Completed Let's play Realms of Arkania: Star Trail HD - Part 71: Phex Temple 15 - WTF Ending

[Eriador]

Part 47: TOTN 3 - Lady in Ice

Spoiler

Not sure if this is supposed to be obscured by dust or fog.

Hey, maybe we can drink this?

Oh look, a fountain called a well! They kinda had it backwards, didn't they?

Well, another key we need.

Thankfully, I've raised some obscure spells to positive levels in case they could prove useful. Still no opportunity to use that Speak with Dead spell.

Yeah, sure, after all, having Praiodan the undead monstrosity that feeds on suffering as our companion might not be the best idea and this is a good opportunity to get rid of him.

Oh, I'm pretty sure you'll do fine, spawn of darkness!

He's gonna suck her soul out or something, right?

Called it!

I guess she's seen weirder things down here. Everyone also seems to take this revelation rather well.

The fountain is still called a well. And for whatever reason, we CAN'T refill our waterskins from it.

Well, atleast we have the second key.

If you accept, the character you choose instantly gets the Holy Smelting! spell bumped to 15, so that you can get the key even if you didn't put any points into that spell, since as fas as I know this is the only place where you need it.

They sure love their reading, but they should do something about that horrible brown fog.

Yes, we need one key to open the door and one other to open the chest inside.

But I have to question the logic of keys that can't be removed from the lock. How are they ever gonna lock that door again?

SHAMEFUR DISPRAY, GRIMGRAVY!

Well, since Grimgravy ran away screaming, we have to win this battle without him.

After the ghouls are dealt with, the cowardly Grimgravy returns to us once again. He will have to work hard to redeem himself. SHAAAAAME!

This spear is pretty sweet, but from my experience, it never really revealed any speacial anti-dragon properties. Maybe it needed to be identified or something...

The only one who could equip it was Morkar, who had skill ranks in spears (unlike Helly, who mastered them) and the one time he managed to hit, it did negligible damage like every other weapon.

I think we need this statue to open that secret wall that hides the other exit to level 2.

Level 2!

 

[Darth Roxor]

Wait, when was it established that Praiodan was some kind of munster?

Maybe I shouldn't have skipped all the tl;drs

 

[Eriador]

Wait, when was it established that Praiodan was some kind of munster?

Maybe I shouldn't have skipped all the tl;drs

It's implied by that dialogue that shows up everytime you rest inside Blood Pinnacle with him in the party and also the fact that he doesn't require any food or water. At first, I thought NPC companions just don't require food and water, but it seems only Praiodan doesn't need it for obvious reasons. Our new blonde warrior companion Helen actually does need to eat and drink.

 

[Eriador]

Part 48: TOTN 4 - Endless Cultist Waves

Spoiler

Level 2!

Oh god, this is where it starts.

These two druids are actually easily dealt with, but later on, we get to fight whole swarms of these guys. It doesn't help that they love to spam Mad Dance, which incapacitates a character for a few rounds. And if all of your characters are incapacitated, you lose.

In one of these shelves, there's a hidden key you need to go any further, but you won't find it on your first try unless you are the kind of person who double-checks everything.

This is the alchemy laboratory, but there's nothing interesting here, just some dried whirlweed. Not even a healing potion or something like that.

As soon as we go through the passage, we trigger another combat. We will get lots of these filler encounter with cultists and evil druids and half the time, the get reinforcements. I'll be showing only some of them.

They are pretty tough and hard to hit for a bunch of spellcasters and we have to gang up on one to get him down. But mostly, we spam Chain and Manacle with Azira and Grimgravy. Later on, we face whole swarms of them, so eventually, in 50% of the battles I spam Chain and Manacle while everyone else just stands around passively "tanking" or I just flee from the other half of the fights, if they get ridiculous reinforcements. They don't drop anything worthwhile anyway and if the encounter isn't triggered again after you enter the spot once more, you didn't miss anything important. But sometimes, you get a really terrible battle arena, where retreat is not an option. Also, sometimes the actual battlefield is really tiny and I have to restart, since I can't get to the remaining enemies, because the "bound" enemies block them.

As you can probably guess, it's not very fun. Also, they are spellcasters, so they cast things like Lightning, Mad Dance, Ignifaxius and Horriphobus...

Past the door, we get another encounter when walking to the area on our left.

The Dormitories! There's three rooms here and two of them contain ridiculous, but totally pointless fights.

Like this one. The druids spam Mad Dance.

They also get reinforcements. I win via Chain and Manacle spam, AKA "Straps and shackles surround you and force you into my ban!"

Nothing interesting here, one of the beds has a normal fishing hook under the pillow which you can take, but it's pretty much pointless.

Disarming these traps tests Dexterity.

This is the largest room in the dungeon and it contains several fights with tigers and cultists and 4 chests containing 100 ducats each. But you can pretty much ignore everything here and just go to that secret door on the other side.

There's like 3 tigers inside that one tile. Strange, this never happened before or after. Also, I had to restart this fight several times, since these kitties take up so much space and I couldn't reach the other tigers that came with the reinforcements, since the wall of "banned tigers" wouldn't let me go past and killing them would take forever.

Yay! We are rich! We loot the other 3 chests, so we now have over 400 Ducats, but it's not like that matters much now.

This is where all those tigers sleep, I guess. Ingramosch has some really weird stuff in his cellar.

Well, we have to return for that bronze key...

But first, we have to win another ridiculous cultist encounter via Chain and Manacle spam, I've pretty much skipped turn with everyone but Azira and Grimgravy. Escape is impossible, since the whole battle arena is walled off.

Oh, and they did get reinforcements.

As you can see, the loot pretty much sucks.

If you're wondering why the table is so large, it's because the game adjusts the view depending on the height of the party leader and since Rainhardt is a dwarf with the lowest possible height, we get her view of the human world.

More tigers to ban.

And cultists in the other dormitory.

Here's that pointless fishing hook.

These keys are in the most random of places.

Well, now we can continue onward to the next exciting section!

Seriously, they should tone down the number of fights in this dungeon. It was okay in the first level and the other dungeons, but here, I guess they went overboard while trying to be "epic".

 

[Darth Roxor]

Lots of hiveminds in this dunjin.

 

[Eriador]

Lots of hiveminds in this dunjin.

Yeah, I think we've found the hive.

 

[Eriador]

Part 49: TOTN 5 - Timed Amulet Collecting ADVENTURE!

Spoiler

Here, we have to wander around, until we trigger fights with skeletons. There are 4 groups of them we have to defat for their amulet pieces and we have to do it in rapid succession, because if we take too long, we have to do it all over again.

This fight is ridiculous. The Skeletons are heavily resistant to thrust, piercing and slashing damage, so our axes, swords, arrows and spears do minimal damage to them. We mostly have to rely on Chain and Manacle, which works on undead by the way.

But the most annoying thing is that the game starts us out in this tiny 3-spaces wide corridor, while they spawn in that spacious room. And since they have ridiculous initiative (14 before rolls, while we have 5 or 7), they always go first and block the tunnel.

It takes several restarts and some clever positioning/escaping with superfluous party members to get through this. Also, I ban Helena with Chain and Manacle to keep her from rushing to the skeletons and blocking them. I wish they made NPC companions controlable, so I wouldn't have to resort to this.

Anyway, we win the first fight.

Need 3 more. We can't really rest or meditate for very long, else this happens:

"Wait!" Boreale exclaims, "didn't we find part of an amulett before? Where did it go?" No one can find it in the bags any more! Far off you hear the horrible clatter of bones again...

So I pretty much save after every fight, recharge some AE and then rush to the next fight as soon as possible.

The next one is a lot better, since we actually have some space to move around this time.

After we get 2 amulet pieces, this wall opens up, giving us access to the other 2 battles.

Both Grimgravy and Azira have mediocre Necrophobia, so they keep freezing in fear .

Finally, we have them all!

We manage to find the door in time.

Now that we are no longer under that time limit, we can make sure we don't lose Morkar. Yay, another "exciting" section awaits. This was probably the most annoying part in the whole dungeon .

 

[Darth Roxor]

gud game

 

[Eriador]

Part 50 - TOTN 6 - Prem Flounder Faces

Spoiler

Before we get to the next level, we have to fight some cultists and their dogs, we can't escape from this fight because of these walls around the battlefield.

This is actually entrance to level 3, so the game is lying to us.

...you know what, I don't blame her. And it will probably be easier without her, since all she ever did was get in the way, forcing me to spend precious AE to ban her.

SO WE LOSE THE SALAMANDER STONE FOR THE 3RD TIME????



Seriously, at this point, is there any other reason for this then to annoy you?

We did bring it to Lowangen, but your minions stole it from us as soon as we've arrived. There was never an option to bring it to you, sir.

Anyway, there's this lock for which we need a combination.

As soon as we get to that altar, we are attacked...

...by a lone knight.

Ban for the win!

This is one thing we need to get that code.

Also, Boreale can read now that I've improved that skill.

Nothing really interesting here, just average cult stuff.

Yeah, this is the second thing we need for that code.

It took me lots of tries, but eventually, I've solved it. The word CULT determines which letters we need and their order in the code. We are looking for the first appearance of each letter in this text and need to count their position from the start of the line. Therefore, C is 1, U is 3 (from your, 3rd place in the second line), L is 6 and T is 8.

If you get it wrong a couple times, the EHVUL guy himself will start offering you tips. Awfully nice of him! I know that he is supposed to be leading you into a trap, but leaving us locked out of the final level would be way easier.

And really, Prem flounder faces? What kind of an insult is that?

Anyway, this is the code.

Now we can go forward!

But first, we get attacked by skeletons.

And after we discover the fake wall we can finally go forward!

Yes, here.

 

[Reinhardt]

Although this is a dwarven city, the furniture is human sized and you can barely see the innkeeper behind the bar.

If you're wondering why the table is so large, it's because the game adjusts the view depending on the height of the party leader and since Rainhardt is a dwarf with the lowest possible height, we get her view of the human world.

 

[Eriador]

They actually fixed those Finsterkoppen bars and made dwarven versions of the taverns.

 

[Sacred82]

holy crap but those dungeon graphics are jarring and crappy. No TDE feel whatsoever.

YES!

 

[Darth Roxor]

Although this is a dwarven city, the furniture is human sized and you can barely see the innkeeper behind the bar.

If you're wondering why the table is so large, it's because the game adjusts the view depending on the height of the party leader and since Rainhardt is a dwarf with the lowest possible height, we get her view of the human world.

 

[Eriador]

Part 51: TOTN 7 - Almost There!

Spoiler

This thing is a teleporter. There's like 3 of them around here and they transport us between rooms on this floor. Not that they are actually neccessary, since you can get around just fine without them, it's just that a lot of passages here are hidden by illusory and sliding walls.

There's lot's of random encounters on this floor, but none of them are mandatory to win, so we can just flee if needed.

If we did flee from a fight we needed to win, all we would have to do is return to that place which triggers it and we can try again. Thankfully, the filler fights won't trigger again if you manage to flee.

This is the only important room in this area. It features a couple of unimportant cultist fights and a riddle we need to solve.

All of these screenshots are from the same battle.

Well, I didn't find that riddle at first, so I've decided to explore further.

Behind this door, we got ambushed by skeletons.

And they got reinforcements...

I've retried this battle a couple times, but in the end, I've decided to just flee. We did that a lot from this point on.

I've turned animation speed to 4x (the highest) at this point, since those zombies were painfully slow. It doesn't help that I had to remember which enemies were banned and which weren't, since there's no status indicator or even an enduring "web" effect.

This is some kind of library area. There's nothing here, except some optional cultist fights and some fluff text.

At first I thought we've triggered a battle with no enemies.

But turns out, it was just a mage under an invisibility spell. There was ever only 1 of him, so we didn't have to use Exposami.

This is about the only "interesting" thing here.

Unless you really love undead and cultists.

Or evil druids that cast Mad Dance. Everyone with the skull icon is affected by Mad Dance and thus incapacitated.

There's multiple of these pillars in this room and you have to read every one of them, otherwise the correct answer doesn't even show up.

The last answer is the correct one, if you didn't read all the text from those pillars, only the first 4 show up and they are incorrect.

This opens a hidden area to the north.

Yay, dragon! This is gonna be fun.

How the hell does he know that. Is this common knowledge for Hunters in Aventuria? Or is it because he read the boss tactics on Wowpedia? No PHAT LEWT for you here, I'm afraid.

We need this to open a door out of this area. We give that helmet to Boreale.

Dammit Azira, don't be such a pussy! The first option sucks, since we want to conserve Life Energy, we don't have a meekness spell and we need Azira to ban people, so leaving her behind is not an option.

Maybe Grimgravy can convince her, after all, he too knows a thing or two about fear, because of his serious Claustrophobia and Ghoul phobia.

Or not.

Well, it seems like we can just try again right away, so it doesn't matter that much.

Now that we have the dragon claw, these sliding doors open.

Strangely appropriate...

First, we have to get through some more cultists with reinforcements.

Now, this door leads to the final boss! Let's enter-

Know what...

Let's just flee...

Now that we've fled from those cultists guarding the door, we can finally enter the door and face the final boss!

 

[RK47]

Riddle text box popping from the statue's crotch.

 

[Eriador]

Riddle text box popping from the statue's crotch.

Ok, nvm, Helly was leading us, so... yeah, funny :D

 

[Darth Roxor]

There's lot's of random encounters on this floor, but none of them are mandatory to win, so we can just flee if needed.

I've retried this battle a couple times, but in the end, I've decided to just flee.

Let's just flee...

The classic endgame dungeon marathon :russiastronk:

 

[Eriador]

Part 52: TOTN 8 - FULMINICTUS THE DRAGON!

Spoiler

Fine then, time to face him!

...we are most likely gonna die in this state.

You know, maybe they could give some kind of indication as to which line is spoken by the EHVUL guy and which one by the dragon, like in that wizard tower.

This is Arkandor, the final boss. I've looked at the last battle in the original Star Trail and I think he actually looked better there.

He can attack in melee with his claws, but he mostly just spams Ignifaxius, which I guess symbolizes his dragon breath.

The Ignifaxius is random as always. Sometimes, it barely does any damage, other times it does a ton.

He is also immune to Chain and Manacle and other spells like that, which is a good thing I guess...

He is also immune to fire.

Only Morkar could equip this thing and he sucks with spears.

I don't know how much AE he actually has, but it's enough to spam this. We also have trouble hitting him and if we actually hit him, he has 8 damage reduction, so often we do barely any damage.

After multiple tries, I've tried to reacharge Azira's and Grimgravy's Astral energy to full, so they could spam Fulminictus, but in the meantime Reinhardt and Helly starved to death, because Morkar got some crappy rolls on Treat Wounds . And it turns out that my memory was faulty, Grimgravy actually survived in spite of the Traumatic Fever.

Well, let's try it like this. I gave Boreale Reinhardt's axe, so he doesn't have to fight barehanded.

Fulminictus does work much better then melee attacks.

Boreale has high resistance to magic, but even that doesn't matter much if he rolls high enough to get 40 damage Ignifaxius.

And Arkandor himself has high damage resistance. He also counts as a demon, so everyone has to pass a Courage check each round to act.

The battle goes on and on and on.

Finally, Morkar manages to hit the dragon with the dragon slaying spear.

Some "power".

Fulminictus is actually way better dragonslaying method then that Dragon Slayer spear, but Grimgravy and Azira lack the combined AE pool to kill him.

I guess it could've been because of our poor condition after these endless cultist waves, but they are precisely the reason why I no longer have patience for this.

We will use our newly aquired wealth to send everyone but Boreale to the nearest magical academy to master the secrets of Fulminictus.

After years spent mastering the arcane and Fulminictus in particular, everyone rejoins Boreale and prepares to face the dragon.

Sadly, we can't just Fulminictus the EHVUL guy right now.

First, I try this spell to make Boreale tank the dragon.

Sadly, it seems that the dragon's Ignifaxius doesn't actually count as a spell. That fire resistance spell might have worked better, but screw this.

Let's just restart and spam Fulminictus!

FULMINICTUS THUNDER WEDGE! HIT AND KILL LIKE AN ARROW!

FULMINICTUS!

Boreale will tank, while everyone else provides Mage DPS.

Yeah, let's FULMINICTUS this dragon to oblivion!

Ok, it seems that Boreale doesn't make for a very good tank. Skeletons are far superior.

And Helly takes the final Fulminictus!

Jesus, it took almost all of our AE to kill this dragon.

 

[RK47]

Horrible.

 

[Eriador]

Part 53: THE END!

Spoiler

Bullshit, the dragon is dead, he even had his own dying animation and everything, even though it's hard to see it, since that victory screen blocks it.

So no, he is totally dead!

Yay, we have the magical D20 back! Now, will some GMPC show up and steal it from us YET AGAIN?

This door you can see leads back to the surface. It opened once we've defeated that dragon.

But first, we have to make sure Boreale and Reinhardt survive.

This is the map of the whole dungeon, map zoomed all the way out. It's a pretty big place. I didn't explore everywhere, but it should be the majority.

As soon as we step outside, Elsurion Starlight from the very beginning suddenly shows up to rescue us! Yay?

What, no cutscene or anything? LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME!

After I click next, we get teleported to Kvirasim.

Well, this is the end, I guess.

If I finish this I want a damn medal...

So, where's my damn medal?

 

[Darth Roxor]

With all the "in the following days" in the outro, I totally expected it to end with "[ALL_NAMES] IS PARCHED! DO SOMETHING!"

for great perseverance

 

[Eriador]

With all the "in the following days" in the outro, I totally expected it to end with "[ALL_NAMES] IS PARCHED! DO SOMETHING!"

for great perseverance

More likely, someone would get Dullskull and then Blue Cough...

 

[RK47]

Wow...that's such a shit reward for doin all that.
Pop ups
Pop ups
More pop ups.

 

[Eriador]

Wow...that's such a shit reward for doin all that.
Pop ups
Pop ups
More pop ups.

We didn't even get any reward for the main quest. Those elves are cheapskates.

 

[Reinhardt]

Only four reinhardts died. Incline, i guess.