the map with that town I was in earlier with the two boat destinations, so I went back there and headed east onto the steppes to continue exploring that area.
To my surprise, I found a random hut while following the western edge of the map, so I went inside and, lo and behold, the nomads ARE still on the steppes! One of them also mentions horses, just like Aisha had in RS1. Maybe I will get one? :D Talking to the people I learned that the ship I saw earlier was not somehow crashed but built there instead, and talking to the elder he revealed it was a fort of somekind and people were making drugs there. But even the Holy King banned the sale of narcotics! D:
Doooooooooooppphhhhooooorrrrrreeeeeeee!!!!
He also asked me if I wanted to help them storm the fort, or maybe help come up with a plan, which, I mean, duh. We just stormed it. :shobon: He yanked me around and we ran straight at the thing which, to my absolute amusement, as in I actually cracked up, popped out of the ground and sailed away, which scared the crap out of the nomad who then in turn ran off. I mean, I was dying at this point, I have no idea how that boat was moving, but I did the most logical thing I could think of when dealing with floating forts and rammed myself into it. A lot. To no effect. Sad to say, since the only method I know of infiltrating floating forts is by visiting a nearby town and getting captured, and since I'm pretty sure that only works on floating tree forts with barrier shifting skeleton men at the helm, I decided to give up on this for the time being and went back to the nomad leader, who had . . . honestly, no advice to give. Eh, them's the breaks, I suppose? :shrug:
Since I was already in the steppes I decided to head south again back into the savannah and finish exploring that, which revealed another small town with no quests. Actually, this one was probably the least eventful since Japan, as all I really learned was that two other towns existed on the savannah, both of which I had already seen, and that . . . molemen exist? Ehhhh? Sadly, this wrapped up all of my exploration options on the continent and I was forced to either take on one of the main quests I had seen or to head back to that town and take the boat to where it was heading, so of course I did that. Because, I mean, who even quests?
:smug:
Uh, funny thing though, walking back into that town it was overrun with monsters which . . . was a surprise. At first I assumed this was like the monster invasion in RS1 and probably meant that I screwed these people over by bumping that ship, but on inspection the monsters here didn't . . . actually want to fight. They just kinda grunted at me. werd. I talked to the guy up near the warehouse and he offered me a job, which I assumed was of genocidal inclination, so I agreed, and . . . he drugged me. And stole my stuff. And stuffed me into the hold on the ship. Huh. I decided to break free, which actually would have been complete hell as I was totally unarmed, except that in the single most ironic twist of fate ever the naked monk I'd been passively trying to kill for the last hour or so was suddenly the most useful person on my party and his ranged paralyze attack basically carried me through all the fights here. Sadly this isn't one of the cases where you open a box and find all your gear though, and instead I had to scavenge what useful stuff I could find from the boxes on the ship itself, and let me tell you, all of it was traaaaaaash. Except for a super sweet blazing sword, which I gave Not-Sif, since she still knew double strike. This area took quite a while since I had to conserve MP/WP big time, and Shirley having 1 LP was not much help. I finally slugged my way to the boss, though.
Annnnnnnd, unfortunately, it turned out this boss was one of the Heroes I had been trying to avoid, and there was no realistic way for me to avoid fighting him, so I had my first big boss battle with no gear, four people who were bad at martial arts, 1 LP, and almost no MP. It went about as well as one would have expected. I'm tenacious though, and this boss actually seemed rather weak, especially since his major gimmick is that Marionette tech I got on my epee ages ago (which, I want to share, is some HOT trash when YOU use it), so after some tweaks I came up with a plan: I removed all of the armor from my monk and Not-Sif to maximize their speed and put them on the wings of the Imperial Cross formation as attackers, loaded my other 3 members in full armor, had the pointman spam counter, and left Shirley and my mage focused on defending and healing. It took a few attempts and about 20~ turns due to low damage, but we finally got him! One down! Kind of . . . unintentionally, but still. This added the steppes to our empire and returned us to Avalon without . . . advancing the generation? :shrug: Whatevs, our orchard is now complete and that is where I have currently ended. Still need to check out that boat and kill my monk, though. :x