Pussycat669
Liturgist
Index
1. Raubritter
2. Heathens
3. Mines
4. More mines
5. Dragon
6. Sabbat
7. Templars
8. Preparations
9. Dark Fortress & Ending
Man, this takes me back. I still remember that haircut when I first saw it in a game magazine which I had stolen from my brother back in good old 1992. To celebrate the 19th anniversary of this event, I thought it might be time to actually play the game and examine if all the positive feedback holds true for the actual experience. I'll try to keep it brief so this will be more of a 'watch my awesome screen collection' kinda thing with one or two sentences thrown in here and there. You've been warned.
There are four free character slots however and since getting fellow forum members to sign up, arguably by attracting their collective need to project themselves on a virtual character whose wit, courage and/or skills would usually surpass their own, is the latest thing these days, I'll make this the official recruitment call for three brave volunteers. Preferably anyone who wants to share his/her inexperience with the game. My rule of thumb, if there is a surfeit amount of volunteers, would be: the less work for me, the higher the chances for you. So man up, get the game and manual, create the most horribly inefficient character built you can think of and it will still be more appreciated than that guy writing 'I want a guy who talks good'.
Quick tutorial from my first half hour messing around:
After choosing name, nickname and gender, the important part begins with choosing your background, depicted in the screen above. Depending on the background, you get a different amount of experience points (the red goo) which you can freely distribute among the attributes (the usual: Endurance, Strength, Agility, Perception, Intelligence, Charisma. Divine Favor is this game's equivalent of mana from my understanding and is already 99 from the start). According to the manual, this is pretty much your only opportunity to modify your attributes permanently. There are some notable differences, like strength also being health. Please refer to page 22 or so of the manual for a more in-depth explanation about attributes and skills since there is no bloody way I'm going to bloat this further. Another thing of notice are those 1:00, 3:00, etc. next to the skills. These are skill bonuses and training capabilities. After you have chosen your background, you can start to choose professions. Each profession will cost your character five years of his life and raise/decrease some attributes (haven't looked up yet how aging factors in in all of this) while giving you more EP to distribute among your skills only. Coming back to the numbers, let's say a recruit gets a 5:07 for a weapon skill. That means that the skill is automatically increased by 5 points and you can additionally raise the skill for 7 more points using your free EP.
Skills are:
Edged weapons, impact weapons, flail weapons, polearm weapons, thrown weapons, bow weapons, missile device weapons (crossbows & guns)
Alchemy, religious training, virtue, speak common, speak latin, read and write
Healing, artifice, stealth, streetwise, riding, woodwise (=outdoorsman)
Some of the more advanced professions may require a career chain so to speak. My first attempt, Holger 'Ox' Greifenberg, a battle hardened veteran, required him to first become a recruit then a soldier. He may not be the brightest fellow around and he's certainly not likable, but he should hold his grounds in a stand up fight.
That's it for now. Let's see where this goes.