Dragon's Dogma: Breaking the Loop

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Since I've collected enough of these heart shaped wakestones (revive item) I am now able to open an even stranger portal in the Everfall which leads me (alone) into a strange plane where the floor is water, and it is only decorated by a single throne which a dude in a white robe sits on. This god "Seneschal" turns out to be Savan - and he is behind the whole mess that brought me here in the first place!

Apparently he is bored of being god, and the only way to step down is to get an arisen to kill you and take your place. The only way to make an arisen is to summon/create a dragon into the world, and just like me - he killed his dragon a long, long time ago. This ultimate showdown is a bit lack luster, even when he summons his man at arms as well as Rose for a 2 vs 2 fight. He is easily defeated, and asks that I kill him. I oblige and become the new god.

Savan prefers to talk than fight.

I can tell right away why this is boring though - at this point you can only visit Cassardis or Gran Soren as a ghost figure and can't interact with anyone, apart from attacking or throwing them around. I do think of a way to break this cycle though. I need an arisen to end my loop? Well, I am an arisen right? Seppuku time! Yes, the game makes you kill yourself. It works - and the watery floor gives way to clouds as Rose and I fall into the sea...

Rose eventually washes up at Cassardis beach, inexplicably wearing my armor. Was I just a figment of her imagination this whole time? Madeline helps her up and assures her that the two of them will manage brilliantly. At this point I have the option of starting New Game+, but then I wouldn't really be breaking the loop would I? :P

Dragon's Dogma: Aught to Kill You

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Deciding that it is time to confront the dragon, I return to the Dragonforged who is nice enough to tell me where to find him. He also mentions that when he tried, he lost and is now just a ghost. That does explain why only I can see him! The beasts lair is beyond the Great Wall, guarded by hell hounds, succubi harpies, and gorechimera. It is also strangely familiar in that it is the same place I dreamt of at the start of all this... only Savan and his team were the ones hunting the wyrm.

More awesome than Zhaitan.

We eventually reach it and I am surprised that the tavern keeper Inez is a prisoner here, and the dragon offers me a choice: fight him and potentially end the world, or kill Inez (who represents my love interest I guess?) and live forever... which is what the mad Duke did. Obviously I fight the dragon - and what a glorious fight it is, covering a huge distance as we run through and a top of ruins, shoot at it with ballista, ride on it's back, and ultimately face it in a big arena!

Heat seeking magic arrows are very handy in this fight, but in the end the dragon goes down due to my learning how to double jump and grab onto its chest - followed by daggering its heart ad nauseum. After a long battle, the dragon falls and I eat its soul (Dovahkiin)! Well, not really - but he is nice enough to magically return my missing heart before disintegrating. Afterwards we take Inez back to Cassardis afterwards where she shows her appreciation, by giving free drinks and snacks all around! :P

Dragon's Dogma: Now You See Me

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

After the disastrous events last time, it was a good change of pace to have a simple quest in Cassardis in the form of helping the moronic Valmiro pack a boat for his "great" adventure, but once he had set sail it was back to the capital for some serious business! After switching to the "Magic Archer" class (because shooting heat seeking mana arrows is fun!) Ser Fedel and his aides Margel the warrior and Cedric the mage joined the party to hunt down a thieving ex-court mage and his band of hired thugs.

The wizard played a bit of whack-a-mole with all his teleporting around, but too bad for him he kept going to where my Port Crystals were and was put down very easily. We are then also tasked to aid Captain Mercedes handle a rebellion in that Northern Fort much to her disdain, asking me to stay out of her way. I oblige, deciding to take a back seat in the proceedings. Her forces do pretty well, taking down a Cockatrice en route to the fort and hold their own against the renegade soldiers. Not that I let them, because I'm bloodthirsty like that.

This band is led by Ser Julien who Captain Mercedes challenges to a duel. Julien prefers to fight me but Mercedes insists that I sit out of it so... fine. The silly Captain ends up losing to Julien's mace, and is only spared so that she can be whored to the rest of his forces. Lucky for her, he the "rest of his forces" are all dead. Content he has weakened this continent enough (which is why he helped Salvation in the first place), he withdraws back to his own country, and Captain Mercedes shamefully does the same. I suppose I could go chase them but via game magic all of them just vanish from the fort. Guess they all had port crystals too?

Or maybe Julien just *really* likes goats.

Dragon's Dogma: Fool's Errand

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

After what happened last time I decide it's best to adventure outside the capital for awhile, and Madeline the busty merchant decides to tag along. She is unlucky as we run into night-time drake with an army of goblins encounter again, and since last time going for the goblins let the drake breath fire on our charge this time I went for the flying wyrm. It was a faster victory, but not fast enough as by the time I turned around Madeline was gone, abducted by the goblins.

Frustrated I decided to head back to Bitterblack Isle and hunt Death, because I found I had a "god arrow" in my pack. It was tough going fighting or running past the stronger foes such as greater goblins, hell hounds, giant saurians, and a dragon with a heart on it's back this time around. We did find the spirit though and the god arrow hurt it bad (and killed everything else in the area) but it wasn't enough to destroy it.

Well, this was a bad idea.

I was foolish enough to pursue the reaper into the sewers where I thought a run and gun tactic would probably work given enough time. A randomly spawning elder ogre ended that idea mid-chase and while managed to kill it, Rose, Lily and Ingvald were all caught by Death's "sleep AoE" lantern. All I could do was grab Rose and sprint out of the way as Death's scythe cleaved the other two in half with a single swing. After getting away I teleported out of there and back to Cassardis.

Dragon's Dogma: Placing Ports

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Near the Greatwall is a mini dungeon called Soulflayer Canyon which serves as a "not so shortcut" back across the map and is home to lots of ugly critters. While traversing it, Barnaby is once again put to sleep by snow harpies and this time since they also manage to ice me and have the rest of the team dealing with goblins one of them picks up the sleeping fool and spirits him away. Presumably to make baby harpies, followed by Barnaby steak. We never see him again.

Easiest cyclops kill in here!

We then journey far past a windy valley that doubles as a bandit camp and encounter our first golem! Again, good idea for this creature - powered by magic immune disks that serve as its weak spots. You can't pick and choose though, you need to get them all - and with one in the palm of its hand and another in the base of a foot it proves to be a good challenge. Eventually we reach the crumbling Bluemoon Tower we had seen all the way from the other end of the bay at Cassardis. I love the draw distance in this game.

If you are wondering why the heck I'm going to these places it's simply to place Port Crystals (as I mentioned to Coppertopper in the comments previously) so that I can just warp back to them later. It's certainly pretty handy for the cascade of hunting quests I've been assigned. Everything from rats to Death. Yes, there is a quest to kill Death and while I know where to find him I don't see how the heck I'm meant to do that one.

Dragon's Dogma: Settlements

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

After getting Bich slapped last time, we return to Cassardis where the local chief Adaro joins us to settle a few matters including catching a local thief which is easy, helping Valmiro - a wannabe adventurer who is also a moron, followed by taking out a Saurian nest in the well. I suppose if Valmiro's been drinking lizard pee all this time it might explain his behavior. Anyway, after clearing them out it's off to a bandit fortress to retrieve another slate for the Wyrm hunt investigation.

Adaro is killed by a sniper on the approach, so we reciprocate by murderizing the entire place and looting everything we can. We then take a quick detour to the Shadow Fort which is failing in doing its job of "keeping goblins and other monsters out" since it has fallen to those very same goblins. Fortunately they and their cyclops buddies are no match for the team now, and we force them to flee back into the tunnels they dug under the fort.

Siege weapons are fun!

A quick warp back to Gran Soren (which I'm glad they included because walking is nice, but time consuming) and I am asked by the local bald rich bastard named Fournival for aid in evicting a family who cannot pay the rent in one of his properties. I manage to convince the wife and the boy Pip, by simply out parkouring him - but the husband Jasper is a resilient S.O.B. Lily suggests that we simply purchase the house for them outright which would leave us 80k out of pocket but since I've got millions of gold at this stage I figure why not, just to get another quest out of the way. Needless to say, all parties are happy with the result.

Dragon's Dogma: The Bich

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Since the altar is closer to Cassardis, I decide to trek back there and recruit the towering Nord gal Juliana and take the team back to Bitterblack Isle with Olra's help. We are much stronger this time around so I decide to take on that Cockatrice we ran past previously. Keeping with good D&D, the damn bird has a petrifying breath and Rose and Juliana are stoned midfight just as a huge black boss wolf shows up out of nowhere, because that's a thing here. Randomly spawning bosses.

I manage to cure Rose in time but Juliana is shattered by the big bad wolf before both beasts are laid low. Despite her loss we press on and recruit another ranger deeper in named Monterrey before taking on the giant beholder that stopped us before. Not so this time as we have enough ranged attacks and raw power (from Lily) to take it out. This opens a shortcut back to the surface (ala Dark Souls) and a path deeper into an underground fort with undead.

What made it challenging is our good buddy Death showed up again, meaning the team had to sprint through all the scum to avoid his one hit kill scythe, right into elder ogres and a tough minotaur type thing. Fortunately the spirit vanished at that point and let us handle these tough fights properly. There's also an undead dragon we have to run past later but it doesn't matter since it catches up to us at the next boss fight with its partner, the Lich Bishop - or Bich for short.

This is probably not going to end well...

This floating Bich proves to be way too tough as he summons tornadoes and other BS magics on top of being able to resurrect the dragon at will so once again we have to warp out of there, promising Olra will get that Bich next time.

Dragon's Dogma: Into the West

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Back at Cassardis, we meet the busty merchant Madeline who asks for an escort to the encampment which is easy enough. She even comes along for a short detour in clearing out lizard men from the town well. Once there she parts ways with us and I recruit Rook's replacement, a veteran warrior of infinite battles: Lily. We decide to go exploring to the West, stumbling across a friendly young witch who makes ales and less friendly foes in the form of brigands, goblins, phantoms, ogres who are "excited" by women, a chimera and even a drake!

This game makes a big deal out of hearts.

The drake is extra challenging since it charms Lily mid combat, meaning I have to fight her as well. Fortunately my magic ice sword from Bitterblack Isle deals with her effectively while skirting around the beast. Fortunately knocking her unconscious is enough to break the monster's will over her and it is over powered in a long fight. More difficult however are the phantoms, since our melee weapons go right through them.

It is up to Rose's magic to keep them at bay as the eerie cloud form ghosts (ghosts done well, better than TESO for sure!) take turns "latching" on to us to drain life force. At one point it seems the forest is filled with these bastards but with the dawning of the sun they vanish - which quite literally saves us. Anise, is clearly shaken by the experience so we head back to the encampment to rest.

Dragon's Dogma: Stage One - DEATH!

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Having earned some fame I am allowed (to create) my own bodyguard - who I design as Rose the sorceress (because, wifey!). I also recruit a warrior type lady named Anise and after some quick training exercises with Ser Berne, the sergeant at the encampment, we head back to Cassardis to hand in and complete a handful of other newbie quests (like flower picking). Since it is night time when we arrive, we find a spirit lady named Olra at the docks who asks for our help. I say yes, and we are warped to Bitterblack Isle.

That's not a big black curtain behind us...

This turns out to be an "end game" area but I don't care. We push through the insanely strong greater goblins and run into Death himself, who we have no option but to run from. Rook is too slow and gets beheaded by the reaper's scythe before it vanishes into the shadows. Undaunted, we push on - often having to run past things like giant skeletons, skeleton warlocks, a cockatrice, and gargoyles, until we reach a deep chamber which is the home to a giant floating eye.

This beholder is far too tough so we backtrack out of there for the time being. Fortunately we now have some pretty cool gear, enough XP to reach level 17 and a rather large sum of gold in the bank. :)

Dragon's Dogma: Heart Eater

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

After a strange dream where a knight named Savan hunted down a dragon... I inexplicably awoke in the small, peaceful fishing village of Cassardis which is clearly not part of Tamriel. It was also under attack be the very same dragon from the dream! With heroic instincts kicking in, I grabbed the nearest sword and attacked the beast only to be easily overpowered. It then proceeded to eat my heart. Somehow I still survived this. What!?

Mmm, tasty.

The dragon's voice was now in my head, asking me for a challenge - one I wouldn't decline. Grabbing the nearest rusty sword I headed out only to be stopped by a healer who wanted curative flowers to heal others injured in the attack. Because that's more important than going after the world-threatening dragon. Is this some sort of island in Guild wars? Who knows.

At the town gate I am joined by a magician named Rook who helps me save the traveling merchant Reynard from goblins and brings me to a small outpost called the encampment which is under attack by more goblins and a towering cyclops. With our assistance the monsters are beaten, and I am recognized as an "Arisen", which apparently translates to "someone who has had their heart eaten by the dragon" in this land.

I'm just going to go ahead and blame Sheogorath for this mess. :P