Part 6: An Intentional Bug?

Update 06: An Intentional Bug?





When I last punched through the character limit, we were leaving Highcastle after several lore-breaking encounters. Let's get on with it.




Much like Tyr-Sog, Highcastle has an "are you sure about this, dude?"-dialogue east of it.


: We've probably come far enough east to have thrown any other assassins off the track. You have a better idea of what Delekhan would throw at us, Gorath. What do you think?

: I think that if I were he, I would hunt us in the same way that one hounds a fox. You chase him and snap at his heels, all the while driving him out of fear into his hole.

: And in this instance, the hole is Krondor. If he doesn't already suspect our destination, he can't stay unaware of it too long. But he couldn't lay his trap for us in Krondor itself. Even a large contingent of elves there is enough to stir up a ruckus.

: I suspect a trap immediately to the north of our objective. That would be most prudent.

: I think I'd have to agree. Slipping in at night from the southeast would probably be the best way in... I'll at least keep it in mind as we travel.







There are a few signs of habitation and, yes, the hollow tree stumps that are blatant sprites four times as wide as the trunks of actual trees in the game are interactible containers hiding items. This one has a small piece of vendor trash, another of those blue shells, and little else, but they're worth keeping an eye out for.





Between Highcastle and Wolfram there are no encounters, so this next leg of the journey is relatively calm, and Wolfram has little of interest at this point.




Though the local store, the Arms of Dala, is somewhat interesting.



In that it sells everything up to top-tier weapons and armor, but all of it at 50% durability, like a used armor store. One way of making lots of money is, with sufficient weapon/armorcrafting skill, buying a bunch of weapons here, fixing them up, and then carting them over to a higher-priced store and selling them there.





Past that, we have the Temple of Tith-Onanka, the god of generalized warfare as opposed to Dala's warfare in the defense of others. They offer the same services as the temple of Dala, but maybe the high priest has some interesting dialogue?


The presentation of the high priest as being more concerned with war as sort of a... spectator sport, with bets and intellectual interest rather than caring about what the various sides are trying to accomplish, is pretty interesting. It's probably more detail than the priests of Tith ever get in the books, and also not exactly flattering.

Now that we have two temples visited, however... we can also finally see what they charge for teleportation services.



Just a smooth 10% of our funds to avoid having to spend a couple of days' worth of rations(maybe 1% of our funds) to walk down a road we already cleared of moredhel dickheads. If you were trying to speedrun BaK, you'd absolutely attempt to mark temples in the early game when the way to them is easy, and then use them to skip around time-consuming encounters in the later game, but for a casual playthrough, they're actually not really worth engaging with.






It's nice that we're finally somewhere peaceful, we haven't been attacked in days now.
Maybe we should stop at that idyllic farm to ask for directions and get some fresh food!


So, two oddities in this text, firstly there's the bit of casual sexual menace which is as far as I recall never a feature of Feist's books, neither sexual violence or its implications are things I remember seeing used for cheap shots in any of the books I read. Part of it is probably the dearth of female characters, but I think a good part of it is also just that Feist isn't the sort of asshole who makes use of it for emotional weight. Good on you, Feist. The other one is Gorath "praying to Ishap." Now, Ishap is confirmedly one of the world's gods, but generally it's implied that the elves(of any flavour) have no organized worship and have their own cosmological beliefs(which may or may not be right, considering that they believe they don't go to Lims-Kragma's halls of the dead, but that said halls do confirmedly exist, even if their population seems to be purely human).




Still, we manage to get to Dencamp-on-the-Teeth without any further violence despite the implications of there being angry trolls in the area, and Dencamp actually has something very interesting for us to investigate. That's right, something more interesting than high-heeled shoes and free slippers.



We want to interact with this house...





Then we head down this side path to this house and...


And then the situation softlocks. See, in version 1.01 of BaK, you're meant to be able to go back to the first password house and get the right password, then come back here and get the Mind Melt spell, a single-target, no-projectile spell that does double damage against goblins and boosted damage against a few other enemy types, too. But for some inscrutable reason, between versions 1.01 and 1.02(which is the version on GoG and I think the only version that you can get your hands on these days EXCEPT, I think, the German version which for some reason never got patched?), they removed your only way to get the spell, which seems to suggest that it's an intentional "bug." Now, when you go back to the first house, the party just refuses to interact with it.

I've had no luck finding the definitive patch notes, but it's odd because everything else the patch does is absolutely about removing actual crashes and lockups and chances for items to go missing, but this one is just very much a "no, fuck you, you don't get this spell"-situation.



On the way out, we can also harass some more people.


And it's like, sorry for your loss ma'am, but we'll absolutely be taking a backpack full of pies. It's like three full stacks of rations, which is great. We'll be well set for food for a while.




Your civilization may be inferior, but your human pies almost makes me want to spare you all.
Hey, is that a corpse in the ditch up ahead?
Grave-robbing, the perfect dessert.



The corpse only contains one thing, Coltari Poison, the only use of which is poisoning rations. I'm honestly not sure why it's in the game as an item with discrete uses as it has all of two actual applications in the game(one side quest, one main quest), and could just as well have been an essential item of some sort.






A whole day of travelling later and we still haven't encountered any enemies, but we find a house out on a side path in the wilderness. May as well check if the owner will put us up for the night.


The reward is a mostly-intact Medium Crossbow which is vendor fodder at this point, but every little bit helps, but if we keep going down the road...



We stumble upon a minidungeon called "The Diviner's Halls," which we aren't supposed to visit until chapter 5. But certainly the boys can have a little bit of sequence breaking, as a treat.



As soon as they disarm the trap outside, that is. This one is deceptively simple, though.




You just shove the single transparent crystal forwards, the cannon blows up the rod, and then whoever wants to can just saunter up the field in the now-safe gap.




Despite the lack of variation in the overworld, at least in the underworld areas they sprung for some slightly different wall textures.




Oh and pit traps. These are instant TPK if the party walks into them, and can only be crossed by expending a "charge" from a rope, and there are absolutely some chasms that need crossing to complete the game, thus meaning they technically provide a way for the player to softlock themselves or lock themselves into a corner if they spend their last rope crossing a chasm they can't get back over. Ropes are, thankfully, relatively plentiful compared to the number of chasms, but if you're playing the game without a FAQ and have a poor sense of direction, you could well get a little bit lost at points and spend more charges than you intend.





Being intended for a later chapter, the Diviner's Halls are only sparsely populated for now, with only a couple of troll encounters hanging around and little we can access in the way of loot, but it's the principle of the matter.





It does hold a few chests, though.



JACKET



Now, what's extra odd about this is that if you come here in chapter 5, as intended, then that egg is completely useless. It's a wyvern egg, a material component(two whole spells in the game use them), for a spell that makes wyverns fuck off, but wyverns are only present in chapter 6, and the characters you control in chapter 5(yes, spoiler, the party make-up does change a bit from chapter to chapter!) aren't in the same party as any of the characters in chapter 6 for the rest of the game, and travel restrictions prevent them from dumping the eggs in a chest that the chapter 6 party can access.

So clearly, clearly I was meant to come here and loot this in chapter 1, like a genius.




This one baffled me as a kid, how is this even a puzzle?!

SAWDUST

I will maintain to my dying breath that this is absolutely the dumbest moredhel wordlock in the game.



But since it contains the equivalent of 200 to 300 sovereigns, I will forgive the developers.



There's also a room full of human and moredhel corpses containing spoiled rations and a few more wyvern eggs, assuming I ever bother to use them and don't instead desperately hunt for a shop that'll buy the fucking things.





Now we can get back on the road, and we're almost at Northwarden!






Along the way is a single ambush from three goblins which, seeing as how they're relatively close to moredhel in strength, doesn't even approach being a challenge. Boring bored because they haven't looted anything in five minutes, the party wanders off-road right into yet another trap.





Yet another straightforward trap, just use the cannon to blow up the rod and walk to the finish line. But I'm greatly amused by how it uses the game's "terrain" by populating the battle map with chests big enough to fold up Owyn and shove him into.



Our reward is yet another three wordlock chests. Dare we enter this magical realm?



DOOR



A bit disappointing, but still useful.



OUTSIDE



Yet more unexciting but fundamentally useful adventuring supplies.



ONION



We get it already, rations are important!





Suddenly, as we're marching up the road towards Northwarden...


I've just come from Northwarden and I don't feel like playing for him anymore today. My fingers are numb, my mind empty, and my stomach grumbling.

Calm yourself. We haven't come from the castle. We're just travellers wandering through who heard your music and thought we would see who was responsible. So, what is a songbird doing among the falcons?



Why do you stay here then?

I haven't the choice! While sharing a cask of ale with a friend, he told me of a small village where the wine was exceptionally strong and the ladies exceptionally thin. Once sobered, I resolved to take myself to this wondrous place and avail myself of its pleasures. To my horror, I found that my friend had mixed his metaphors and I was laid upon by a lady who could tear the teeth from a bull bare-handed. Before I could extricate myself from such humiliable circumstances, her father, a Baronet of some note, exiled me here to entertain for the Baron Gabot or else sacrifice my head.

I'm surprised he didn't have you beheaded...

Well, his daughter was less than maidenly and secondly, he hadn't his fealty to pay for the year. As the Baron Gabot is fond of music, they settled that I should make even the debt... I see that you are a noble of some note. If you could do me a favor, perhaps you could ease the stress of a minstrel's life.

Perhaps. What can you want?

A length of light bowstring. While it is not immediately useable to me, I have found a resin that can be applied to it that will allow me to restring my lute. I have a feeling that I may need new strings soon.

Now, since I forgot to bring that light crossbow string with me, and of course Northwarden isn't selling any, I can't get the reward right now, but if I could...


Thank you, Tamney. That was most enjoyable, but I am afraid that my companions and I must be off again. Things to do.

I bid you farewell then. Come and see me again.

If ever I come to Northwarden again, you can be assured of it. Good day.

This also rewards the entire party with a +5 Barding skill, which isn't a gain to be sneezed at.






The final approach to Northwarden itself is a bit odd as the roadside is littered with corpses, but there are no ambushes and Northwarden itself is perfectly safe to enter.



As a fortification, however, Northwarden is less hospitable than, say, Highcastle. It only has a shop, a noble to harass(and he won't even be here until chapter 2!) and a small stash in the woods containing two sovereigns(which is, frankly, a pitiful amount of money at any stage of the game).



If Baron Gabot was in, we'd absolutely know, he fills almost half the screen.



And now, we're going to do all that in reverse.
What?!
It's absolutely the very last thing the Moredhel would expect.