Part 5: [Goblins]

Update 05: [Goblins]





When we last left off, we were about one third along the east/west road running south of the Teeth of the World mountains, which amounts to roughly 1/9th of the total distance if we were going to take the longest possible route from Yabon to Krondor, i.e. going east to Northwarden, south to Silden, and then west to Krondor. The thing is, despite most quests and encounters for this region not being activated until later chapters, there is actually one Chapter 1 exclusive sidequest up here, which we'll be collecting before turning around, just to avoid tapping out the eastern north/south route several chapters early.





For some reason, at a couple of points, you get dialogue prompts to skip onwards along the route, possibly to make it feel longer than it actually is.




This little skip nudges us about half of the way from Tyr-Sog to the small town of Eldpoint and...



Also right into another Moredhel patrol.



Up here the gloves are off, there are no more 1 or 2-enemy encounters, we're going to be outnumbered almost every time and winning surprise is important, not to mention that even the basic Moredhel Warriors up here tend to have somewhat better stats as well as usually at least one or two of them fielding crossbows. Since we do win surprise, however, this is basically the ideal use case for Flamecast.





Who needs Stardock when I can just read random pamphlets on how to cast destructive magic?

In the novelization, the explanation for why Owyn doesn't know any battle magic is that, quite reasonably, Stardock doesn't want brawls or disagreements to turn into students throwing fireballs and lightning bolts at each other. However, the videogame is absolutely superior to the novel in that just this short bit into an early detour and he's already graduated to becoming a battlemage. So, anyway, Flamecast! It tosses a ball of fire that relies on Accy:Casting for its accuracy(though note that missed projectiles can still hit other targets, so it's best against tight clusters of enemies) and does up to 60 damage to the primary target if Owen sacrifices the maximum 20 Stamina to it. Even late in the game, this is enough to one-shot or cripple(enemies get the same stat penalties as the main characters do when they lose Health) the main target. The AoE effect is ~20% damage to enemies within two squares, which contributes to it being best to cast on round one. Firstly the enemies are likely to be clustered, and secondly they're likely to be far enough away that you won't fry your own party in the process.



For instance, this is how things look a round or two later. Hitting either of the nearly Moredhel with a Flamecast would fry both Owyn and Locklear, and is thus what the wise ancients would call "an absolutely dogshit stupid idea." In any case, except for a brief scary moment where one of the moredhel walk up to Owyn and start swinging at him, the fight passes without anything noteworthy happening.



So much for your genius plan, Squire. They're still after us, and in bigger numbers.
Or they just snuck over the Teeth of the World to hurry on down and intercept us, but we ambushed them rather than the other way around.





I'd say about half the homes and barns near this road are, in this chapter, uninteractible, with their residents either unresponsive or simply not at home.



Taking anoter step here drops us right into an ambush, despite there being no visible enemies in-game. I'm unclear whether this is due to an insufficiently high Scouting skill, or whether some battles are simply pre-coded as being ambushes every time. Not even the huge Krondor FAQ seems to be of any help there.




Unlike the last fight, Owyn can't start it by nuking one of the enemies into the ground thanks to their instantly closing with the tougher boys and giving them two to one odds.



This leads to Gorath actually having all his Stamina worn away, which could have gone really badly. If he'd taken one more hit, it would've severely impacted his ability to hit back and to dodge attacks, and could possibly have lead to him getting his ass kicked, plus one of the fighters was chasing Owyn around, preventing him from evening the odds with Despair Thy Eyes.




It also leads to the event of one of the Moredhel running for the hills, which is something you desperately want to avoid. Not because he'll return or bring reinforcements or anything, but because the game has a limited number of battles, and thus limited resources, and some of these blue-clad idiots carry things we desperately want to get our hands on for free rather than having to pay for them.





Once we're done tossing the bodies for spare change, we turn a corner in the road and encounter... an incongruous Grecian-style building.




What we've got here, is our first temple. Their main feature is curing hard-to-remove conditions like Near Death in exchange for hard-to-acquire resources like gold, the second thing is blessing your high-tier gear to make it even more high-tier(this is generally not worthwhile for a couple of chapters yet, though, as we're still pretty far from the top of the power curve and blessings are pricey) and the third... let's go poke at that mandala on the wall to our right.


This is completely non-canon, by the way. In the canon, the only ones with access to teleportation are the Tsurani Great Ones(and Pug, because Pug has all the magic), and even then they need carefully prepared patterns to memorize and teleport to, or devices keyed to very specific locations. In general the temples feature... relatively little in the canonical stories, despite Midkemia having a fleshed-out pantheon... but I'll rant about the gods in the next lore post. For now, suffice to say that Dala is also known as the "Shield of the Weak" in-setting, a faith not explicitly devoted to fighting, but definitely as ready to crack heads if someone's fucking with the defenseless as it is to handing out food to the homeless.

All temples also have an option to go harass the head priest for attention.


Despite being able to pick up this quest in Chapter 1 already, it can't be completed until Chapter 2 due to necessary NPC's not being interactible or encounterable until then, but it has a really good reward, so we absolutely want to keep it in mind. In any case, we don't have the money to bless anything(nor is it worth blessing anything at this point), no one's half dead and we don't have any other temples visited to turn them into teleport locations yet(not to mention the prices are absolute ripoffs.).



So we're going to take a detour to find grain for a temple?
Well, no. But if we happen to stumble across a sack of grain anyway... we could probably use all the divine help we could get.




Oooooh, berries!
Owyn, your pack is filled to the brim with rations.
Aw c'mon, we're sparing like, two weeks for your dumb detour. Can't we spare ten minutes for my berries?
Fine, fine, just be careful, some of these look odd...


The first flavour text means the bush yields rations, the second means it yields green potions(restoratives!) and the third means it yields poisoned rations. Always remember to read the flavour text, kids, or at least to check what kind of rations you're picking up.




...why would a wagon be a sign of an ambush?
Maybe the moredhel are bringing so many guys for the next one that they need to cart them around.
I refuse to believe they need a supply train to ambush us.
If you doubt my elven senses, go ahead and take another step forwards.




Son of a bitch.





Mostly what this battle shows off is that battle fields can have different sizes and sometimes even shapes. The game doesn't play a lot with it, which is a shame, some battlefields with actual choke points and obstructions could have been interesting, but it does occasionally change the tactical calculus and, for instance, dungeon/cave battlefields tend to be narrower than overworld battlefields.



Ugh, now why are we going off-road?
Since Gorath was right about the ambush, he might be right about the wagon, too, and while I doubt Delekhan's soldiers travel by wagon, stacked like barrels, they might have transported something else in among the cliffs...




Jackpot. Two chests just off the road. Generally overworld containers don't change from chapter to chapter, though the non-code ones, the locked ones, may be simply too difficult to pick early in the game, which is why they're usually our best chance of breaking the power curve in half even more than we already have.



COALS



And oh does this chest ever kick ass. The Keshian Tapir(that huge scimitar up there), is the fourth most-damaging sword in the game(and third most damaging if you only count non-unique ones) and represents a massive damage boost for Gorath, while the amulet is an Amulet of the Upright Man which gives a +15% Lockpicking boost. Getting that in the first chapter of the game when the scale is 0 to 100, is pretty great!



SECRET



And the second chest contains crossbows good enough that now it's actually worth it to take the occasional potshot at enemies and let them waste the time closing in, rather than sending Locklear and Gorath ahead to brawl. Though I'd like to note that I am officially an idiot for not picking up that bowstring(an item that repairs a damaged crossbow to 100%).



FUTURE



The last chest contains a Medium crossbow which is a sidegrade to the red Tsurani crossbows. It does somewhat less damage, but has better accuracy.




I'm surprised they just left that undefended.



Owyn!



This trap introduces a few new things, crystals and cannons. Cannons shoot fireballs at anything that moves past their "muzzle," doing 30 damage with each hit. Solid crystals provoke attacks, but also block them, so the solution to this trap is pretty simple.




Move the first-line crystal to the right so we can shuffle the second-line crystal one step forwards and block the second cannon as well.

Another important note is that traps have no time limit, so if your characters are wounded at all, a hot pro tip is to wander into a trap and have them "rest" over and over until they're capped out on health and stamina, THEN "solve" the trap.






The next step of the road is quiet.

Too quiet!



You hold him down, Gorath, and I'll punch him until candy comes out.




Even with the advantage of ambushing the party, four moredhel fighters go down without too much difficulty since they don't immediately tie up Owyn, and he can thus get started on blinding them all while Gorath and Locklear fillet them mercilessly. This encounter is great, though, because one of the dead moredhel has one of the most important items for this stretch of the game. The best thing about it is that you might very well never know that it's important, on account of the game never actually deigning to tell you what its effect is.



Ow! Damn! Just stop hitting the damn thing and I promise we won't kick your ass.



This is another place where a noteworthy gear upgrade is just casually stashed in a corner of the geometry.





Head off the road, walk into the hills, skip around the barn and poke at the little bit of disturbed dirt in the corner.



The Goblin Sticker within isn't as damaging as the Keshian Tapir, but is slightly more accurate and also has a +5% accuracy bless. I missed that it was Elven-typed, though, and should have absolutely given it to Gorath instead of the Tapir(which is human-typed).



Between all these magical traps and ambushes, though, I feel rather turned around. Let's go ask for directions at one of the actually inhabited houses in the area.


You can tell these guys are actual protagonists because they actually respect squatters rather than turning them out for some lame reason like "the law." The chests they mention also exist, but they're both locked beyond Locklear's skill and also contain some surprisingly lame loot compared to all the chests we can effortlessly open at this stage.




Just around the corner we reach Eldpoint, which is largely notable for having one of the worst stores in the game, "Guds," which has an absolutely terrible selection of items AND buys basically none of what we find on any of the enemies, or in any of the stashes around the area. So instead, let's harass some of the other locals, one of them has a present for us.




Sadly, we can't dress Gorath in high heels, but if we accept the offer, we get a pair of free Weedwalkers which, you might remember, are a +30% bonus to Stealth. Considering that Weedwalkers have a base price of 150 gold, that's a pretty big score for the early game.



It also, of course, has an inn, though sadly without any unique NPC's. Just the usual barmaid, lute and a few randoms. You'll probably not click on any randoms after the first time you try, since they generally just have very short dialogues that amount to: "And the NPC told Locklear to fuck off and mind his own business," but there are actually several unique, but rare, and randomly assigned, dialogues for inn patrons which are worth reading. I'll toss in a few of them as the game progresses, like right now!


We will, of course, also take a shot at barding and hope we don't get our asses tossed out again...


It's the lowest tier of success possible, but it's still a success! This is more or less entirely down to the practice lute that Owyn hammered away at until it broke last update, it brought him just over the minimum requirement to get a reward. Only about a quarter of the maximum possible reward, but I have no idea how you'd get the 82 Barding necessary to get the max reward here in Chapter 1 without abusing one of the game's multiple free money tricks, the simplest of which relies on the fact that anything sold to a store can be bought back any number of times. Thus, if you break a high-quality crossbow entirely, you can buy an infinite amount almost for free, then buy bowstrings to repair them, and sell the repaired crossbows for more than the price of buying the wreck and the string.



At least you're finally earning your keep.
You mean aside from the magic?
If you two would stop squabbling, there are enemies up ahead.
In the middle of Eldpoint?
Indeed, it looks like we've arrived in the middle of a raid.



Welcome to a new type of enemy: Trolls. They're, uh, nothing like trolls in the books, who are described as looking more like primates than people. These things are just tall people with some bad makeup and large sticks. They tend to be beefier than Moredhel, and hit harder... and almost zero of them carry anything, meaning that if you decide to spend your time hacking them to pieces, they're gonna provide some training, sure, but likely mostly waste your resources and perhaps paste the party. So instead, do the smart thing.

Cover your ears, everyone!


DINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

The secret power of the tuning fork is that it makes all trolls in a given battle instantly start fleeing from the battlefield. It's a supremely useful item that makes the game so much easier, sparing you a ton of quite annoying battles, and outside of perhaps one single piece of NPC dialogue somewhere, nothing ever tells you that the damn things actually have a use.




I'm going to be resolving all troll fights with tuning forks when possible, since the forks aren't exactly in short supply(we've got about 60 uses on the one we found) and there's never anything lost in doing so.







From Eldpoint to Highcastle, there's only one battle in our way, which is another pure troll encounter and thus removed with another Tuning Fork use. And thank God we're finally at Highcastle, I've had to pass up tons of mediocre items thanks to not being able to unload jack shit at Tyr-Sog or Eldpoint.




Despite being a border strongpoint, Highcastle has the spread of amenities: A shop, a tavern and a local noble to harass. The local interactible background item is the mentioned Cutter's Gap in the background...


I'm not sure what Locklear's "reasons" could have been. A boondoggle attempt at travelling north and assassinating Delekhan to shortcircuit the entire plot? It would've been funny if it was an option.

There's nothing exciting about the local store, it just has a ton of high-tier armor and weapons at prices sadly much too high for us to pay at the moment. So let's hit up the bar, play some tunes and get another bit of fluff dialogue.




Many of the "rare" inn dialogues seem to be minor game hints, like this one which tells you not to fuck around in dungeons without rope. Now that everyone's had a chance to get drunk, let's talk to the local noble.


So the plan is... to not have a plan?
Exactly, no one would ever expect someone as brilliant as me to be acting randomly.

Anyway, now that the party's inventory is unburdened, we have a change to kick over some things in the environs around Highcastle.





Firstly, and most importantly, we need to pretend roads don't exist and run more or less straight west away from Highcastle until we bump into a cliffside, which should also trigger another magic trap.




Now, this trap I don't quite get. You'll notice we've got all the previous elements here, plus a new one, transparent crystals. Fireball cannons will attempt to shoot at them, but their shots will pass through. If they hit one of the pillars for the lightning lines, they'll disable that entire line, but at the same time they can't shoot through the line itself, as the line will blast the fireball out of the air.

Considering that we can't pull crystals, only push them, I'm lost as to how to solve this trap "perfectly." Ultimately, what I did was just having Owyn run past the cannon on the right(it's only 30 damage, he'll be fine!), with the solid crystal, so he could use it to block the top left cannon and walk past it. If the rightmost crystal was a transparent one, the solution would be super obvious, but since it's not... I don't have a damn clue. If someone else can use their tactical megamind to solve this one without frying Owyn halfway to a crisp, go ahead and let me know.




Of course, I also double fuck it by pushing this crystal a step too far so Owyn has to eat two fireballs. Still, at least there's a reward for this!



While completing battles drops you out where you stood, completing traps always drops you in a fixed location, in this case more or less staring down three coded chests.



BARK



The contents of the chests are a bit... eh, though.



BREATH

For instance this one just contains 28 rations. Nice stuff, but not exactly super vital.



YESTERDAY

Instead, this one is the big score.



Another good sword, a high-quality emerald(worth about 100 sovereigns) and two bags of seemingly innocuous powder.



Though at least these come with some instructions. They go in Owyn's inventory, and we'll soon see that they're some of the best items in the game for handling battles where the party's outnumbered.

Now, let's see about getting in the Baron's good graces. Those goblins he mentioned can't have gone far...





Excuse me, has anyone in here seen any rampaging goblins around?


She's a hint leading us to the chests we just found. But since we already looted those, we'll just keep heading north.




Goblin campfires, do you think?
No doubt, you can tell because they never follow proper campfire safety rules.
????
Draken-Smokey says only you can prevent forest fires.




There they are, it's the [goblins]!
Prepare to meet your end, miserable [goblins].
Those aren't goblins, they're just guys in green shirts!
Shut up, Owyn and eat your goblins.

Ahem, so. These are obviously just digitized images of slightly shorter(or downscaled) humans in green clothes which are hilariously completely unlike Midkemia goblins, who are, oddly enough, blue-skinned, always black-haired, much shorter than humans and have black scleras. In some of the books they're also described a bit like smaller trolls, as in being somewhat simian in stature. Stat-wise they're also more or less completely identical to moredhel, which is another oddity since in the stories they tend to be described as generally being much less dangerous than both humans and moredhel, and generally only a threat in large numbers or if they manage an ambush.




These bastards are set up with two archers and also run right into the middle of our formation, so I decide to bust out the big guns and eat the friendly fire involved in Flamecasting the center goblin to reduce how much a threat he is to Owyn.




It mostly goes well, except that Owyn almost gets hacked apart and ends up with only 6 Health left, a goblin all up in his grill and it being able to act before Locklear or Gorath can get to it. So what do we do?



We pop it with one of those powder bags, of course. Nothing explains how they work, but they paralyze an enemy for an undefined number of rounds. It's like a better version of Despair Thy Eyes, especially since it also allows you to see that A) the effect has in fact, taken effect, and B) whether it's still active. As long as Owyn's carting around a few of these bags, we're pretty well guaranteed that he won't be taken to the own zone by personal space invading enemies.



Now let's pick through their carcasses for quest items.




Again, it's funny to have these perfectly literate goblins when most of the time they're portrayed as being hide-bound savages. Let's cart this back to Highcastle and see what Baron Kevin has to say about it.





200 Sovereigns for killing 5 goblins is a really good score considering that up to this point, the party has maybe earned about 700 or 800 sovereigns total. With this, though, we've tapped out the Highcastle environs for the time being and it's time to head further east and north until we reach Northwarden.



That's for the next post, though, since Betrayal at Krondor is a surprisingly wordy game(and I am incredibly incapable of shutting up), and thus this post is already at 50k characters.