Part 40: Update XXXII - The Soul Dilemma
Update XXXII - The Soul Dilemma
♪ BGM: Asgar's Castle - blood009.mid ♫
Alright, so after we've experienced the wonders of the cheat tree, we're back off to regular business. Our first point of order will be introducing the recently vampirized thief to her new role in un-life.


















Alright, so, the thieving. How does this work? Well, it's simple!
There's a timer running in the background, which gives you some goodies once the timer hits a certain number. That number is as follows, depending on the skill level in thieving you have.
At level 0 (where we are), an item comes in every 300 seconds.
At level 1, an item comes in every 270 seconds.
At level 2, an item comes in every 240 seconds.
At level 3, an item comes in every 210 seconds.
When an item comes in, the game rolls a number between 1 and 100, and then adds an item to the chest based on a drop table, which depends on the amount of thieves in our crew (we'll be finding the other thieves and turning them into vampires... eventually). Here's the rundown.

Item table excitement! So, the general idea is that the items get better the more thieves you have. That was worth about fifteen minutes of work, wasn't it?
Anyway, depending on the roll, one of the noted item is going to be put into the chest, and you can then eventually pick all of those items up. And, y'know, I think I see something here. Now, Mraagvpeine asked in the thread whether it would be possible to get tax income while in bat form, since you don't get the castle attacks while in bat form. And while that does work, the mechanics of the bat transformation (which we'll get into fairly soon) make this not a liable way to get money easily. However... I think this thieving might be a way. We just need to get into dialogue, which flips the "no castle attacks" switch. Time continues to pass during this, I'm pretty sure, and that means items should continue to accumulate. So I just let my computer sit there over night, running up the items, and then I just cash all of them in at once, giving me loadsamoney. This should work. I'm going to test that and report back with the results later. I could maybe work this out with my RPG Maker test game, but I don't know all the variables at play, so testing is difficult apart from doing it directly on the subject at hand.

Next on the agenda, more torturing, and we have a success!












Alright, that's another one down. Progress!

Before we head out, another letter update.


Yay. Now, moving on.

♪ BGM: A Truth Revealed - WraithTouch.mid ♫
Next, we're going to take the bat transformation out for a spin.

So, how's the bat transformation work? Well, it's simple!
The bat transformation allows you to go basically everywhere by virtue of allowing you to fly over mountains and water. It drains 1 BP every "tick". A tick occurs every 2 seconds if you don't have the Shapeshifter skill, every 3 seconds if you have the first level of that skill, every 5 seconds if you have the second level of that skill, and every 6 seconds if you have the third level of the skill, with the added caveat that if you have the third level of the skill, the "tick" no longer removes BP, making the skill free. Another sign that something was changed during development.

Alright, so, next, I have a bit of a... let's call it a dilemma. I need souls. Basically, I need 50 souls to learn the first level of the Ancient Languages skill, because there's a book in one of the castles of the Clan that improves the strength of my units in the castle battles, which I very much want. That book requires that skill. However, the only real way to get souls is to kill enemies, which also gives me experience. This essentially means that there is a limit on how many souls I can get before hitting level 10. Now, the solution that eluded me at the time was to just let Valnar die without BP so he doesn't get revived, then grind for souls that way. Instead, I tried to maximize the amount of souls I could get while minimizing the XP gained. So I started killing these first enemies for a while, but that was too slow for me. I end up leaving - we'll find a better way later.

Now, while exploring the world map, we find some sort of smoking town. I wonder what this is?

♪ BGM: Asran - calmness.mid ♫
Oh! Now this is interesting!

We then get a bit of a flyover of the town, showing how Asran has been doing since the world shifting.




The answer is "not well".




Uh, right. We have not gotten to that part yet. ...I think. I genuinely don't remember anymore if the party has floated the idea of searching for Asran because of Valnar's visions yet or not. Anyway, that's not what we're here to do, we're here to pick somebody up. You might have noticed him in the above screenshots.

OK, you can't see it here, but it's the robed guy from the last picture. Who turns out to be...

Lord Mandrake! You know, the guy that we had an opportunity to talk to way back in the beginning of the game, which I missed and had to show off in post.










And Mandrake gets teleported to our castle.



That's all we're going to be doing in Asran, so let's bail.

♪ BGM: A Truth Revealed - WraithTouch.mid ♫
Our next stop is one of the castles we've conquered. I think there's something here.

♪ BGM: Castle Ardos - Ardos.mid ♫
Alright.

So Ardos is pretty big, and the map is split up into five different smaller buildings, so we're not going to be looking at all the maps here. Instead, let's just give the castle the old run-through. To note, there are about four things we find in castles. The dungeon, which we can't enter. Chests, which have some stuff that is sometimes interesting and sometimes not. Secrets, which are usually not interesting, albeit welcome. And bookcases. A whole fucking lot of bookcases. So be ready for that.

I guess we were due for one of those.

Five Elras attack and take out seven mercenaries.
Mercenaries Lost To Global Domination: 136 + 7 = 143
Now, on to the bookshelf bonanza!







Odd thought. Didn't Vincent Weynard create vampires - meaning that there were no vampires before that. So how can there be books about vampires in castles from the past?



I... OK?

Handy items!



Well, that wasn't interesting. Let's take a look at a bookshelf I missed somehow.




















Wooo, vendor trash!



In another building, we find the book I've mentioned before - the one we need the skill to read the ancient languages for. So that's what we're working towards. Also, good question, Alaine.


Man, that's the second time Marlex took the piss out of FF8. He pulled the same number back in VD1.











OK, I think something went wrong in the translation here, because "tail" is not slang for "penis", whereas "Zipfel", the word used in the German original, very much is. In fact, "tail" is basically the opposite!

Hm, that might be interesting. We'll hear about blood roses later on.





Asgar, you're undead. Would you belong in a book about "living" legends? Also, who likes community shoutouts? Marlex likes community shoutouts!












Oh, snap! Anyway, that's all there is to find in Castle Ardos. I mean, we have the dungeon, but we obviously can't get in there yet, and we don't want to get in there for that matter, given that the monsters would murderize us. Now, next time in Vampires Dawn 2, we'll be seeing a new gameplay system, but before that, it'll be another Behind The Fangs chapter, in which we'll start getting into the insanity that is events, and you know it'll be fun.