Points decided, I'll go into how a couple more specific skills work. This time, let's have it be Meditation and Swords, since those were what was chosen, and I've already covered the perception and learning skills in detail.
Meditation is bonus mana. How it works, however, is greatly related to your class. Every time you level up, you increase in Health and Mana. Or just Health, for our Knightly sorts. How much depends on your class Bonus. For Knights, the HP bonus would be four, while the MP bonus is zero. They can never learn magic, and so there is no use for a mana bar. For our Sorcerors, the HP bonus is only one, but the MP bonus is four. Every time they level up, therefore, a Knight receives an increase of four maximum health, while a sorceror increases by only one health, but four HP.
This also effects your stats and both the body building and Meditation skills. Every point in meditation will increase your MP by your class mana modifier, just as Body Building will increase your HP by your class health modifier. As such, they're better for some classes than others, though everyone should eventually get them. Similarly, every critical benchmark in the relevant stats will increase you by that same modifier.
As a note, the Druid MP modifier is only three. However, they draw mana from both Intellect and Perception. As such, as long as Selias keeps up with both his mana stats, they'll stay well ahead of the sorcerors, who have a better 4 in mana, but draw from intellect alone.
Expert and Master level meditation and Body Building are good, but uninteresting. No quirks, the bonus just increases the skill's effect. At Expert, the effect is doubled, and at Master it is tripled. Torg, at an expert rank of four, gets as much HP as a normal rank of eight would get them. With an HP modifier of four, that is quite a lot of health. Thirty two, in fact. Odds are very good that, throughout the game, if something goes wrong? It's going to be Torg that drags the rest of the party back for healing, simply on the basis of them having so much more health for anything to chew through.
Walls of beef.
Sword, now. Sword is your basic weapon skill. For the most part, all weapons are pretty similar and, at least at normal rank, they all get the same skill bonuses. Every point in the skill increases your attack bonus... more clearly, it makes it more likely that you'll land the hit. At Expert, your skill also reduces your recovery time with the sword. In short, you land more hits
and you swing faster. At master, you gain the ability of dual wielding. The sword is one of two weapons, along with the dagger, that you can hold with your left hand.
There's trade-offs for that, of course. Swords aren't great parrying weapons, like some others, and there are much better weapons for direct damage. With that said, sword is a solid choice even if you don't intend to sling two weapons around like a living blender.
"Welcome aboard." the salty captain calls, as we step onto the rocking ship.
From New Sorpigal, you don't have much choice in the way of travel. You can go west, by coach or by foot, and reach Ironfist castle. Or you can take the boat north, and reach the islands of Mist. Either way, as I've said, generally speaking? The further south and east you are, the safer you are. Mist and Ironfist alike, both regions are somewhat more difficult than New Sorpigal. Fortunately, we've dallied in the area enough to pick up a few levels, so we'll do fine.
"Where can we go from Mist?" You may be wondering.
The captain will answer that for you.
"Ye can always take the shipping vessels back t' New Sorpigal. Fine trade between the regions. Elsewise ye have two choices... set off for the Castle Ironfist, or put off in a ship bound full west, fer Bootleg Bay. North? Ah, we don't go north. Due North of Mist be deep and treacherous waters. Infested with Eels, they be, and so you'll find hearty eating by casting the nets... but them eels serve as supper for vicious monsters of the deep as well, and they don't take kindly to tresspassin'. There's ways to find a safe port on the islands north, and a few mad folk who live on them, but none passin' north from Mist. Ahoy lads! The tide is pulling. Raise the anchor and set sail, 'tis time to cast off!"
The trip to Mist takes three long, seasick, heavily fish scented days before you arrive. In the meantime, enough time was spent in New Sorpigal that a new month has begun, making this February. February is a very good time to visit these islands, as you will see. Soon.
However, the second your feet hits the docks, you are greeted with loud shouts and the sound of charging spells. Followers of Baa are here.
What? Oh, no no. She's just a peasant with questionable religious beliefs. Sheer circumstance. Also, hidden behind the image is a barrel... it's empty, though. Unfortunately, barrels aren't guaranteed to have liquid in them, and may be empty... or worse, have black liquid within. You like black Potions. You don't like black Liquid.
These are the followers of Baa I mean. They're sitting outside the light-houses to both the north and south, waiting, presumably, for you. None else recieve their ire on arrival, at least.
The Follower, Mystic, and Fanatic of Baa are a new series of enemies, ranging from 9 to 25 hp. Hardly problematic. They are, in effect, the new goblin. Curiously, the Mystic is the only caster, and will fire a weak Mind Blast at you from time to time. However, the Fanatic is not, and the Mystic doesn't seem to cast as often as others, for me.
The main role of these angry religious zealots is to charge at you and attempt to beat you with sticks.
They drop like flies.
And with them out of the way, we proceed directly to one of the big reasons that sorcerors
love Mist. Mage guilds.
"Members only." the swarthy, bearded guildmaster says, rejecting your interest in spells.
Don't give me that. We just butchered close to a dozen similarly dark of skin and grey of beard men. And this aside, we payed our dues to the guild of elements. What gives?
Well the fact is, these aren't the same guild. The guilds of the elements pay homage to all four of the elemental spheres relatively equally. These guilds, however, focus on just one. In a practical sense, what this means is that you have to purchase membership to the local initiates guilds of Air, Water, and Fire individually.
It's worth it, however, as they have a much wider range of spells inside of their Sphere, stocking the first through the seventh spell. Even better, as they
only draw their stock from those seven books, you're far more likely to find what you are looking for than the guilds of Elements, which are chancy.
The local alchemist and general goods are like any other shop of their kind, and don't contain anything of note at the moment. I'll talk about armor and weapons instead.
The arms length spear shop, much like the Knife shoppe in New Sorpigal has a specific weapon specialty. They sell polearms. Not just spears, but also staves. They
may also rarely sell pole-axes, I'm not certain. In any case, the featured halberd falls under the skill repertoire of Spear rather than Axe.
The armor shop, by contrast, doesn't really have any specialties and is just slightly better than new Sorpigal. I posted an image, because they happened to have a couple interesting pieces of equipment.
Interesting. Not
good. The 'Doom' enchantment sounds a lot nicer than it actually is, and offers a +1 to a number of things down the line. However, when all is said and done, +1 doesn't really matter much unless you are
right on the edge of a stat thresh-hold... and even then, it's better to wear a piece of equipment enchanted specifically for that stat, which will push you a little closer to, or over, the next.
It's a rarer enchantment to see come up, but when it comes down to it, if you try to seriously use it then the doom it refers to is yours. It's shop fodder.
Moving up north, we acquire membership in another guild of weapons, and draw the ire of the other new set of enemies.
Once again, very.... ethnic. The cut-purse, Bounty Hunter, and Assassin have no ranged options, and as such aren't very special. With nine to twenty five HP again, just keep firing spells or arrows at them, and they drop before they get close.
And you want them to. Because they have... unpleasant tricks to attempt. Let them engage you in melee, and the cut-purse and bounty hunter will attempt to steal from you. I can't recall if this is 'just' in regards to your gold, or if they actually fish things out of your inventory... I go out of my way not to let them get that close. The assassin, however, has a nastier trick.
She can kill you. Let her get close, and if you're unlucky, you'll see one of your characters go from full health directly to dead. Even if she doesn't, she still inflicts a nasty amount of damage with her normal attack.
Fortunately, with only 25 hp, she goes down like a poorly thought out dating analogy.
Once they drop, we look into Duelists edge to discover that I am apparently in error. The guild offers training in Mace, Chain, Bow, Shield, and Body Building.... and apparently Selias actually can learn how to use maces. Startling, but so can the cleric, so I suppose it's not completely dumbfounding. It offers a melee alternative to the dagger, if Selias decides to start using shields, anyway... unlike the spear, a Staff can
only be used when you have both hands on it in a solid grip, so you can properly wallop enemies with the knob on the end.
Without waiting for input, I immediately buy the Bow skill for Torg, and equip that nice-ish crossbow we found. Now the poor Knight doesn't have to just stand there and feel awkward as everything on the overmap is killed loooong before it enters melee range, and can actually pitch in! And keep firing after the mages are out of mana! Naturally, you have infinite arrows and crossbow bolts. Why wouldn't you, after all?
After killing the last enemies on the main Island of Mist... we check out that castle you might have seen in the assassin screenshot.
It's important.
You can tell it's important because it actually features gate guards. As a note, guards such as these are the only times you will ever cross paths with law enforcement through Enroth! If it's important to speak with the people behind these doors, then you'd better keep your nose clean. If you've already done all the quests that require you to pass a gate check by, however, you can feel free to massacre the peasantry to your hearts content! Your reputation will suffer, but you will never ever be held accountable for it beyond people not wanting to talk to you.
More importantly, Lord Albert Newton, one of the six Lords and foremost Sorceror of Enroth, rules Mist from this castle. And he has quests for us to collect.
The first is the Council Quest. You'll need to do this eventually to advance in the main plot. But like all Council quests, trying to charge off and do them right away will get you hilariously slaughtered.
This is a two stage quest. You have to go through a dungeon, and collect a key to unlock a
completely different dungeon that actually holds the item we want. At the moment, just the first is going to be a struggle. Even if we get the key, the second is basically going to roast us alive! So, you know, keep that in mind.
The second is the Sorcerous Advancement quest.
You remember how there are six Lords? Each of them is the most politically important member of a specific class through the land. One for each.
Each of them will offer two quests to advance your class in rank. Doing so increases your Class Modifiers... I mentioned those earlier. Almost every class increases your Hp and Mp modifiers by one each. It doesn't sound like much.... but when this applies to Level, Stat, and Bodybuilding/Meditation bonuses, it adds up to quite a bit.
Knights like Torg, though? They don't get MP. As such, their advancements will, both times, increase their HP modifiers by
two.
Walls of beef.
In any case, if you want to be a Wizard, you have to drink from a specific fountain and return. The game doesn't tell you which fountain you want... where, rather. If you don't know where it is, then you're stuck just drinking from every pool of water you happen to see, and checking back frequently to hope you've found it, and this is a frustrating quest.
If you know where you are supposed to go, however, then this quest is arguably the easiest advancement quest there is.
All in all, there's never a reason to not advance, if you can. The only 'drawback', if it can be called that, is that it costs more money for a more advanced character to level up. With that said, the advanced class and extra length of your health and mana bars, means it's easier for you to kill enough things and complete enough quests
to level up. And gold is easily acquired, for the most part.
With the quests in our log-book, we check one more feature of the main Mist island.
Their shrine. The shrine of intellect, stat most essential to a Sorceror. You see, it's currently February. And February is the
month of intellect.
This means, if you pray at the shrine in February...
This... is not what happens.
This is me, once again, missing the momentary notification that pops up when you do something. Damn it. Latrio is unimpressed.
This should be a better view.
You see that Intellect stat?
Pray at the right shrine, in the right month, and you receive a permanent increase to something across the whole party. In February? That's Intellect, baby. All the brains. Torg doesn't get much out of it, but it's a nice thing for our casters.
Supposedly you have to talk with a Certain Person to activate these quests, but I've always found that the first, at least, goes off automatically. That's usually Intellect, just because it's easy to get to it in the required time-frame. January's shrine visit time has passed us by... until next year.
In any case, this is the other big Monthly matter. And it's repeatable. Come back here next year, pray again, and we'll get another... +3. It's the first visit that has the big boost.
Little left to do but check the Mage guilds again, now that we're enrolled.
A few spells stand out, in between the minor buffs and low level stuff.
Lightning bolt, our characters are familiar with by now, having been hit by it enough. 1d8 damage per skill level is pretty good, and electricity is a solid choice of elemental damage.... but with only one skill point in the magical discipline, a cost of ten mana is just too much to justify using it at all. We pass on this one.
Ice bolt is
much better. With five points in the skill, Latrio casts this for 5d7 damage. I'll grant you, however, that 8 mp is still a little much to throw into a single spell at this point of the game. For the most part, he'll still stick with cold beam, since there's not much that really needs to be absolutely crushed right this second the second you see it, yet.
Better still is the Enchant Item spell. With an Expert rank of five, Latrio has a solid fifty percent chance of placing a wide range of enchantments on most items.
Or, he would. We aren't buying that one yet, though. We pick up a Water Walk utility spell, but right now we don't have much that he could
actually cast it on. The spell needs quality to work. Quality!
Besides, we have to save our money for the last interesting spell on the list.
The classic fireball. With four points in Fire, our robot ninja wizard casts this for 4d6 damage.
Which, yes, isn't quite as much as the d7 or d8's that get thrown around. But there's one reason you want fireballs, even if you have only a couple points in fire, and even, or especially, at the beginning of the game.
Splash damage.
A fireball hits, and then it damages
everything in its radius. As such, groups of enemies drop
much more quickly than picking them all off one at a time. It's not the best of the mob-clearing spells, of course, but it has the bonus of being able to use it indoors, and comparatively cheaply.
Right now it's still a little expensive, but we want this. Oh boy do we want it.
The purchases wind up being Ice Bolt, Fireball, and Water walk. Can't really afford more.
Before we shop, sell, and pick up spells, though, it just passed ten oclock. Which means that the town hall is open.
Charles D'Sorpigal, the mayor's armsmaster and bodyguard, is worried about the Silver Helms. He wants us to storm their outpost, the only dungeon in Mist, and acquire Evidence that they're a sack of dicks.
Which they are, no doubt. And eventually, we're going to have to go there... it's where the key for that council quest is found. For now, though, it's a little tricky still. Depending on what's spawned inside, and in what numbers, it may or may not be feasible.
In stark contrast to Charles' concerns, the Mayor is pretty cool with the idea of just handing over all his authority to the Silver Helms, and just letting them have free run of the place. They're only going to kill evil people, right?
Finally, the clerk offers the February bounty. This month, it's set on a Thief.
Not a cutpurse. A thief, specifically.
I'll note, try as you might, you will never find so much as one Thief in all the region of Mist. You'll have to travel elsewhere, search until you find one, and then travel back, offering probably a huge waste of time and money for a reward that really isn't worth it. This is more or less what you can expect from the bounty hunts. If we happen to find a thief somewhere, and can get back here in time, I guess I'll try to remember the bounty but there's no promises. 800 gold really isn't worth the headache.
In any case, no images, but Mist contains trainers for Expert Staff, Spear, Repair, and Leather, and Master Fire, Air, Water, and Meditation. Those master skills mean a lot for Sorcerors, as Mist is the only location where there is a Master trainer for them. There's a lot in Mist that Sorcerors will find important. Fits, given that it's ruled by the big cheese of sorcery.
In any case, we've seen all the quests on offer. There's one thing, though, that isn't exactly a quest...
There's a string of smaller islands to the north. If we water-walk there, there's a lot of easily-killed followers of Baa and cutpurses. Alternatively, there's someone who will activate a teleporter and wish us luck in clearing them out. It's mostly good for a few xp and some loot.
At this point, our choices are:
Clear the islands, there's no reward specifically but less hostiles is good.
Desperately flail at the
Silver Helm Outpost. It's a bit tricky at this point, but not impossible.
Or
Catch a ship elsewhere. The rates for leaving Mist are a bit more expensive than getting there, mind, and we're starting to run a bit low on funds.
