Battle Brothers: Spear Wall

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

With the string of recent victories, morale is high as a banner for the Spears is created. The Nord Craizee is recruited as the company goes to hunt the rampant dire wolf packs roaming the forests.

The large white flags means their morale is breaking.

These critters are fast, but are easy prey as they keep lunging against the front line spearwall. The same tactic works well on zombies encountered at some random ruins, the only difference is - they get back up, making for a marathon battle but one still won by caution.

The company eventually arrives at Wiesendorf who not only have hauntings at the graveyard, but also a fort of bandits raiding their supply lines. With a quick scouting run it turns out the "hauntings" are also bandits, so the Spears set out to rout both locations.

These bandits are wise to the spear wall method, and counter with delays or ranged attacks forcing the Spears to charge. Ultimately this leads to the death of S***A who is piked while spear walling (pikes out range spears), and Moaning Knight (one of the original three) who takes an arrow to the knee... and another to the face.

Coppertopper the messenger and He-Alve the strange, scaled one are recruited as replacements, but Faltran and Bloodfire know they'll never be able to replace their fallen comrade.

TESO: Not so Graht

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

Despite all my efforts it seems the Lion's Guard went ahead and captured some pact soldiers which led to my return to their valley encampment the Nord dagger man, Craizee, and together we killed every single Lion Guard scum left in there. At this point I definitely regret reviving King Emeric. Anyway, there's still hope for an alliance with Queen Ayrenn so I sail over to the giant forest of Grahtwood next, and this place is a mess - story wise.

The trees here are massive!

It's like they put piece meal ideas everywhere, such as a rebellion, a vampire den, the Worm Cult messing around, freeing forest spirits, a showdown against Sheogorath's new favorite mortal, assisting an Ordinator of Almalexia shutting down a dolmen and so on with no main thread tying them together like in past zones.

At least I got to push a drunk wizard off a tower.

Ultimately I just need to retrieve pieces of an ancient machine so that the Bosmer (who are actually cannibalistic since they don't eat plants) recognize Ayrenn as their true leader. Her brother Naemon tries to use the machine first which turns him into an ugly daedra which I destroy easily. Ayrenn (who did no work for any of this I might add) doesn't change at all, just powers up(?) and then sends me to fetch her next accessory over at Greenshade.

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.

TESO: Convoluted by Design

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

When I get there, Windhelm is in the middle of a celebration for Jorunn's 10th year anniversary of being king. As expected, there is a party-pooper in the form of Fildgor, Jorunn's twin brother who resents the fact that he didn't become king. Fildgor's jealously leads him to start a civil war and making multiple attempts on his brother's life, each one stopped by yours truly, though Naryu does show up to help occasionally.

A Breton illusionist comes closest to slaying Jorunn with daedric poison, but thanks to a convoluted ritual involving dream walking and vampire blood he recovers fully. Does this mean Jorunn is a vampire/dhampir now? Not sure. Majorn the Ancient, the vampire who so willingly donated it to me after I helped him slay his son for making "sentient" thrall, seems to think so. Pity the game doesn't let me slay Majorn too.

After much chasing, I finally catch up to Fildgor at Sovngarde (of all places) and defeat him there where he is humiliated among all the dead heroes. I figure that's enough of a punishment for him and convince Jorunn to let him live. I also collect the final tome of Shalidor after one more silly trial from Sheogorath, and learn that the fighter's guild council has put out an arrest warrant for their current Argonian guildleader for he murder of their previous Nord guildleader. That stuff advances pretty slowly in the background.

I think Sheogorath's uncle was someone's stunt double in Resident Evil?

TESO: New Life Unlock

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

For some reason Friede's words "Thy place of belonging" kept ringing in my mind and with the Fire Keeper's help I used my significant soul fire to teleport me somewhere closer to home.

I awoke in a very weakened state in the familiar landscape of Coldharbour. Lucky for me not five minutes goes by before a towering Nord lady named Lyris frees me from my cell, informing me that my current undeath condition was caused by some scum named Mannimarco. With no intention of keeping the silence this time, I took great pleasure in eviscerating all the dremora in the way to our escape route: another prisoner called "the Prophet".

I can still backstab with a two handed sword!

The old guy manages to open a portal back to Tamriel for us, but thanks to Molag Bal's interference Lyris doesn't escape. Just want to note that it is fortunate the Prophet's portal opened over the sea because it was pretty high up! I washed ashore on a snowy little island called Bleakrock and was soon conscripted by the local Dunmer She-Captain into gathering all the townsfolk for an emergency evacuation since Covenant warships were spotted headed this way.

Despite the "rush" I happen to come across a friendly Argonian He Alve who teaches me the art of lock picking, which is now a simple mini game. Simple when someone explains it anyway! Just push down on each tumbler and let go when it starts to shake. More importantly just -remember- when it starts to shake so your second attempt will always work. After this two minute crash course, I've not failed any. Thank you He Alve!

Skyrim: 30 Days of Skyrim

Might as well be part of my Skyrim Adventure Journal! You can read the whole story here!

Turns out there's this "30 Days of Skyrim" challenge floating about, and since I've raked up hundreds upon hundreds of hours on the game I thought I'd give it a crack. Also rather than spread it out for 30 days I'm just going to hit them all at once. :)

Day One: Which race did you chose?
I always go with Nord. The natives of Skyrim. Which happens to be my character name.

Day Two: Mage, Warrior, Rogue or mixed class?
I always start with Rogue, then eventually mix into Warrior and only at the very end do I pick up magic skills. I don't mind worlds with magic, I just don't like being a magic user.

Day Three: Favorite Quest Line.
The Forgotten City Mod. It's fantastic.

Day Four: Favorite Quest Mission.
To Kill an Empire, and any others that involve directly slaying Thalmor or Imperial people.

Day Five: Favorite Faction.
Dawnguard. Definitely my type of crazies. :)

Day Six: Least Favorite Quest Line.
A Night to Remember (the one you get drunk). Did it for completion but it's ultimately stupid.

Day Seven: Least Favorite Quest.
No Stone Unturned. It's a collection quest. Blergh.
Also, Diplomatic Immunity because I'm not allowed to eradicate all the Thalmor in their estate.

Day Eight: Favourite Companion(s)
Serana from the Dawnguard DLC since she has the most backstory and is easy on the eyes. Brutus Brutalus [from the Summerset Isle Mod] was a real ass kicker though for whatever reason.

Day Nine: Favorite City
Whiterun, it's in the middle of everything and has a nice layout to the place.

Day Ten: Favorite Hold
Again Whiterun. I like the open, rolling, non-snowy plains. I also quite like the wandering giants and mammoths!

Day Eleven: Favorite antagonist.
Samel from the Inferno Mods. The guy just keeps coming back!

Day Twelve: Favorite Shout(s)
For a long time it was Dragonrend, but recent mods have me favoring Slow Time and Become Ethereal.

Day Thirteen: Favorite Spell(s)
None really, since I'm not a mage. I suppose the light ones are useful every now and then.

Day Fourteen: Favorite Weapon(s)
Paralyzing bows and paralyzing knives. Eventually graduated to dragon slaying katana and oblivion sword though (from the Death Mountain Mod).

Day Fifteen: Favorite in game book

This one from the Death Mountain Mod! :P

Day Sixteen: Least Favourite Creature
Slaughter fish, mainly because they are hard to target and pointless to fight.

Day Seventeen: Horder or no?
Not really items wise, but gold - wow I love gold. Despite having over a hundred thousand coins I still open baskets and nightstands to take all the coins I can find.

Day Eighteen: Favorite House.
Solitude. It's spacious and pretty functional.

Day Nineteen: Mods or no mods?
Definitely Mods. They add so much content to the game!

Day Twenty: What do hate most about Skyrim?
NPCs try to fight me when I'm clearly out of their league. They should either flee in terror at this point or simply surrender immediately.

Day Twenty One: Funniest thing you’ve done.
Chain executed maybe 20-30 enemies from the Sinister Seven Mod as they chased me through a door to a new area.

Day Twenty Two: Funniest glitch you’ve encountered
Dead dragon in Riften. Respawns dead. :P

Day Twenty Three: Favorite Song.
The dragon fighting music!

Day Twenty Four: Stormcloak Rebel, Imperial Legionnaire or neither?
Stormcloaks forever. Imperials are pussies since they lost/had to make peace with a bunch of elves. HUMANS MUST REIGN SUPREME ABOVE ALL OTHERS!

Day Twenty Five: Vampire, Werewolf or Vigilant of Stendarr?
Vigilant of Stendarr I guess, though I never really wear that title. Guess it fits somewhat though. Dislike of magic, slayer of non-humans. *nods*

Day Twenty Six: Favorite Armor set
Mastermind's Armor from the Sinister Seven Mod. The darker it gets, the faster you can move ultimately twice or three times of someone on horseback. Especially useful in dungeons where you can sprint up to an enemy (from the front) in stealth and execute them before they can draw their weapons!

Day Twenty Seven: One thing you would change about Skyrim
Let the game handle thousands of combatants in combat without crashing.

Day Twenty Eight: Who did you marry in game?
Njada, because she's a human Nord. I quite like her scars too. For me they make her look better than the ones who have flawless skin.

Day Twenty Nine: Favourite Deadra
Sheogorath. I'm biased though, since I really liked him in Oblivion and the Shivering Isles too. Still disliked his quest here.

Day Thirty:  What do you love most about Skyrim?
The dragons!

Dark Souls III: Return from whence thou cam'st...

Tales from Dark Souls - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Ariandel asks me to fetch Friede but there's no need, as she is already approaching with the exact same ice magicked scythe of the previous white-haired painting lady. It's pretty clear now that she killed her somehow and with Ariandel is now corrupting this world. I would not let that stand!

Or ... maybe I'll just back away now.

It turns out Friede is a nunja though (dual class nun/ninja) who can turn invisible and pretty easily kills me with said scythe. A few goes of this and I am so beaten up mentally I opt to withdraw first, following the suggestion of a player message to cut the long bridge outside.

This then serves as a ladder down to a root maze (guarded by two annoying great Nord archers) which reaches the frozen lake below. The area leads to a flowery valley with the bottom part of that tower where a lady with an affinity for wolves guards a curiously familiar grave.

Though not stated, I'm sure this is Knight Ciaran, especially given how tough she is (and she can somehow parry while attacking, the cheater). Worse when she summons a great wolf for aid. She's not as tough as Friede though, as it only takes me three attempts to defeat her.

Dark Souls III: Mountain of Madness

Tales from Dark Souls - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Beyond the prison chamber is an exit to a snowy mountain pass which is heavily patrolled by the javelin dudes followed by wolves and the great Nords. In traditional Dark Souls fashion, since I was terribly outnumbered here (worse than 10:1) I decided to go to the old staple: Panic Sprint through everything and somehow it worked!

Oh yuck.

After opening a few shortcuts I found myself entering a large, smelly chamber full of carcasses - a hive of giant flies? While very yucky, these weren't that dangerous to get through since I wasn't silly enough to wake all of them up at the same time. A nearby lever opened a secret passage back at Sister Friede's chapel. How I saw what happened in a cut scene far away - I don't know, but that's not the first time it's happened either. :P

A secret passage from the hive then led to a tangle of roots down to a familiar looking circular tower... damnit. This IS the same painting that I was in before! With nowhere else to go I used a homeward bone to return to Friede and get some answers.

She just casually implied I should leave but didn't actually stop me from descending the secret steps into the large, underground sanctum. At the end was a giant bird man, peering into a golden cauldron. It turns out this is the titular Ariandel.

Dark Souls III: The Second Painting

Tales from Dark Souls - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Following Sirris' instructions I find Sir Gael at the Cleansing Chapel (of the Deep). I guess I misunderstood that he could help me though, since he is the one asking for help - tasking me with bringing fire to the painted world of Ariandel, holding out a scrap of painting which serves as a teleporter. Why not, it's not like this is the first painting I've stepped into.

I soon find myself in a wintery mountainside, inhabited by tall, javelin throwing viking dudes, lonely trees, and packs of wolves. Individually they aren't that tough against my fully upgraded axe, but since this is Dark Souls - they come in groups of three or more. Still not a problem though. Even the giant wolf pack leader isn't a problem since I've fought one who wielded a giant sword before.

I like that it's just sitting in plain sight so you know what you're walking into.

Progress seems good until I hit some ruins near a crumbling guard post - that's when I encounter the giant Nords who live up to their appearance and cane me very easily. At that point I decide to look for a way around these guys...

Skyrim: Dream Crystal

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

Falskaar: Where women and children don't matter.

Continuing the campaign against the bandits, we clear them out from the docks where they had taken locals prisoner. One of them happens to be a trader that sails between Falskaar and Dawnstar, so we pay the 500 gold passage fee (both ways) to recruit someone to replace our fallen ally (Bandit). Fawadin, the Nord who I previously met working as Burgundy's bodyguard was in town and was up to the task.

Making camp.

Back at Falskaar (which is surprisingly warm for a place North of Dawnstar), another theme to many of the quests is that the local necromancers are taking control of various critters through use of magical stones. It's like they're playing Pokemon,  and it's up to me to collect all them. The stones that is. Arnand, the helpful monk guy suggests all this is actually the result of a rogue member of his order, so after collecting all the pieces we head to some ruins where it can be destroyed. Of course, said bad guy gets all the pieces in transit and makes the place go a bit crazy more visually appealing.

Floating furniture!

Pity that he's a push over when we reach him though, basically only summoning draugr to do his dirty work. When he ultimately tries to use the mega-pokeball assembled Dream Crystal it kills him. That kind of wrapped up rather nicely for us!

Skyrim: First Encounter

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

Miraak's Temple was near those Nords Sero and I assisted last time. It too had a mind-control stone and a lot more people working on it than in other places. The warrioress Frea was also here, trying to wake up her people to no avail. In true Nord fashion she then turned to me and asked for my help in killing everyone responsible. Hell yes! We go down into the depths of the temple underground, easily dealing with Miraak's cultists (side note: he has the smallest cult ever).

Pendulums, why is it always pendulums?

Near the base is another black book which I use to warp to Apocrypha but this time get stunned by Miraak's magic cutscene! Apparently the ex-dragon priest and self proclaimed "first dragonborn" now resides in this realm and has not only a few dragons under his command but all the horrible fish men too. Then he does the traditional bad guy mistake of letting me go. Guess he hasn't read the tomes on being a genre savvy villain!

I made friends with Cthulhu.

Back at Solstheim, Frea takes Sero and I to her village which her shaman dad protects with magic, just not very good magic since half his villagers are working on a nearby obelisk. Shaman dad tells me that I might be able to free those stones from their corruption with a new shout. Finally, a way to get back at Miraak - by yelling at his stones! That sounds like a job for a hero... :P

Skyrim: Ewok Slayer

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

After inadvertently reopening the local mine, much to Raven Rock's benefit, I decided to hire a local sellsword named Teldryn Sero for the low price of 500 gold and began exploring the island - discovering more of those strange mind-controlling obelisks, hostile blue ewok goblins called reiklings, and that bandits here prefered to be called reavers, because it sounds cooler. We also take down a local serpentine dragon, massacre the reikling ice castle, and find hints of some pirate treasure.

Zeeg teeket!

We also help some reiklings whose chief can speak broken English. At least up to the point where he asks us to kill Nords, the same "weak ones" that ran from their own meadhall. We instead ally with said Nords to slaughter the blue dwarves and given that there was only one friendly casualty in the encounter - and that Sero and I hung back and watched - I'm wondering how the they lost to the reiklings in the first place. Getting their leader banished afterwards is a step in the right direction I think.

Dutak jadgreh!

Obviously I'm also collecting a bunch of new shouts and boosts from the ever entertaining black books. The ones where its really dark and that "the darkness hurts you" are my favorite ones. Also all the moving corridors are great, but the collision detection sucks balls requiring me to learn the power-hack tcl (no clipping mode) to get through those areas without falling through the floor into the acid muck below.

Ehda graks!

Before I knew it we had explored around 75% of Solstheim!

Skyrim: Southern Justice

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

I was surprised as I watched the giant man, Captain Guomundr, come across the bone bridge up to Death Mountain. Apparently he had news dire enough to come seek me out: the Thalmor had a new base at the Southern border, and had begun killing mead merchants crossing the border. Knowing how much Nords like their drink, I was determined to put an end to them. Not because I like mead. I just like killing Thalmor.

Right in the... kidney?

A snow storm concealed our approach to the large camp, giving me the opportunity to pick off a few strays before rushing into melee. They were not as tough as the ultra skeletons and were cut down with ease. There were lots of them though, and mostly archers. Guomundr took on the Thalmor commander while I handled the rest. In the end I had to handle him too as he had electrocuted Guomundr to death!

I found a note indicating that the Thalmor were actually after a criminal in the nearby Hollow Tooth ruins. Usually this would make him my ally, but he opts for "it's complicated" and attacks out right. It's probably better this way as this was the sure method to not let more Thalmor troops come traipsing into the region on the pretense of justice.

Justice is absolute.

Who is your Elder Scrolls Main?

Question time from me since all this talk of The Elder Scrolls Online is slowly seeping out from the bowels of the NDA. If you are going to play TESO or have played any of the previous Elder Scrolls game - who is your main character? The first one you create? Do you often change your protagonist? I don't and you probably can guess what I play just by my name.

If you don't / haven't / aren't going to play any Elder Scrolls related stuff I'd still like your input just based on races. Your choices are:

 

Top Row:
Altmer - tall high elves that favour magic
Argonian - agile lizard folk who favour magic and are resistant to disease
Bosmer - shortish, dextrous wood elves
Breton - fair haired humans that favour magic
Dunmer - dark (of skin) elves proficient in melee and magic

Bottom Row:
Imperial - everyday normal dudes that excel as crafters and traders
Khajiit - sneaky cat people, complete with whiskers - that enjoy making drugs
Nord - pretty much Vikings who like to punch things - especially dragons
Orc - green of skin with under bite, you won't like them when they're angry
Redguard - dark skinned human warriors - best fighters of the land supposedly

Just curious! Looking forward to seeing your answers! :)

TESO: Beta Weekend 2 Review

If you are reading this, then the NDA has been lifted fully on The Elder Scrolls Online and I am finally free to talk about my experiences with the game about it during their 2nd beta weekend stress test. At least I think it's the 2nd weekend...

Initial impressions? It is pretty cool and fantastically beautiful. I obviously played a Nord since they come from the country of named after me and after escaping a not too dangerous daedra prison (guarded only by weak, crazed souls) I found myself traipsing around an island that seemed pulled straight from Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and later still was reliving my memories of Morrowind.

The combat was decent enough for the class I used (I played in first person as a Dragon Knight) and the clean interface was pretty much copied out of ES:V, with minor tweaks for hot bar abilities. Skills individually gain level as you use them (and sometimes when you don't - which is weird), and at certain points each can "morph" into a different variation of the same move, for example choosing between additional range or damage. There's no going back up the skill tree as far as I know so while everyone may be using a "slash" attack, each would have variations of the same move. The optional first person perspective also helped add to the immersion.

There were some negatives of course. Being a Beta there were missing textures, text mismatching the voice acting (all lines are voice acted - that must have been expensive), missing quest givers, people falling through cracks in the world into ... space? Can't say Oblivion because that's actually a place in this series. :P The enemies have very simple AI and sometimes it feels like you just have to press "E" to win. Also the instances were very "phase" heavy. If I was playing with a friend and I happened to finish a quest before or differently as to how he did in an area then we wouldn't see each other despite standing in the same spot. This is to keep with our individual immersion I guess, but I can see how that will be problematic later.

More worrying were reports that the further settlements were simply just not done yet, which given their release schedule, is a bit of a worry for all those who purchased the pre-order stuff. They may end up racing to a world not yet ready for them. My main gripe however is the login queue. One hour and a half is a bit rich. Hell, even 5 minutes is unacceptable to me, so that was my queue to go play something else.

In the state I experienced the game at, I'm forced to only score it 2 dragons out of 5. Hopefully Zenimax fixes up all the broken pieces before release because this would easily double its score. Will I pay to play it though? That's a silly question. Of course not.