Darkest Dungeon: Facing the Abyss

Reports from Darkest Dungeon - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

There's a large source of bacon.

With a final push, the warrens are now clear. Once again, Wilbur was found this time whispering in the ear of a massive creature they call the Swine God. Despite losing Boris Pavlovich and Liadri, Dr. Shen and Rocket Man were able to scrape a victory through a battle of attrition. A second team composed of Yuria, Alvinia and Shalquoir, Party Girl and Lu Lingqi, vanquished the formless flesh while all being at the precipice of death.

Elsewhere we lost Andre who was strangled by a raving madman and Saranthor whose heart was exploded by a cultist witch. Also lost were Zhurong, Maughlin and Masu of the first exploration team sent into the Darkest Dungeon where tentacled priests worship a horrible beast that matches the description of the shambler let loose so long ago. Only Dieannin Avery returned alive, his mind half gone but with a map that might prove useful for the next expedition.

-Catharina

Darkest Dungeon: The Tragic Extent

Reports from Darkest Dungeon - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

My concerns of any leadership challenges have been abated this week with the death of Lenigrast. He was laid low by a small pig man named Wilbur who everyone assumed he had previously slain. They could not recover his body, no doubt he is now food for those hideous creatures. God rest his soul. We also lost Bill and the spy Mina Petrova who fell (or rather, had crushing debris fall on them) while hunting a fulminating prophet in the ruins.

They're always filled with disgusting bile.

Fortunately their allies Hunter O'Harrah and Don Pez managed to find victory thanks to their sacrifice. They then had a much better run when hunting another hag in the weald with Alpha, a soldier from another time, and the cats Alvinia and Shalquoir. Apparently the old crone was no match for them at all.

Soon after Lenigrast was avenged by Melisandre, Don Pez, Ian and Da Qiao, a young vestal who can't be older than her teens. Despite Ian getting hacked in two, they defeated the Swine King in the warrens, and Wilbur as well - though after the battle they claim the little pig was nowhere to be found. I have a feeling this isn't the last we've seen of him. Da Qiao also accompanied the barbarian Zhurong, Techno Viking and the shaman Katunga to slay an Unstable Flesh afterwards. This girl shows much promise.

-Abbess Feeva

Darkest Dungeon: A Call for Election

Reports from Darkest Dungeon - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Yo, like Lenigrast was the man this week. He didn't take no shiiz from Fawadin and went out there and kicked some serious ass! It was him, me, Sunbro Forever and Sellsword Luet that went to the pig crib and put a cap in that swine prince POS and that midget piglet Wilbur. People say that dude's always been some king's assistant, but now he's back in bacon form. I know right!?

Anywayz after that Leni goes with Myria, Ser Sad, and the big guy - Gough into the Weald right and put down that ugly mama the wizened hag. Yeah, too bad that witch cooked up Ser Sad in her soup pot before they could ice her but its still one less ugly out there for us to worry about.

That's a crappy way to go.

Leni - my man, you should be the leader - not this Fawadin fool!

-MoGG

Sacred: Heavy Reading

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

Since I already had a way gate marked at Ice Creek Pass we just appear right there, right next to where Wilbur died, and proceed up the mountain past the local hill giants, frost goblins, ice wolves and ice drakes of ever increasing size. This is actually easy since they cannot catch Speedy. Upon reaching the library though, we find that it is under seige from Ice Giants. Only one Seraphim and a handful of novices survived by escaping via the front door.

Ofcourse what we needed was inside the place (no horse), and with goblin shamans having the paralyze spell it meant a lot of close quarters combat against the big blue guys. Fortunately they were nowhere near as tough as the ice elf jedis from the forest and Shareefa herself was a pretty handy ally with many destructive spells launching from her fingertips. Soon we found what we were looking for... a seraphim hologram who gave us some really obscure message about elements.

Shareefa understood this to mean that we needed to acquire each element and put them together to defeat the Sakkara demon and then promptly told me to go get them on my own before teleporting herself out of there (The bitch!). Not sure why I couldn't just pick up some dirt, then spit, fart and light it on fire with magic but I guess that would be too easy. Fortunately the "air" element was nearby - just higher up the mountain in the ice giant home. Thanks to Speedy I was in and out of there before they even knew it, and was one step closer to creating the thing that would destroy the demon once and for all.

Captain Planet!

Sacred: BFG

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

One of the skills available to a Seraph is called "BeeEffGee", which summons a large, holy spear that shoots destructive heavenly energy at things. Magic works with different rules to that of conventional weapons in this game. With conventional weapons there is a roll to hit section to see if your opponent parried etc. With magic, if the graphic touches you - you are hit. You take damage. The end. This particular skill puts out a truck load of magic damage, firing a shot (which goes through all enemies) as fast as I can press the mouse button. Takes a while to recharge and a little bit to cast but the effects are impressive.

Guess how I killed DeMordrey's Dragon.

With all the enemies dead (and starting to respawn), Wilbur and I continued on our journey - handling an evil magician in his mansion and a cave full of slavers with captives that were all freed before coming to the small town of Slaters Grave which had its own share of bandit and slaving issues. We were less fortunate in the rescue attempt there as the local Hill Giants were faster than the women we freed.

We then pushed on North and finally reached the Sharuka encampment - the one supposed to reinforce Prince Valor at Wyvern's Pass. Upon showing the Count's signet ring though the Captain revealed that that was in fact, the signal to kill us. At that instant the other guards attacked and slew Wilbur instantly before freezing in terror. Apparently I was a few levels too far above from what they'd normally aggro. This made executing them one by one all the more sweeter.

Sacred: Detour XP

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

We took a slight detour to reach the villages of Florentin, the nearby Porto Draco and the rather large city right beside of Mascarell. The whole place was plagued by bandits. Indeed I think the bandits outnumbered the townsfolk ten to one in the region, leading me to question where the heck they all stay? Fortunately they were all easy enough to slay, including the rather large portion of hostile Demordreyan troops among their number.

Apart from the expected crime and banditry quests in the region, the bigger problem were the small concentrated zones of undead. We only had to deal with ghosts haunting a mansion (for the new owners) and ghosts haunting a ruined playground (for the kids y'know - those effing ghosts have no manners) but those ghosts had some more, corporeal allies in the forms of zombies and skeletons. In this game you need to kill one of those THREE times unless you have a potion of "undeath death" which makes them explode. Poor Wilbur was getting tossed around like a ragdoll in some of those fights but he's a pretty resilient guy. 

It makes these situations three times worse!

The only other thing of note this session was finding a random group of drow elves in the nearby forests and their pet baby dragons / winged lizard thingies. Flying enemies are annoying. Since we never got a quest to hunt them down I didn't explore in that direction further since the main task was in the opposite direction entirely. Oh, and we found the "Legendary Mace of Hell" in a barrel at one of the taverns. Wilbur was pleased.

Sacred: Bad Odds

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

After arming Wilbur the two of us travelled on through the orc desert to a small stone fort which was where Prince Valor and his men were holed up. Wilbur told the Prince where the orcs were coming from, a place called Wyvern's Pass in the deep sands and the Prince immediately decided that he will go march there with his troops, because he's had enough of these damned orcs. Can't blame him. Valor requested we (Wilbur still tagging along) go ask someone named Count DeMordrey for reinforcements though, as he knows his current force will be outnumbered.

Sounds like an important job, but since it looked like none of the soldiers there were in a hurry to go anywhere I decided to first deliver another letter - this time for a merchant, deeper in the desert at an oasis outpost. The orc patrols were getting scarier and scarier the further we went until my character herself had a voice over line indicating the sheer terror she felt in that region because the MOBs so badly out levelled us.

The same feeling terrorists get when Jack Bauer is in the area.

Still, I made the delivery and did pick up all the quests in that oasis camp. Bad luck if they wanted them done anytime soon though because after a cursory look around, Wilbur and I were high tailing it right back past Valor's fort and Porto Vallum. I noted that the orcs are bad shots with their bows, but they still managed to kill my horse (I failed to evade that volley), a farmer girl NPC I was trying to take back to town, and a herd of stolen cattle. In hindsight it was fortuitous to have so many meat shields with me. Hey, Wilbur survived!

Sacred: The Green Sea

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

There is a serious goblin infestation on the outskirts of town number two which is in between the town of losers and Porto Vallum. This makes my tasks of treasure hunting, finding missing people, and simply giving a man a drink quite a challenge. As usual they are easily dispatched in small numbers but these buggers are literally coming in waves of ten or more, with shamans warping in more reinforcements from the nearby goblin planet (I suppose) every 15 seconds.

They stole our technology, Captain!

It actually takes a bit of scouting before I find a suitable path through the unending green bastards to my destination of Porto Vallum - alas the two random guys who needed an escort there did not make it, being eviscerated by the goblins midway. Been awhile since I've seen a "Quest Failed" message which still lets you continue the game. Oh well, they have no problems now being dead and all so I was left to my own devices to explore this ... outpost really, which sat on the border of an orc infested desert. Great.

Fortunately the orc forces don't have a unit (like the goblin shamans) that can paralyze your movement, which meant I could gallop right past the massive crowds of them to fetch lost medicines, maps and the like and fight specific groups at locations of my choosing. This was way preferrable to the little terrors from the woods before. Anyway, my main objective here (after handing in the letter from the town of losers) was to find Prince Valor's man servant Wilbur who had been kidnapped by the orcs he was spying on. It took a little effort to find the correct orc camp but soon Wilbur was again a free man and had urgent news for the prince.