Part 37: Update XXX - Insert Training Montage Music Here
Update XXX - Insert Training Montage Music Here
♪ BGM: Asgar's Castle - blood009.mid ♫
Alright, we're back from Mesdor and once more doing our regular business, which means...
...getting money...
...and failing torturing. From this point on, I'm going to just skip over these two things, because they're going to happen a LOT.
Ongoing Costs: 13900 + 6000 = 19900 Filar
More mercenaries for the mercenary throne. Time to conquer another castle!
We get together 79 mercenaries for an attack on Castle Faryn.
♪ BGM: Castle Battle - VD2Burgkampf.mid ♫
The first thing you'll notice is that the enemy numbers have drastically increased. We're now dealing with 37 knights, which is almost double what we dealt with in the last castle. I think this isn't the optimal castle to go for when you're trying to go in an increasing difficulty, but there's something here that we want to get ASAP.
The good thing is that I can just skip to the end now that I'm looking at a video of gameplay. This battle took about three minutes.
Mercenaries Lost To Global Domination: 45 + 35 = 80
That number's going up!
♪ BGM: Asgar's Castle - blood009.mid ♫
With that, our number of castles went up to 4, meaning we now have almost half of the castles in the game. Of course, the later castles are going to be seriously tough cookies. But the really important part...
Excellent...We get another torture victim! Now, you're just gonna have to take my word for it that we want more torture targets, since you haven't actually seen what we can get if the torture actually succeeds. Anyway, let's go and check who we got!
Ahahaha. Asmos, you poor fuck. First you get a magic spear shoved right up your ass, requiring Nyria to go out and get a cure for you, and what happens after you get cured? You get yourself captured by vampires. Poor bastard can't catch a break. Let's torture him!
...fuck me.
♪ BGM: The Sewers - EvilChoir.mid ♫
Now, we're really going to be getting into the sewers now. Now that we've reached the point where we're executing The Secret Plan, we can just bop around the sewers, leveling up a bit, because we probably need to be level 9 to beat the boss of this area, and we need to beat the boss to get the bat transformation. One of the important parts of executing The Secret Plan is finding something to do while tax revenue builds up, and exploring our conquered towns is going to be an important part of that. However, we currently have no other town we can explore without the bat transformation, so that's the next thing we need to go for.
So since we're now exploring the sewers, let's look at the map. You can see a bridge down at the bottom with some events in the middle. That's the trigger point for the boss of this dungeon, so we're going to be sticking to this area for quite some time. We'll be sticking to it for... an hour. An hour? Man, grinding to level 9 felt longer to me.
We find a very nice weapon upgrade in a random secret, which is always welcome.
We start gaining levels. You'll note that fights often end with us in a kinda shitty position as far as HP is concerned. Having only one primary healing source sucks.
Anyway, there's actually only one more interesting thing in the sewers before we get to the point where we fight the boss, and that's this here.
You are on the right track. Just a bit further, and you've got the thieves.
How do you know that? Just trust me...Pictured: Somebody You Can Trust
Also, he gives us a free save, which is nice of him. No heals, though, which I really could've needed with Alaine poisoned and at 1 HP with me having run out of Serums.
We then make one quick round trip: We exit the sewers, buy Serums from the store, suck the merchant's blood to regain that, Retreat back to Asgar's castle to take a nap in the coffins...
♪ BGM: Asgar's Castle - blood009.mid ♫
...get attacked while torturing some dudes...
...fight back the 4 Elras, but not without significant losses...
Mercenaries Lost To Global Domination: 80 + 9 = 89
...and hot diggity damn, we have our first torture success!
You damn monsters! Sir Aaron will destroy you all!
But of course. The Clan is as good as eradicated, pal! You can't destroy the Clan! We'll see about that. But for now, you'd better tell us something useful, or do you want some extra torture? No, listen, the Elras are threatening this world! They have a weakness. When you're fighting against them, try to confuse them by swinging your swords around. That seems to distract them a little... Hm, good to know. With this knowledge, our troops should have an easier time fighting against the Elras! Now, tell us something else useful, you worm! Arrr, you're all going to rot in heeeeeeeeeeeeeell...
He's passed out...Alright! This basically means that the battle strength of the Elras is reduced by 1. It doesn't sound like much, but in the long haul, this'll help quite a bit. There's a lot of useful information to be gotten from torturing people, it's just a shame we can't really control when we get it beyond constantly trying over and over.
♪ BGM: Mesdor - cairiel.mid ♫
Back to Mesdor. Since we're now grinding up, I decide to invest in some better equipment. It's not in tune with The Secret Plan, which has us taking on the boss in the sewers at level 9 with no equipment, but screw it, it's not that expensive, and it's not all that much in the long run in exchange for making my life a bit easier.
♪ BGM: Asgar's Castle - blood009.mid ♫
Back to Asgar's castle. We grab Improved Blood Sucking as our next skill - our primary BP regaining comes from using blood sucking, both in combat and on the map, and this makes both of those better. This is a great pick for us right now. For instance, Blood Sucking 1 has an effect rating of 20, whereas Blood Sucking 2, which we get with this skill, has an effect rating of 40, which is a great improvement for us.
♪ BGM: The Sewers - EvilChoir.mid ♫
Back to the sewers. More grinding ensues. With our new improved blood sucking, we can keep Alaine healing more effectively, and our new equipment makes fights shorter and the reduces damage we take. Plus, every level we gain makes it easier.
A fair bit of grinding later, and we're already collectively at level 7!
As we get ready to head back to Asgar's castle to pick up another skill (souls build up very quickly once you start grinding), note that the Retreat spell gets more expensive the higher your level is. It always costs 20% of your max BP.
♪ BGM: Asgar's Castle - blood009.mid ♫
Back at the castle, we pick up Lying as our next skill. It seems fun, and we get better quest rewards from it, which is fairly neat.
We have another success on the torture rack, this time with the knight. Note that this guy isn't implied to be the same knight Nyria was questing along with. They just all look the same.
Arrrrgh, what do you want? Tell us a few useful things, or you're going to die a painful death here! You damn bastards! Tell us something interesting now, or you will suffer! No, please, stop this! Talk already! There is a town that we have no control over so far... the town is called Zilahs, and it's located on one of the ice continents in the far south of this world. Hidden in a mountain chain. We don't have a castle in the vicinity; otherwise, that town, too, would be enjoying our protection... There we go. And now tell us something else useful, or... No, please, I can't take this... Arrrr... He's passed out...Chances of me forgetting this town exists are pretty high, honestly. Well, we'll see how it goes.
Let's check some letters while we're at it.
uhm... peekaboo ^.^
*peekaboo back* woa thanks youre really... cool ^.^. EY THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU ^,^. Yehr now im happy again ^.^. Thank you. Normally, I stay cool, but maybe you can spare a short minute and tell me how long you will approximately take. Otherwise... I'll see eventually. Such luck, if you're reading this, you made it! 
uhm i'm working at my game uhm who are you? may i know that Sending me a mail and not knowing who I am. Uiuiuiui, looks bad... hello This is one of my favorite kind of mails, by the way. Answering it is always so easy 
PRAAAAAAAAAAAAAISE!!!!!!!! I love Vampires dawn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PRAISE PRAISE PRAISE *shedding a bloody tear of joy* When does the game world of warcraft get released?? the link says 31st of may but that's been a long while ago best regards and please answer me as quickly as possible I am sorry, even as a longstanding Blizzard employee, I couldn't give the correct answer to this mail back then, either. Such a great pity... Can you tell me how I can make missions because I am also making a game. Note to everyone: go to https://www.rpgmaker2000.4players.de and read the Ebook!Actually, don't go there, because that subdomain no longer exists. The main page does, but there are no RPG Maker 2000 infos there anymore. Instead, you should be reading my Behind The Fangs chapters, where I go over the fundamentals of RPG Maker 2003!
first of all an important question before I keep asking.does it bother you when I ask you something??????? We had this one already Just ask, don't ask whether you're allowed to ask He you're totally all right!! I hope **** and I can also do it as coolly as you! I hope so, too 
Alright, I just went over double the letters for some reason, but let's just roll with it.
We end up accidentally running into a new location north of Syrahs.
♪ BGM: The Pasture - fd_field2.mid ♫
We ended up stumbling over the pasture where that one guy's sheep are being killed. Guess we might as well do that quest, while we're here and all.
We heard there are some problems with the sheep.
You can say that. Do you see how few sheep are still left here? There used to be 30 of them here. But one of them disappears almost every night. But if someone is keeping watch, nothing happens! It's almost like it's cursed. Hm, well then, we're going to see what we acn find out about what's happening here. Good luck!
You poor sheep! Today, Betsy got taken from me. My little Betsy... *sigh*
1) Forget it! - 2) Yes, I'm also hungry!We could eat these sheep for some extra blood, and if we had the Hunter perk, we'd get some extra stuff. However, I don't think it's worth it, especially since we also then have to kill the shepard boy.
I think sheep aren't really that delicious anyway.
Now, in order to clear this quest, we need to find the source of the sheep being killed, and it's here. Behind this tree, there is a cave!
We're sure to find the cause here for all the sheep dying...
Our primary enemies here are bats. Bats fucking suck. Why do bats suck?
Because they can suck.
This means they really, really like to inflict Bleeding on us, and that means we're constantly going to be losing BP, which means we're going to be constantly losing blood and fighting not to go into Berserk mode, which is definitely not something we want to be in.
We find another recipe for a spell, which will come in handy down the line. Nothing much else interesting beyond the end, so let's jump there. The cave is pretty short and entirely linear, too, so the map's not really that interesting either.
At the end, we find a wolf and a whole bunch of dead sheep! Looks like we found our culprit!
The wolf doesn't get any miniboss music or anything, though he is a fairly tough cookie.
Wolf:
Recommended level: 5
HP: 700
BP: 50
Attack: 60
Defense: 50
Intelligence: 20
Agility: 60
Behavior List:
- Attack
- Attack
- Attack
- Bite (hits one party member, 70% base success rate to inflict Bleeding)
- Bite (hits one party member, 70% base success rate to inflict Bleeding)
- Growl (increase Attack on self, base effect rating of 30)
The wolf isn't that big a problem for us, especially since we're actually beyond the recommended level.
Really, the only core issue is that he really likes using Bite, which has us bleeding out fairly quick. However, since we can just wail on him and don't have to rely on spells, it's not that much of an issue. If we were weaker and needed Alaine to heal, we'd be up Shit Creek...
...but we kill the wolf fairly quickly.
The wolf doesn't get a special death animation, just the same all enemies get. And with that, we've cleared another quest! Let's go and tell the shepherd boy.
Yes, your sheep have been killed by a wolf... A wolf? Damn it! But I hope you have finished it off? Of course. Ah, my boss is going to be happy about that! Thank you! Don't mention it.So, now that we're officially getting experience, let's also turn in the baby quest we never officially turned in while we're at it.
♪ BGM: Syrahs - field4.mid ♫
Take this as a thank you!
Water Amulet received! 1) Thanks. - 2) We have kids, too... (Lie)So, this is the first time we get to take lying for a spin. Basically, depending on the lie you want to tell, you need a certain level of the skill to succeed. If you fail, you can sometimes end up getting less than you would've got if you hadn't lied, but it varies from situation to situation. Here, we can lie successfully with our level 1 skill.
Really? My condolences. Here, take these Filar and buy yourselves some bonds or something... 100 Filar received!
Hm, guess I should talk about quest experience now. Quest experience works like this:
Every quest has a "quest experience rank" attached to it. For instance, this quest has the rank 1. The sheep quest has the rank 4. Now, here's the low-down on how we get this EXP number using that rank.
- The base number for the experience calculations is Valnar's level (VAR = 7).
- The base number is then multiplied by 180 (VAR = 7 * 180 = 1260).
- That number is then multiplied by the quest rank (VAR = 1260 * 1 = 1260).
- That number is then multiplied by a certain factor depending on difficulty - 1.5 on Easy, 1.25 on Normal and 1.1 on Hard (VAR = 1260 * 1.1 = 1386).
- That number is our end result.
As an aside, RPG Maker 2003 cannot do floating point numbers. These multiplications are achieved by multiplying by, for example, 110, and then dividing by 100.
Also, if we lost a castle at some point, we would get a "disturbances in the population" point. We could remove that by turning in two quests. On other difficulties, you only need one quest (and since you can't be attacked on Easy, it'll never be necessary there), so that's another point where the difficulty comes into play. Finally, let's turn in the other quest.
We've solved the problem. Really? Oh, how marvelous! Was it thieves? 1) Yes, thieves. (Lie) - 2) No, it was a wolf. - 3) No, it was vampires! (Lie)The rewards for this quest depend on this choice. Option 2 gives us 3 Lightning Dust. Option 1 gives us an Ice Rune if we have one level in lying, and 1 Holy Sand if we don't have it. Option 3 gives us a Life Ankh and a Fire Rune if we have two levels in lying, and 3 Lightning Dust if we don't. With that in mind, we pick the best option for us.
I knew it! Here, take this as a thank you! Ice Rune received! At last, i can sleep soundly again. 5544 Experience Points gained!And with that, the entire party levels up to level 8. Quests can give you a ton of EXP, and since the EXP is dependent on your level, it will always be worth it. And that'll be it for this update. Next time, it's back to RPG Maker. Not sure if we'll be looking primarily at Resources or Events, but it'll be one of the two.