Queen's Wish 11: Procrastination

I actually have been playing in short bursts every day or so, but I'm just not compelled to do this game, unlike the earlier Spiderweb games. I think it's just kind of the same old, same old all over the map.

Yes, there is some variety in the fights, but mostly the fights are just the fights. If I can't win one I try again, and if that fails again I just zoom over to another part of the map and work there.

I think that interrupts the storyline. Each of the three map areas has a distinct storyline, but you have to jump away and back again to it.

I rather like the artwork, although that also becomes a bit of the same everywhere. 

So when I couldn't slay the dragon in the Vol, I managed to get to the places in the other two where I'm dealing with the powers that be. They have all given me quests—what a surprise. 

I am progressing, truly I am, but with other Spiderweb games I could hardly hold myself back from playing. This one is, oh, I really ought to get back to the game. 

I'm also not a fan of the finish-the-dungeon-in-one fight scenario that Jeff put into this game. He said on the Forum that he wanted to make it a real challenge for the player. Well, in his earlier games he didn't have a problem making challenging fights. 

Ok. Another spider fight.

In fact, that may be one of the things that contributing to my malaise. In Avernum, for example, we could play part of a dungeon, come back, and the monsters we killed would still be dead. So the story continued. We wanted to go back and finish that dungeon! I still haven't gone back to try to get that scorpion. I kinda dread it, instead of wanting to make progress.

Also, we don't get points for just random trash fights, only for completing quests. There's no loot to scavange; the treasure hunt is gone for the most part.

Well, no doubt when I make some real progress things will get interesting again. I hope.

Beginning to wonder.

Next entry.

Queen's Wish 10: Getting Killed

Well I have really been moving along for the past couple of days! Haven't done much, but kept getting killed when I was just sure I could beat the deadly scorpion in the infernal pit.

So far, I haven't managed it.

But first, I ventured further into the Vol, and I found an odd place with odd humanoids who offered portals to other areas, or dreams. OK, I decided, why not. I bought a dream for 30 coins. Didn't seem to do much at the time. 

Now, I know that it's usually a bad idea to accept such offers, but I did it.

Shortly thereafter, when I got killed by the scorpion, I was sent back to the original fort and got a message from Mom (the eponymous Queen). She said she'd noticed that I'd found this odd area, and warned me not to accept the offered dreams.

Oops.

Well, it'll turn up sometime in the future as a bad thing. I imagine that I will survive, however. I just made it more difficult for myself.

But the infernal pit is really quite nice:

The boss battle

I've gone through the first two encounters several times. The goal is just to use arrows and save my magical energy for healing and curing when I get to the boss battle. However, I used up most of my scrolls the other day (these are much more scarce in this game than in earlier games) and I just can't manage to stay alive long enough to beat the thing. Tried about six times.

Finally I thought OK, I'm just not quite strong enough to do this yet. However, I wondered if I might be strong enough now to go back to one of those areas where I was warned not to proceed. So I chose the Ukat area.

This time I didn't get the warning. Yeah, it was a fight, but not all that difficult. So I'm in the Ukat northern area now and have already rebuilt another fort. 

Plus, I learned a new thing about the game. I got into a difficult battle with some "Mire Boars" in a mine. Large things they were. I just shot arrows at them and took care of the first wave of them one at a time. Got killed on the first effort to get the boss, then on my second try I found a new way to approach the area that narrowed the passage they could get through.

My first effort. Did not go well.

Got lucky. The boss attacked me. I had enough health left to wail away at him and I got him. Got the message that I had cleared out the dungeon. However, three more of the minions continued the attack, and I was way down in health by that time. I tried to run with my main character after the my other three characters got killed, but it finally got me.

However, I had killed the boss and got the "mission complete" message, so to speak. I figured that was enough. Went back and righto, yes, I had done it! I reported the quest to the manager of the mine, went back down, and those three nasty mire boars were gone.

So. Just get the boss. After that you're done. I was also able to explore the whole area and found several boxes containing my loot.

So that was quite satisfying! 

Tomorrow I'm going to continue in the northern Ukat area. I think I'll go back the Ariel area after that. Once I get more done in those places I ought to be strong enough to go back to the infernal pit and get the scorpion boss.

Still have plenty more to do however, because I'm only making a small dent in the medals so far:

We get medals. 

I can never get all the medals in Spiderweb games, because at least one is for completing the game on the "torment" setting, and I'm never even gonna try that. I did do an Avadon game on "hard," which was hard.

Anyway, I'm back to enjoying the game despite not being able to treasure hunt.

Till tomorrow!

Next Entry.

Queen's Wish 9: Fight!

Wow! Well I fired up the game today because I was waiting for someone (late) to show up here, and got into quite a fight with some drakes. 

I just stumbled upon this dungeon, which turned out actually to be a dungeon, well, a jail anyway, and innocently went into the basement. Found a buncha lizards, including basilisks. Basilisks no longer kill you as they do in the early Avernum games, but they stun you and take you out of commission pretty easily.

I managed to defeat them all. By that time, however, I was pretty much out of energy and needed some health restoration.

So at that point, I ran into some serious drakes, who turned out to be the bosses of the area. I was sure I couldn't beat 'em, and in fact they took out my main character pretty quickly.

But, I thought, I will try again, because if you don't defeat the bosses everything regenerates when you come back to the dungeon in this game. Still didn't think I could win, but this time I was more careful, used bows and arrows from a distance (actually those do fairly decent damage) and realized that I had quite a few consumables that could really help. Those included some group heal and group protection scrolls. I also have two healing potions per character now, and was able to transfer one to a really damaged character.

It took some time, but I managed to keep everybody alive and won! Got some tremendously good loot, too. This time I didn't want to leave it behind.

But when I went upstairs I found even more beasties! More lizards, more hellhounds, but also more nice loot in those chests.

Plus, I leveled up again. 

So that was fun! 

I also cleared out a rather nice looking castle. There are a couple of locked doors in it that I couldn't open even after defeating the fairly powerful bosses. I checked the Spiderweb forum and learned that I'll find the location of the key somewhere else in the game. So I'll wait for that.

Nice place! I'm impressed!

So that was a pretty good day's adventuring! I still would like to be able to do treasure hunting, but if the fights are going to get this interesting then I'll be happier. At least there was some good loot in the chests this time.

I'm still wandering around in the Vol, and haven't yet encountered any message that I'd better come back when I'm stronger. I may be strong enough now to try those places in the other two areas. But I'm going to go as far in this area as I can before I go back to try those places. 

Should have more time to play tomorrow! Good! I need to get this game done by Oct 24, because Jonathan Boakes in releasing his next game then.

Next Entry.

Queen's Wish 8: Leveling Up

I'm getting ever more deep into the Vol area, and have just encountered an eyebeast! Yay! A holdover from the other games. Also a tough enemy. I beat it the first time, but my lead character died. I didn't want to use a return life scroll, so I just went upstairs and reported the victory. 

Humph. Everybody else leveled up. Probably my main character didn't. 

So I went back and did the fight again three more times and on the third one I slaughtered the beast. Got some nice levels, and am using one of the cultural benefits of my other characters. Also got some nice loot.

But, I have figured out why I'm not playing this game as compulsively as I've played all the other Spiderweb games. 

It's those chests. Jeff hasn't hiden loot all over the place. It's all in easy-to-find chests after we finish battles. OK, that makes it easy, but it also destroys one of the main things I love about Spiderweb games—the joy of finding loot.

I mean, we can't even loot the mangled bodies of our victims. We can't steal stuff from the odd rotting corpse that we find lying around. What kinda adventuring is that?

Really, it's ruining the game for me. The game just turns into a series of fights that start to seem mostly the same. Yes, some enemies are tougher to beat, like the eyebeast, but the variety just isn't there as in the older games.

Of course I will finish it. But the lack of treasure hunting and the no-personality characters is really sucking the interest out of the game for me. The characters in Avadon had perhaps too much personality, but going to the extreme opposite just isn't working.

So. I will of course continue. I'm just not into it as much as usual, and that's why.

Glad to see an eyebeast, though.

Teensy-tiny eyebeast.

Next Entry.