Part 16: The Black Geyser

The Black Geyser

Welcome back! Last time on Black Geyser, Isla told us there was an entire other plot after we defeated the main villain and also our main motivation to do anything. Today we're going to descend into a land of confusion and complete fucking idiocy.



First, however, we need to yoink these poisoned arrows from a barrel in the Curious Cat. A better game would have this imply something. I have no idea why these are here.



We're still going to the Temple of Almefuckadick, but I remembered that you can just go to the Pendulum and you don't have to fight through waves of tedious encounters.



The Pendulum apparently lives on top of a mountain with a convenient path so parties following idiotic time-waifu railroading can climb the stairs and get exposition. Are you ready?



The Pendulum looks like every evil mage in this game. He is even wearing "cultist robes".



We are about to travel to a land without logic.

: Nice view. Wish I had time to just stand here and take it all in.



Put your pants back on you sick fuck.

: All right. What is coming?



I know a lot of you are rolling your eyes already, but I want to point out our character has the exact same thought. The writing for this section realizes how dull and cliched it is and thus we are given the option to turn it into bad slapstick.

: Can't you just give me the whole story at one time?

: The Dark Moon is an event which will spell the doom of Yerengal.

This is of course written like an encyclopedia entry. "A fart is a methane expulsion from an animal's anus".

: And now nothing may be done to stop it.

But... why? Could we have done something earlier? I stole the time stone off Isla, can we use that?



No idea why they do that Jade, you're actually fairly chipper.

: Then I guess I'm wasting my time.

Much like the people who made this game!



: You're going to tell me what to do about the Pact Prophecy and save Yerengal?



: Okay. What is the disaster that is prophesied to occur when the Pact is broken?



What the fuck are you talking about? Excessive greed, pride, or bloodlust fall under "madness" pretty easily. This game gave as an example of greed a bunch of farmers killing people to put their blood into wine and that would somehow make them more money.



But... what if we didn't do that? Things are getting better. The king is uncursed. The civil war is basically over. The plague is receding. Aldnar is dead.



: Me? How will I be responsible?

This is absolute horseshit but whatever.



But... wait. If we can't change this and it's decreed by fate or whatever how is it our fault? Earlier you said it couldn't be stopped now. Could we have stop- fuck it. Why do I bother?



: What exactly is the Pact?

: Long ago, as the races of Yerengal were being formed, their selfish, animal instincts subsided. Some of the gods were full of joy as their creations flourished. Others were disinterested. Still others reacted with alarm.

: Zornilsa, Goddess of Greed and Rothgor the Devil-God watched as greed and chaos gave way to charity and order. Without influence in mortal affairs, these entities grew weak. Thus they formed an alliance to fight back the slowly encroaching order.

You know, I hate to be that guy, but greed and chaos aren't necessarily bad. Excessive greed and chaos are, but no one ever said "fuck that man who went to engineering school because he wanted to earn more money than flipping burgers!" Likewise, "chaos" is probably regular people's only recourse against people like Aldnar and King House Thief.

These concepts are far too interesting for this shitty game.



So, yes, that's the Black Geyser. It's a portal to hell where a bunch of the spirits of the damned show up and turn people greedy by, um, stuff. It's not even clear this plan is working, because the greed girl showed up on behalf of Zornilsa to offer us obviously bullshit NFTs, and that's not a play you make when you're winning.

: What must I do?



This castle is right outside the capital. Are you telling me that with a civil war on no one bothered to investigate a potentially useful fortification?



: How can a mere mortal break a pact between two gods?



: How do I find divine assistance?



Wow, thanks shitlord. You're the worst.

Now, you might be thinking "what about Alnarius? Isn't he the king of the gods who explicitly invested the king and all those churches?" Maybe you were insane enough to learn this game's lore and read that Alnarius was the mightiest of the gods because he was so widely worshiped.

Alnarius is not going to do jack shit all game.

: Assuming I locate the Black Geyser, what happens then?

: You yourself must enter the Geyser.



Jade gives nearly as few fucks as I do.



Ok, I get it, but aren't you the high priestess of the Sea God? He sends you visions and stuff right? Could we ask him for help? No.



I see Hamlin is an ass man.

: Enter it? You said the Geyser was a rift between Yerengal and... the realm of Rothgor, the devil-god.

I really wish I'd taken option 2. It's astounding, really. It's like one of the writers was out to sabotage the rest.



: What happens once the rift is closed?



: Why is every one of the world's damned problems perched on my shoulders? Is there a stamp on my face that says "dullard"?

: Finish what you must do in this world before you venture to the other. There will be but one chance, and even should you succeed, I do not know if you will return.

I thought we were prophesized to succeed?



Fuck off and die you condescending ass.

: Go now. Do what must be done.

: We will not speak again.

Naturally, instead of disappearing or whatever he sticks around and you can speak with him again.






The game wants us to go back to Isla but she's just going to send us to the Temple of Shit Garbage, so off we go to the Temple of Shit Garbage that has the actual text of the Pact Prophecy. Is it going to tell us anything new? Nope



The game loads these scorpions within striking distance of our mages, because coming up with lazy gotchas that shit on the player is easy and writing a competent story takes real effort no one wanted to make.



These three undead misers have a quest where this lady got one less gold piece when they split a hoard and now you can kill them all for their treasure. I pass because it's boring, and, hilariously for a game about greed, we don't actually need their treasure.



There are also empty huts with nothing in them. I don't know why.



Unfortunately we can't get to the Temple proper until we grind through pointless scorpion encounters.



I then get the bright idea to uncurse Inta's armor as Sea Hag is higher level now and discover something horrifying. The armor only gives 30% resistance, down from the 40% from before.

I figure the guide is wrong - it's supposed to go up to 50% physical resistances - and reload a save.



It turns out the developers did a complete armor revamp in the latest patch and you can't just stroll through the game with 100% physical resistance anymore. It's not just armor, either.



This used to be 10% physical resistance, now it's 3%. I'd be more concerned if there was anything actually good for the slot, but as it stands its a pretty vicious nerf to all three people actually playing this game.

There's something in the patch notes about rebalancing two-handed weapons. This is Inta with the Crimson Kiss, the weapon you can either buy in Deron-Guld or get off the adventurers outside Time Travel Farm:



This is Inta with the legendary weapon we got last update.



Look at how little difference the damage range is! Remember, the first (non-legendary) weapon actually has a high chance to drain life on hit while Alakai gives a bunch of immunities, but still, it's kind of hilarious that the legendary weapon does so little more damage. Note also that the Kiss gives +2 physique while Alakai gives 3 - we could probably find a ring or something to make up the difference. What a fucking joke!



Anyway, now that the developers have patched out the resistances we're back to the standard Infinity Engine "have your casters blow their resources than click the rest button". Riveting! These lizardmen are melee monsters, but they're melee monsters who actually attrition our resources.

Except we're not on a clock or anything, so the only resource that gets attrited is my patience.



There's a boss fight outside the temple. It's just a bunch of melee guys. Pre-patch Inta could have soloed it, as it stands we go for the standard "dump summons and autoattack until everyone is dead".



This poor chimera tried to stop us from going to this shitty temple.



He is avenged by this loading screen.



I realize in horror that I didn't pick any level-up base energy spells for Jade. The game doesn't actually divide them up into base and elevated energy spells on level up. I haven't been feeding the mages scrolls for reasons you're about to see in this update.



This temple is full of undead, and you can tell the game was inspired by Baldur's Gate because of how unpleasant they are to fight. In Baldur's Gate 2 any time you went into a temple full of undead you ran into a bunch of level drain... unless you were smart and brought Korgan or the protection from negative energy spell.

In Black Geyser you just get hammered by invisible ghosts spamming crowd control spells.



See that shitty sand dune in the middle of the same-colored tile? That is an Oriental spell that does AoE damage and knockdown. It's one of the few spells in the game that does AoE crowd control, and while it's mercifully once a fight these fuckers have tons of resistances.



The end result isn't ever really in doubt. You're not in danger of wiping to these things, you're just in danger of reloading because you lost a character and the Staff of the New Dawn - the resurrection staff - is buggy as hell. It is, however, a more tedious grind than the rest of this game. I'm cutting out the rest of these, but rest assured there are a ton of these boring ghost+mummy encounters. That's the nature of Black Geyser. While the enemies assault your characters, the game assaults your brain.



One of these jerks is hanging around and reminds me I could be watching Grace Park pretend to be a sexy robot instead.



The dungeon's "puzzle" is to collect four of these idols and match them with four altars.



This is Rothgor's.



These guys would be a lot more interesting if they forced you to actually change your strategy.



The way this encounter is supposed to work is that when you set foot into the center area a bunch of mummies come out of those sarcophagi and attack you.



However, the scorpion can easily be baited into a safe zone and murdered. Naturally, it drops nothing. You might be asking questions like "which god is the scorpion sacred to," "will murdering a sacred animal incur the wrath of the god who values it", "could we do something nice for the scorpion to gain divine assistance", and I must once again remind you we are being railroaded into going to literal hell to convince two gods to break a pact that benefits both of them immensely because a creature in an evil wizard costume told us to do it.



Alright. Here's the feature of today's update. Remember how I said doing Bjalla's quest would fuck us over in the long run?



My information was slightly wrong. If you're set up correctly, you can grab the Tilindia statue from behind the corpse and just leave and not have to deal with what's about to happen.

Unfortunately, I have to show it off.



This is at least partially gated behind a conversation with Jade.

: Is something troubling you, Jade?



Yeah, it's the wolf again. Both Bjalla and Jade found magic hats with wolf spirits inside them that are linked to the F Word Snow Elves, and Bjalla's quest was all about stealing from libraries and harassing old women for wolf lore, while Jade was just trying to remove the curse from the magic evil diadem that maybe screwed up her life.

: Do you have any idea of why you would dream of a wolf?



To sum up both Bjalla and Jade's quests led here to the temple.



Upon completing that conversation a ghost attacks! If we defeat the ghost she becomes an NPC.



: As my final task in the mortal realm, I am ready to impart my wisdom upon a worthy daughter... Though since there are two of you, I am unsure how to proceed.

Can you teach them both? No

: Two of what? Since the Third Eye chose me, it only makes sense-



I was going to bitch out the game for not making sense, but I think Jade is trying to say that Morvern said they're both candidates? Whatever.



For some reason, despite Espen having little knowledge of these traditions or even the presence to mind to ask why the matriarch can't teach both the women, this is our choice.

: Ladies, please. Let me intervene. Jade, why do you believe you deserve the matriarch's wisdom over Bjalla?



Now, the next dialogue is different. In my original playthrough we never made it to the herbalist and Bjalla was yelling about Jade wanting to be a "queen of darkness" or some nonsense.

Now?

: Bjalla, why do you think Morvern should choose you?



So, I am going to call for a vote, but with some caveats because I want to discuss this astoundingly shitty twist. This quest was not in the game at release. You only get this choice if you've completed enough of Jade and Bjalla's questlines to make this pointless ghost appear. I have a save right before talking to Jade, so it's entirely possible to ignore Morvern entirely and move on.

This choice kicks out whichever mage you don't choose from the party forever. If you take the bottom option you can switch the unselected woman into the party if you kicked the first out (so if we picked Bjalla, we could send Bjalla packing and grab Jade). These two women are the only two mages in the game, so if you wanted to have a double mage party composition tough shit. I'd go so far as to say they're the best companions in the game mechanically, with Helgenhar as a third and everyone else as "tolerable". Losing either one of Bjalla or Jade is a huge hit to party effectiveness, especially if you already recruited all the companions, decided this was going to be your final party and now you have to go back and grind someone who's behind. We have not seen all the companions.

The next question is "what do I get for completing this quest that makes up for the loss of a mage" and the answer is that...whichever girl you pick gets a hat upgrade. I am not joking. Bjalla got a 1/day wolf summon that summons the three eyed wolf and it's absolutely not worth it. You'd think trading away an entire mage would get you something like doubled spell slots or something paradigm breaking like max damage on spells. You would be wrong.

Needless to say, there's a lot wrong with the writing as well. Bjalla and Jade have absolutely no interaction except one of the party dialogues where Bjalla asks Jade where she learned magic and Jade replies she didn't go to an academy, it's all talent. Bjalla gets pissy. That's... it. One conversation far back in Amanuel's Hoard. Now, Baldur's Gate 2 had similar dynamics where Keldorn and Viconia hated each other and it could culminate in a fight to the death, but they also actually started sniping at each other first and the game made it very clear they did not like or respect one another. While it's clear that both Bjalla and Jade want to go to this temple because of wolf hat related reasons, there's no real reason the ghost can't teach them both or that you can't talk one of them into accepting the other getting her way. This also doesn't happen unless you do their quests, so the reward for engaging with more of the game is losing a party member and their expensive gear you've put time and effort into developing. I hope you didn't teach the girl you didn't pick any of the unique scrolls they both can learn.

At least Bjalla gets some characterization.

Decisions lie before us

Are we going to pick Bjalla, Jade, let the ghost pick, or reload and skip this dumb shit?