Part 2: Pest Tourism

Update 02: Pest Tourism



Dear diary, we've arrived in Ravenshore at last!



Simon and Frederick left almost as soon as we hit the shore. Simon wanted to find something to drink and a dark room where his skin could peel in peace, and Frederick was grumbly about us not accepting his theory that the Ancients had built the ship we sailed here on. So that left just me and Elsbeth to enjoy the sights of Ravenshore! And what sights they are! Ravenshore is famed for its-
-smells, slums, crippling income disparity and manufacture of high-quality ships in bottles-
-its... very famous things. And now it also has a crystal.




Why the hell would a crystal have a door?
Sadly, no one was yet selling souvenir miniature crystals, so we went to look around the rest of the town, enjoying the classy old-world architecture and letting some of the locals tell us about their lovely home!





...did you just pick up another quest? What happened to being a tourist?
Elsbeth needed some time out of the sun, she was starting to confuse letting someone tell me about their passions with taking on "quests." There would be no more quests, once we settled the current one, just tourism! Seeing the sights!

This quest stuck out to me since at no point during the writing does the guy actually go: "Hey, you should bring Eclipse back to me." Instead he just gives us a history lesson, but the prompt for getting told about it is the usual "Quest," which means it actually is one. Goes in the quest log and all.





The local church is sadly more generic than the Dagger Wound lizardman temple. They don't even say goodbye with a Star Trek quote!





Yeah, I'd have pity for anyone stuck in Ravenshore, too.





These are just to show off that I like the Ravenshore magic guild and bank interfaces. Not that you'd really ever do anything with the bank unless you're playing Ironman and have to put up with dying occasionally, at which point you lose all gold not in the bank.





Sadly most of the recruitables in Ravenshore don't want anything to do with us. Some recruitables require quests completed first, others require certain story beats hit and I think others just don't want to go along if you're far below them in level. Thorne here, being a level 50 troll, has better things to do than play with us.

Elsbeth's odd obsession has been throwing a bit of a pall over our little sightseeing trip, diary. She keeps insisting on trying to recruit more people into our group!
Yeah, because we're apparently going to just waltz into a pirate hideout and you have the muscle tone of a piece of cheese. We need beef.





That's the Vault of Time?
What an exciting thing we've found, diary! The Vault of Time itself! I transcribed the important parts of the book into you, so suffice to say that anyone would give their left arm to see what's in here! It could be fabulous art! Crown jewels! Ancient weapons!
A handful of spare change and a notched old sword is my bet. This thing is just a rock that some joker hammered a lock into. Let's get out of here before someone tries to sell you a miniature one.






I guess life as a pirate bow ornament might not be so bad, at least I'll get some fresh air.




There is, of course, also another Arcomage Tournament. I've been playing in every inn so far, and, interestingly enough, several areas seem to have two inns, so by the end of this video I've already cleared 6 out of 11 of them.





Probably because they get paid, you know, the reason most people do work.
Something seemed to be bothering Elsbeth, she was getting more snippy with the locals than usual. Perhaps she was just bothered that they were holding her up and preventing her from seeing more of Ravenshore, not appreciating the lively local colour they brought to the place.





It's strange, diary, for all this talk of the Regnan blockade, I certainly had no trouble getting to Jadame from Enroth.
Hang on, didn't you mention something about a dwarf selling you the ticket?
Elsbeth's memory was impeccable(or she reads you when I'm not looking, diary, but that's fine, diaries are for reading), I did in fact buy my ticket from the esteemed Stashley, one of the four lords of Harmondale!
Oh, that explains it, there's hardly any smuggler bigger than her. I'm pretty sure half the ones here pay her kickbacks.



Also here's a Ravenshore inn, the dark elves really love their rose-coloured glowies. I don't think, mind you, that the dark elves ever featured in the Heroes games. As far as I can tell they're not in any way related to classic D&D Drow or anything of the sort, instead they're just elves that got stained by too many raspberries and now prefer houses to tents and trees.




Please... there's no one left...




Another day mopping the floors, and now two idiots just wandered in and tracked mud all over the place...
You! Minotaur!
Uh, me? You're not here to see Gizmo?
I'm sure you're tired of mopping floors in some rich guy's house, don't you want to get paid to bodyguard an eccentric tourist in the great outdoors?
Why, that would be-
Great! You're hired!



Yet another one for the books, diary, or perhaps I should say book, as it's only going to get written in you, but yet another person joined our merry troupe! Arius the minotaur! Elsbeth worked her rhetorical magic and told him what an exciting sightseeing trip we were on, and he just had to join us! He seems a beefy sort, which is good. Sometimes there are ruffians about, like those Regnans on Dagger Wound, and wild animals, too.
Right, so your job is to stand in front of us and hit things with an axe.
I'm not sure I'm very familiar with axing.
Just imagine the axe is a mop and you're dealing with a real stubborn stain.



Arius is the only character in Ravenshore that a starting party can pick up, and he's not bad! He has more roguery potential in terms of disarming traps than Elsbeth does, and as mentioned, minotaurs are kind of like axe-focused knights, so he's perfectly capable of surviving getting hit in the face repeatedly, and also perfectly capable of hitting back pretty well. He does join a bit underlevelled at level 5, though, so the smart play, if you were min-maxing, would be to not get the reward from Elgar Fellmoon until after picking up Arius, so he could get a bit of that level-up XP, too.




I'm looking to finding out whether the Vault of Time is an MM6 Obelisk quest or an MM7 Obelisk quest in terms of reward. I'm leaning towards MM7 on account of how hard they're playing it up, which is just sure to set me up for disappointment.




Should we really be over here? It's the... dirty part of town.
Arachne just loves local flavour, let's hope she loves local smells, too.
Elsbeth kept telling me what a rough and grimy place the "slums" of Ravenshore were, but I'll tell you, everyone over there was a perfect gentleman! Strangely, it seemed that mostly the residents on this side of the river were trolls...




While the water sources are playing softball compared to MM6, you still shouldn't drink from unfamiliar wells in places where the entirety of the decorative ground items are piles of garbage.




I'm also not really sure you can call it a "slum" if people have chandeliers.





Considering the descriptions of the destruction, it feels a bit incongruous that the town square isn't surrounded by a line of damaged houses or something. They could have played it up a bit.





Everyone's also been bringing this up for a while, so I suppose we'll have a chance to dip back to Dagger Wound and deliver this at some point after hitting up the smuggler cave.





Arachne...
You won't believe the stink-eye that Elsbeth is giving me, diary. It's not like it's even a real quest, this nice lady is just asking us to handle a few wild animals when we're on the way somewhere anyway!
Dire wolves, hm, are those bigger or smaller than normal wolves? I'm not sure I could win in a fight against a wolf, but I could probably fight a dog and win, and a dog is just a wolf... kind of. I'm sure we'll be alright.

After this, the party's chatted up every NPC in Ravenshore(and won two Arcomage games), and it's time to head into the wilderness. I make a few trips that provide some Expert-level skills, like Expert Air, Fire and Spirit magic, because Expert Spirit magic means what it meant in MM7... Heroism! A vital tool for actually being able to kill stuff. It also, like in MM7, turns Bless into a full-party cast which saves me valuable SAN points.



It's not like I mind us taking on a few quests, Arachne, they pay the bills, after all. I just wish you'd decide if you were in this for the adventure or the sightseeing.
Aren't they kind of the same?
Hell no, a sightseer does it for fun. An adventurer does it to get paid. If you're a sightseer you'll start going around risking your life out of the goodness of your heart or to see the view off the top of an active volcano or something.
Huh, I've got a lot to learn about the adventuring business...
Calling it a business is a good start. Now let me tell you about tax deductions...




At least Elsbeth is nagging Arius rather than me, diary. I just wish she'd understand that I'm doing this to get away from my parents' expectations that I'd become a mighty Necromancer(and maybe even a Lich!) and have world-shattering adventures and uncover lost secrets of Dark Magic. First I was going to become a Priest of the Sun instead, maybe join a monastery somewhere and meditate until I became enlightened, just to really show them. But then I decided I'd much rather have this holiday instead, something just for me. Maybe I'll even send them a little post card just to show them how much I don't care-



Hold up, wolves over the hill! Let's try not to get me killed, here.
You mean, "us," right?
Ha ha, no. Now stand still or the Heroism won't stick.



So fun thing, how do you tell that the party has Heroism and Bless on them now? Bless is easy, since it has a single-character version, everyone now has a nifty blue star next to their portrait. As for the Heroism... note the warrior man in the upper left. In previous images he doesn't have a sword drawn, and now he does! I think it's a cute way to show it, even if it took me ages to figure out.




Now, while the party's running from wolves and pelting them with Fireballs(because Toxic Cloud is overkill and only hits one target), let's talk about these furry bastards.


Their main trait is having a decently large amount of hit points. No ranged attacks, no real resistances and only one nasty trick which is that their tier 3, their Pack Leaders, can apparently cause Curse on characters. Thankfully that never happened to me, so in fact I didn't even know it was an option! Kind of a nasty thing to drop on players this early, but otherwise they're just kind of hairy Regnans. They drop no gold, but very rarely rings. They also drop hides that the quest giver will trade for 250 gold a piece, a kingly ransom at this stage.



We're not expected to clean this up, are we? I mean, I've still got my mop...
Just the furs, and kick them around a bit to check if they swallowed any jewelry.




Despite lacking any real tricks, the wolves still take a chunk out of the party when I get overconfident and lead the goon squad into a direct confrontation with them. The rare Pack Leaders, in particular, are chunky enough that they'll tank two or sometimes even three Toxic Cloud casts, which is pretty scary.




Elsbeth dropping Regeneration on everyone helps, but it's slow and means that she doesn't have many SP's left over for actual Cure casts at the end of it.





So the party needs to double back and chill out at the inn a couple of times to clear all of the wandering wolves out. Pictured: Fireball putting in some work.



And with Heroism up, Arius does a hell of a lot of damage when he lands a hit. He can almost one-shot the tier 1 wolves(they have 35 hit points).





Alright, a mop won't cut this, I'm gonna need the big spray bottle.
Can't be any more of the damn things around out here. Let's look around for the lair.
I've never seen carnage like that before, diary! Could it really be that we'd caused this devastation? I had to face that yes, yes we had, and we did it for a good cause! Making Ravenshore safer for tourists everywhere! Also I suppose we were going to be given a reward or some such, Elsbeth was very excited about that part.




While I had expected more tropical beaches and less dirty caverns on my vacation, diary, I have to admit I was feeling a thrill at seeing all those bones and skulls littered outside the Dire Wolves' den. It meant I was going to be the first tourist to visit and return to tell the tale!
So, uh, I know I'm not the real experienced adventurer of the team, but I'm thinking that we mostly survived out here by running away, and in there we won't have a lot of space to run away.





Point well made, Arius, we're going to need an edge if we're going to get out of there alive.




My take on the Revolving Door Policy has given me a bit of an issue in terms of the party, uh, being powerful, and I feel like I need an edge up before I fight wolves in narrow corridors. In particular Arius, while not weak, could really need some skill upgrades like Expert Armsmaster and Axe before going in for that fight, hence a side trip to Garrotte Gorge.

Usually I don't link the music, but in this case I will since I always rather liked this track:

https://soundcloud.com/reag96/06-garrote-gorge-ironsand




Elsbeth's unexpected detour was adding a fun twist to my sightseeing plans, but, I had to wonder, what sort of people lived in the untamed wilds of Garotte Gorge? Who would settle here if, as the brochures at the Ravenshore Tourist Office indicated, it was a wildland filled with dragons and hostile nagas?
Oh, that's an easy one: Dragon Hunters.







I like the green tile roofs for the dragon hunters and, sadly, all of them are too high level to want to play with us. Plus they're kind of dicks about it!





I didn't quite share Elsbeth's enthusiasm for visiting the Dragon Hunters. Certainly, they taught Arius some useful tricks, but not without jibes about how he'd "make a nice pair of boots," and their treatment of dragons seemed gloating and cruel, too.
Look, dragons are animals. Are you going to be upset because someone puts a saddle on a horse, too?
...can we please just get this over with soon? I don't think the "boots" guy was joking.




It's also worth noting this well that gives everyone +2 Fire Resistance if their base value is less than 10 or so. It's not huge, but it's still a potential chance to shake off some damage, and once we start stacking on other sources of fire res, it'll be nice.







While we might have had to fight the occasional pirate or piece of aggressive wildlife, I hoped it would never lead us down the dark path of these Dragon Hunters, going places purely to kill things, rather than for the thrill of it, for the exploration, for seeing the sights and meeting the people.




I'm guessing that she'll reward us if we kill dragons. That seems to be all these people care about, dragon killing and dragon killing accessories.




Next time we take a trip, can we visit nicer people?




Heck, I'd rather visit the dragons! They couldn't be any worse. I bet they care about things other than killing dragon hunters.




I don't know what it is, diary, you know me, I can hardly ever stop me helping people... but I really didn't want to do any of these quests! In fact I wanted to find this drum and throw it in a lake. Or perhaps keep it for myself and put it on my mantlepiece when I get home.




I currently have no reason to enter Quixote's fort, so I don't, but I do a bit of shopping, picking up a better axe for Arius(and wasting like 3k gold because I thought, like a moron, that a halberd was an axe and not a spear) and a better knife for Elsbeth. One thing I don't get about Vampires is that they have access to Grandmaster Dagger, Master Sword and Master Shield... that is to say, their primary weapon options are both ones that benefit more from an off-hand than using a shield. I've decided that if she hangs around, she'll be using daggers since Swords don't have a +damage skill level, and daggers have a "triple damage chance" at Master, which I think is simply a percentage chance equal to the skill level.



I think Arius really was carrying the argument with me, diary. The dragon hunters were crude and cruel, and I was wondering when they'd turn on us for their own amusement. It was time to get back to Ravenshore.
You two are absolutely too sensitive. But fine, we'll go back and finish off those wolves.






This is, uh, kind of cramped, also it stinks.
As long as you can swing an axe, you'll live. And if you don't, your body will clog up the tunnel so we can run.
When Elsbeth was testy, I feared she wasn't very good at encouraging Arius. I hoped he knew that he was a valued member of the team and that I appreciated his virtuous heart.




Most of the Dire Wolves in the dungeon are Yearlings, the weakest type, which need at least a three to one numbers advantage to actually do any real damage to the party.




Is that wolf wearing pants? And walking upright?
While it had a certain wolf-like cast to it, I feared that Arius was wrong. This wasn't a wolfman or man-wolf, but instead some sort of rat-person.


It's a bit of a surprise to find any were-rats in the dire wolf den. Stat-wise they're slightly more frail than the Dire Wolves, but all tiers of them can Disease you, and for some inexplicable reason, all three variants of it apparently have an Armor Class of a flat 0 according to the MM8 guide.




It turns out they've set up a little camp in the depths of the Dire Wolf cave, or, well, "depths," as it's not exactly a large cave. It has like two actual rooms with something in it other than monsters, walls and a ceiling.




This well-chewed bone concealed in the wererats' chest had a certain... doomed, feel to it. Also someone had written "if found, return to Zacharia" on the side, so I suppose it was Zacharia's bone. Who would ever think to label their own bones, though?
Maybe a lich. Imagine if a dog makes off with your femur for a chew toy.



There's also a scroll in the chest.

Well, now I feel kind of bad about killing these rat guys, even if they were coming at us. Maybe they're really just a bunch of poor, desperate outcasts, looking for a place in the world-
They appear to have decided that their place in the world is trying to stab us and take our stuff, they'll have to deal with the consequences of that, which is us stabbing them and taking their stuff.




The dire wolf cave is mostly easy enough thanks in part to the side trip to Garotte Gorge for some skill and gear upgrades, but near the end I do hit a nasty speedbump.





This final room has a couple of nasty ratmen in red pants, who're the third tier of ratman. The weird thing is that they appear to punch way above their weight and are much harder for me to kill than third-tier dire wolves which, by the numbers, should have nastier stats. They manage to flatten the party about four or five times before I get lucky and manage to take them down.




Then when you approach too close to the cage, it opens and two tier 3 dire wolves emerge to bite you up, and the best thing is there's not even any chest or anything as a reward for it, but sadly killing them off is a prerequisite for having cleared out the dire wolves and having completed the quest.




That has to be the last wolf. Can we see the sun again? Please?






You know, diary, it almost felt like Maddigan didn't expect us to succeed. After all, why would she give us a mission that would put her out of a job?
If I was in her place, I'd find some chumpy-looking people, sell them on fighting the dire wolves, then go out once the dire wolves were well and fed and pick over their bones.
...while I certainly clashed with Elsbeth in some places, I was suddenly quite happy she was with us and not in our way.

This means a short break to level everyone up, I enjoy how weird the Ravenshore training center looks.



They certainly take the training seriously, in any case. Glowing spikes, big swinging pendulums, climbing nets to fall off of with no safety measures below.




Fighting the wolves had forged us together into a lean, mean, sightseeing machine, ready to help Jadame become the tourist's paradise it was meant to be. Using Elsbeth's amazing, yet acerbic, powers of logic and observation, we deduced that the smugglers would have to be along the coastline somewhere and reasoned that we could simply follow it until we found them.