Part 13: Chapter XII.5: Hellish Caves
Chapter XII.5: Hellish CavesIt would appear that I dun' goofed in the original draft of this LP, and forgot to include the part where I fight Liu Zhang and give the old man the iron, so here it is. You'll have to excuse the insane soldier count, as well as the fact that there are only three people, as walking through walls with x64 EXP does that.
On a tangent, I found out through walking through walls that north of the Greal Wall lies not Mongolia, but endless war camps, and the portal village to
Twenty years, and the old man couldn't even take five steps to this mountain for good iron.
This dungeon is completed by going from the bottom-left door and working your way up.
It's also DoAE's rendition of the Marsh Cave, only less of a pain in the ass, as there are only three branches and two treasures.
After a thrilling straightforward path with three sets of stairs, we found ourselves some iron to make the ultimate swords in the game!
That's literally all that the second path is.
Seeing as how disappointing that path was, let's go on a "Walk Through Walls" detour!
Pictured: a map of Changsha's public transportation system.
That village looks nice, let's go into i-
Oh my goodness.
IT HUNGERS (Zhao Yun is literally shitting out sections of the Great Wall, which is making the character sprites even more glitchy)
RELOAD SAVESTATE: Ah, Changsha's bus map has never looked so organized!
The second village is only a graphic, and the cave freezes the game.
Anyway, I promise to never take you to hell again, here's the north branch, which leads to the other side. Before we do that, let's turn in our iron for wondrous weaponry.
"Yes, this is fine iron. Let me begin at once. It will take many days. You may want to attend to other affairs while I work on the swords."Other affairs, such as finishing our invasion of the Riverlands, and disposing of this Liu Zhang, who is now evil for no reason at all, despite the fact that we just saved him.
We have to go through the Mt. Gan Tai again, but it's only like 50 tiles to the exit, so whatever.
Aight, let's do this. This segment isn't too difficult, as we just had to not only go through a mini dungeon twice, but also swerve along the trees for what seemed to be forever.
"I am Li Yan. Let's fight."
... I can't really offer any advice with fighting him, not that you need it, as my guys were basking in the glory of x64 EXP from fighting the first few warlords. I think by the time Liu Bei left the team, he knew An Sha, an endgame tactic.
Nothing important here, save the Battleax, as the NPCs don't offer any new or significant plot twists.
"This is Mianzhu Guan."
"Traitor Liu Zhang is waiting in Chengdu Castle, to fight Liu Bei."
"Why has Liu Zhang turned on Liu Bei?"
"My husband went to Mt. Gang Tai to find iron, but that was over three years ago. I suspect foul play."
"There is no iron. I can't go home empty-handed."
"My name is Cao Cao, I can slide under tents, and enter glitch field as I please."
The hard part being healing is a dungeon away. The path from Mianzhu Guan and Chengdu is possibly the shortest we've seen since we were fighting the Yellow Scarves and Xuzhou was right behind us.
"Prepare to fight Lei Tong."
What happened to all the Liu's we were fighting?
"To the battlefield! Destroy Liu Bei's army!"
I would imagine that this fight would have its initial moments (until I inevitably spam Da Re, making soldier count obsolete), seeing as Pang Tong, the officer with the highest soldier count at this point in the game is slightly below 4,000 soldiers, while everyone else is in low to mid 2,000s. Strangely though, they didn't use any tactics.
Not like anyone has anything to use, or the brains to use it.
There's just something therapeutic about raining arrows on pathetically weak enemies, while you have endgame soldier stats, I dunno.
With the Riverlands to call his throne, what will Liu Bei's next course of action be? Read on.