Part 4: Update IV - The Reaper Is The Riddler?
Update IV - The Reaper Is The Riddler?
Well... last time, we totally didn't just murder an entire family, and then made our way to whatever the hell this place is - some sort of frost palace where the guardians are some seriously badass motherfuckers. So instead of screwing with those guys, let's head down these stairs.

I see some frozen dwarves that actually move around, four statues, and four switches. I think we can put two and two together here...

...yeah, that's the way to do it. But first, let's clear out those enemies for the XP and the ability to push statues around in peace.


Yeah, these dwarves aren't exactly the most alive-looking fellows. But being undead doesn't stop them from getting beaten up.

After that, we can push the statues onto the switches, and surprise, surprise, a staircase appears! I mean, I would have also accepted "rocks falls, everybody dies", if just for being a neat subversion, but a staircase is neat too.

A treasure chest in an important looking position? Is this where "rocks falls, everybody dies" comes into play? Well, nothing ventured...

In the chest we find a healing potion, a revival item, and a dwarven set of armor. I think I have an idea how that armor is going to come into play, but let's explore further first...

...is what I would say if we weren't set upon by more undead dwarves right the fuck outta nowhere we have to deal with first.


This time we've got some sort of super-dwarf to deal with, who has an even bigger axe than the regular ones.

They deal so much damage I have to use a healing item, but they're nothing special and go down regardless.

Of course, we're still beat to shit afterwards, but a trip to the inn fixes everything!

And one trip back later, we're ready to head upstairs.

A chest, a lever, some more dwarves, a dead guy, and a set of stairs leading up. Let's start with the dead guy.



And we find a fake beard on the guy, for some reason!

So do I, but I have a suspicion, and I'm pretty sure you've all got the same idea I've got. Next up, let's check that lever out.

Holy fuck, the area around the lever is scattered with ice mines! And they hurt! All the lever does is disable the mines, so I guess that was worth it, because we can now open the chest without getting murdered. Well, without getting murdered by the ice mines, at least. We've got a 50% murder rate on chests in here so far, so I'm not exactly confident.

But no, there's no more traps on the chest, and we find another revival item, an MP-restoring item, and a dwarven axe. The pieces are starting to fall into place more and more.

And just for reference, walking up to the lever got me nailed by two ice mines, which took off about 50% of Grandy's HP. After a bit of healing up, it's time to clean up the enemies.


We've dealt with worse before, and he goes down without much of a fight.

And so do these guys. A bit more experienced and a bit richer, we make our way up the stairs.

Another dwarf that goes down without any incident, the pentagram is a save point which comes in handy, and then we have that reaper guarding that chest.



It actually doesn't matter what you pick here, but let's go with the first option here, because we do want that treasure.





Basically, if you tell the guy you don't want his treasure, he'll just go "now listen here, I've been here for ages, so you better try and get me out of here". No real reason to not try the riddles, so let's try these on for size.


We get a few different options here. The first three are "dog", "war" and "fire", and if those aren't enough, we can see three more, but the answer here is obvious - it's fire, since the more it burns, the more it can burn, but once it runs out of things to burn, it dies out.



Options here are "water", "ice", "war", "bottle", "love" and "contract". The correct answer is love, which I mostly got out of the third and fourth lines. Not exactly sure how the first two play into that, though, I'm not good with riddles like this.






And then you have to fight the guy.

And he can drain a good amount of health.

It goes about as well as you'd expect. Now, back to the riddle - the solution is actually rather easy if you take it literally. "My first isn't few", so that's "a lot". "My second isn't heavy", so that's "light". "A lot" in German is "viel". "Light" in German is "leicht". Stick them together, and you've got "vielleicht", which means "maybe". So there's that, but I couldn't figure that out while I was playing, so now we get to fight this guy.


This time, I'll be better prepared! Fully healed, stocked up on healing items and my secret weapon - exploding fire flasks! Those will surely give me an edge in this fight!

...they do about half as much damage as the guy can drain from me.

Shit.

Eventually, through determination and good use of healing items, he goes down. This guy is a pretty damn hard nut to crack, because whenever a boss can drain health, it's bound to be a hard battle.


After this guy has some sort of orgasmic experience while being freed from this plane of existence and then disappears, we're free to check out that chest.

More healing items and a dwarven helmet. Now that we've explored everything but the part where the guardians won't let us through, we move on...

...after some healing, of course...

...to whatever's behind this door.

Well, this time, let's just back off, since forcing it only leads to death.


And now we're a dwarf! Don't ask me about the size problem, it doesn't get addressed. Anyway, now that we're all dwarved up...


Well, that was easy.




Not sure what the point of that is. I guess the game is now forcing you to head up, since you don't have the fake beard anymore, you can't fool the guardians anymore.


I'm not going to question the logistics of having lava right next to ice. They're dwarves - those guys can be hardcore when it comes to breaking the laws of physics, mechanics and whatnot.


And who is that? Could that be the redhead we've been looking for?









Yes, about time we step in...

...after saving first, of course. Now, let's give that dragon what for!





























And with that, Libra joins our party!

She's a battle mage, which means that she's technically supposed to be able to fight in melee, but you're usually better off not doing so and just focusing on magic. She can also equip some decent armor compared to what the average mage can wear. Speaking of magic...

Her loadout of magic is very nice. Six spells - two fire, two ice, two lightning, one attacks a single enemy, one attacks all of them. A very solid setup that comes in handy a lot of times. Now, let's save one more time, and let's take on that dragon!


And here we have our first true boss of the game, the undead dragon. This guy, much like the reaper, is a tough son of a bitch that will whoop your ass given half a chance. So let's give Libra's magic a shot - this guy is a dragon in a fiery cavern, clearly I should be using ice!

9 damage? Damn, that's not a lot. Fire clearly can't be the right answer, so let's try lightning instead.

23 damage, that's more like it. We beat up on this guy a bit more...


Some more fighting ensues, until...

...the dragon spits out a ring of fire. And it burns, burns, burns... and deals a hell of a lot of damage to boot!

Thankfully, we still have a lot of healing items, so keeping everybody alive wouldn't be a problem, but the fight goes a bit in a different direction. After Libra shoots another bolt of lightning in the dragon's face...


And so it is written, and so it has been - he goes down without much fanfare. Next stop, exploring the part of the cavern behind him, which has treasure chests!

...a heavy crossbow? What am I going to do with a crossbow? Libra uses staves, Grandy uses swords, and I'm certain Julie can't use a crossbow (although that'd be really impressive). Guess I'll hang on to this.



Another longsword gives Grandy a hefty attack boost, so that's always welcome.

In fact, it pushes his attack power into the triple digits! Not that that means he'll be pulling triple digit damage numbers now, but still, it's a nice little milestone.

And there it is! We found the Holy Amulet!

Not so fast, we still have one chest left!


A light helmet. Gives a small boost to Libra's defense. It's OK I guess, but I'd have put some gold here instead of a weak armor upgrade. It seems more fitting. But now, let's leave.









And with that, we're back in the Eastern Marches. Let's head back to Dankwart and give him back the Amulet.











Oooh, spiffy new gear for Dankwart!


And with that, our party is full with four members! Let's see what Dankwart brings to the group:

Dankwart is an occultist, as was shown in the flashback where he was living out his inner Frankenstein. And what does that translate to in gameplay?

Holy spells and healing spells. So yeah, Dankwart is pretty much the cleric of the group. We have a single healing spell, a party healing spell, a status recovery spell, a revival spell, a single holy damage spell and a group holy damage spell - once again, we're given a wide range of magic right from the start, which is very welcome.

Dankwart originally attacks with a dagger, but you can swap that out for the Holy Amulet. It deals kick-ass damage against any sort of dark creature, but doesn't do shit against anything else. While you might think that swapping out makes sense, his regular attack is so weak it rarely ever makes sense to equip a dagger or the like. Just have him stick to healing if that is the case.

So with that, we're done with the Eastern Marches and will be moving on to Düsterburg! Except not, because we've still got a few loose ends to deal with - for instance, we never dealt with the ghost and his problem, and that's not something we need to put off until later, we can solve that now. Plus, having Dankwart in our party makes a few changes. So next time, we'll be tying up some loose ends.