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Dark Sun : Wake of the Ravager is underrated.

Cryomancer

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Most people here praise the first game, but the second game is often ignored. And is not only because I prefer mid/higher level. I liked much more the story, encounter design, psionics, spells, graphics, quests and ambiance. You have some memorable NPC's on the Wake of the Ravager like Matthias, more investigation, to the point that I had to use the cluebook a lot of times, and a extremely better encounter design which challenges far more you.

Here is a review from a 90s magazine



Matthias, the lv 18 preserver who leads the Veiled Alliance and a conversation with him
VkyfNaY.png

And when the journos on the video above said that the game is harder than the first one, they aren't lying. For example, my first death to that game was in the Tyr's Ziggurat. Where you need to fight a small army of defilers while the arena is full of dangerous traps. I was wining till my half giant gladiator failed a save VS domination against the defiler, and my party could't survive. On my second try, I beat then with no problem.

IY9iOQM.png

To even reach that ziggurrat, you need to investigate a little and find a secret passage

nLu6bEy.png

And the underdark, you need to get access to a mine, investigate the mine, and when you descend into the underdark, is a really nasty place full of powerful mindflayers and no place to rest. I sadly had to save scum to get trough the underdark. Mindflayers are not only extremely powerful but also has powerful half giant gladiator slaves. That encounter was very hard and fun.

v70LOks.png

The whole point of the game is that once the Sorcerer King is dead, the city is not freed from tyranny. In fact, maybe the sorcerer king is protecting their city from nasty outsider things. I get that most people here prefer low level, but mid level is not that unpopular according to my last poll. I suggest to give a chance to Wake of The ravager. Wake of the Ravager is not a high/epic level adventure. The level cap is 15. If you prefer low level gameplay but enjoyed BG2 : Shadows of Amn, you can enjoy Dark Sun : Wake of the Ravager, since both adventures are in about the same lv range. In fact, preservers caps at lv 15 on this game, while they caps at lv 17 on BG2:SoA.

HEre is my end game spells. I can only cast 2 lv 7 spells per rest and most of my lower tier magic is better used buffing my party members than doing anything else.

kGMhItq.png


oas5uTd.png

You can get Meteor swarm scroll? Yes, but it is a one time scroll in the entire campaign.


4aS8NYt.png


1uSGJAz.png

So, if you believe that the game will gonna be a "magecentric" game due higher level cap, I suggest to try it anyway. The game is fully playable with zero preservers in your party. If you hate any supernatural power, than it is not for you as everyone knows psionics. Even my brainlet half giant gladiator. Clerics are far more useful than preservers. I love the game so much. Is my favorite TURN BASED D&D game.

My unique critique is the bugs and that some times you have no clue about what to do. The game also could get more in depth mechanics, for eg, on TT half giant gladiators are very powerful but require a lot of food/water. On the CRPG this trade off doesn't exist. I an not saying that the first game is bad. Quite the contrary. I just prefer the second.
 
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Matalarata

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I remember playing this like, half a life ago and enjoying it immensely. It doesn't help that I was a huge Dark Sun fag back in the '90 and had a campaign running in that setting for 7+ years. Great game, the only real criticism I could leverage:

And the underdark


This is something that always bothered me, I still have the majority of my 1st and 2nd edition books, never found any reference to an "Underdark" itself. Athas is an isolated plane, you cannot access it via the normal magical travel or spelljammer shenanigans. Planar travellers on Athas are usually stranded there due to unforeseen consequences or spells gone awry.
Even if it existed a big enough section of caves to be properly called an "Underdark", you'd find a couple half starved and very confused Mind Flayers, tops. Considering how delicate and complex their life cycle is, I'd doubt an accident could strand enough of their civilization on Athas to be able to reproduce.

/autism


fake edit: could be wrong on the total lack od Underdark in Athas, it's been more than 25 years. Still, I distinctly remember bitching about it even all those years ago. In the grand scheme of things it's not a big deal and, as OP wrote, that's one of the most challenging sections of the game, so it's all gud.
 

Cryomancer

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This is something that always bothered me, I still have the majority of my 1st and 2nd edition books, never found any reference to an "Underdark" itself. Athas is an isolated plane, you cannot access it via the normal magical travel or spelljammer shenanigans. Planar travellers on Athas are usually stranded there due to unforeseen consequences or spells gone awry.
Even if it existed a big enough section of caves to be properly called an "Underdark", you'd find a couple half starved and very confused Mind Flayers, tops. Considering how delicate and complex their life cycle is, I'd doubt an accident could strand enough of their civilization on Athas to be able to reproduce.

Athas was once a blue planet. One theory is that all water is now in the underdark. It makes sense in your opinion? I believe that the Underdark exists on Athas but is a bit different, IE - no Drow, only Mindflayers

I an just asking. I know that my knowledge about underdark pales in comparison with someone who played it for 7 years.
 

Matalarata

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That once there is pretty big. We're talking thousands of years (~15K iirc), during which the planet was completely and utterly changed multiple times. There's also a prett big plot point which rotates around Racial cleansing. I remember no mention of Illithid and such, which I always interpreted as either they were never present in the first place or that they were exterminated either by one of the Scourge or any of the previous/subsequent cataclysm.

It doesn't help that on Athas everyone, his mother and her lame dog has some psionic potential. It would be very hard for a race as psionically apt as the Mind Flayers to remain hidden for long. Also Boris, dafuq do you hide an underdark full of Illithids from Psionicist 30/Defiler 30 motherfriggin' Boris?

Just bithcing though, it's not a big deal and I'm pretty sure a lot of GM's had their player encounter Illithids on Athas. It doesn't bother me too much (/autism) and, since all I wrote I wrote from memory, I could even be completely wrong and there's actually sourced material for that. Don't take my words as absolute truth, I'm just old.

edit:
One theory is that all water is now in the underdark

Sorry, didn't notice that. Mmmh, dunno, it hardly makes sense. The idea is that the primordial Halflings fucked up the ecosystem by creating sorta of a brown algae while attempting an increase in plat yeald. Said algae slowly choked life out of their oceans. The Halflings answered by focusing a powerful artifact (The Arcane Lens) on the sun, increasing heat and radiation and basically evaporating all the water, turning Athas into a green planet. Then you have the discovery of Arcane magic, defilers and all that shit which turns it into Dune 3200BC.

I suppose you could use whatever as a plot point in your campaign though, and I've definitely heard worse than that. Mebbe a portion of the primordial ocean Crystalized into permanent ice and sunk due to *GM shenanigans*. Said crystal are natural barriers towards psionic probing, Illithid fleed there ages ago and prospered on albino Penisworms or such. Pronto, here's your Athasian Underdark. Cannibal Halflings are sold separately.
 
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Cryomancer

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dafuq do you hide an underdark full of Illithids from Psionicist 30/Defiler 30 motherfriggin' Boris?

Nice question. And that is a point of the story of the wake of the ravager that I don't understand. Sorcerer Kings wanna maintain in power. If the king of Tyr got killed, why nobody decides to raze teh city till no brick is above brick, so people will learn to not mess with the sorcerer kings?
 

Matalarata

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Mainly because all SK are scared dicks, barely able to mantain their own territory. Untill Boris is present it functions as a natural balance, they need to work their asses just to provide sacrifices and to procure the necessary means for their own ascension. Remember that once the dragon transformation ritual is initiated, the aspirant is subject to incresing levels of discomfort, pain and genuine agony, untill a perfect transformation is achieved (something that eluded even Boris).

Some are pushing as hard as they can, their transformation initiated centuries ago and are mad with pain, their only hope of finding solace being completing their metamorphosis. Others are afraid to advance, preferring to live with their minor discomforts.
Once Tyr becomes a free city, it still has its own (quite powerful) army, the freed gladiators acting as elite troops, the heroes of the campaign themselves and the not-so-veiled backup of the velied alliance. The most powerful SK could probably take Tyr for their own, but at the expense of leaving their own territories deprived of defenses against the scheming of their collegues.
Additionally, the biggest prize for a SK would probably be Kalak's arcane research, the guy had something going that would make his peer salivate. With that gone, is the war really worth it?
 

Mortmal

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dafuq do you hide an underdark full of Illithids from Psionicist 30/Defiler 30 motherfriggin' Boris?

Nice question. And that is a point of the story of the wake of the ravager that I don't understand. Sorcerer Kings wanna maintain in power. If the king of Tyr got killed, why nobody decides to raze teh city till no brick is above brick, so people will learn to not mess with the sorcerer kings?

There's novels about darksun , they indeed react after tyr rebellion . Hamanu , the lion sorcerer king sent a massive army to crush riku's rebellion , but failed having to squash a rebellion in in his own city, urik. Now remember in darksun war between city states is big trouble the attrition alone make it costly to send an army, many sorcerer kings as powerful they are also have trouble to maintain their frontiers and more important have to sacrifice, willingly, many men to the dragon for him to maintain rajaat imprisoned . Tithian will take the role as pseudo sorcerer king of tyr , advised by the two severed heads, who in fact plot to free their master rajaat. The other sorcerer kings only show contempt to him but he manages to maintain some truce. Then end of the novels , rajaat free himself , banish one of the sorcerer kings,several are killed , rikus and hamanu show mutual respect , it's unlikely he or the few sorcerers left will attack tyr again.
 
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Cryomancer

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Others are afraid to advance, preferring to live with their minor discomforts.

Nice answer. I read Defilers and preservers and never understood why the draconic apotheosis is desired by defilers. I mean, they suffer with pain and madness and to increase their lifespam, there are countless of spells that can grant that without the high cost and risk involved. The preserver apotheosis is also a thing that I don't understand why someone would seek it. The book mentions that nobody fully reached the fully preserver apotheosis, but there are NPC's which at least started it?
 

Matalarata

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I mean, they suffer with pain and madness and to increase their lifespam, there are countless of spells that can grant that without the high cost and risk involved

It's not just immortality (which isn't easily achieved, if one wants to keep his mortal flesh and bone) but the promise of an ascension into something superior. It's a section of the background which is willingly left unclear. When Raajat is defeated the SKs begin their metamorphosis because it's implied that's the way to understand and fully unlock the power that he was trying to harness. They also probably do not fully imagine what they are getting themselves into and the process, once initiated, cannot be reversed, only completed (not exactly true). Also, Obsidian Orbs. A defiler worth his damn cannot resist the lure of such power...
If you don't know it, Borys has an Obsidian Orb, aquired as part of his metamorphosis ritual, which allows him to naturally abosrb arcane energy from living animals and people, not just plants. Any defiler can use an Obsidian Orb but the ones a Dragon incorporates into his body are on a wholly different scale, their range of effect is expressed in miles.

Biggest derp is how hard it is to pull it off in game, you need to be a multi-class elf or dual class human. That means reaching level 20 in one class, stopping cold while high level and starting anew with the other class at level 1. That or you're forced to play an Elf. An Athasian Elf ! A mix between some sportsy gim-bunny influencer from youtube and an ADHD ridden kid.

The book mentions that nobody fully reached the fully preserver apotheosis, but there are NPC's which at least started it?

Oronis (Keltis, scourge of the Lizards), Neras and, later on, Korgunard. Oronis is an ex-champion of Rajaat that actually finds a way to revert the dragon transformation and starts turning into an Avangion, I cannot quite remember if he gets killed in the storyline. The other two are slain before they can complete their ascension, with Korgunard being also eaten by an Halfling, in true Athasian fashion.
 
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Cryomancer

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Awesome. I wish that wake of the ravager had a continuation. But modern Woketards wizards of the coast would't even dare to touch dark sun.
 

DemonKing

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I finished the first game but never this one as it was buggy as hell when first released and patching was not an easy thing in the days before the interwebs.

Loved the Dark Sun setting having played in a tabletop game for years but one thing that annoyed me about these games was that no matter what weapon you were wielding it wasn't reflected on your avatar so it always looked like you were pounding people with your fists.
 

Cryomancer

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Only for me, Wake of The Ravager din't bugged that much? I mean, I had to reload some encounters due bugs but nothing near BUGthesda's levels.
 

SerratedBiz

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Loved the Dark Sun setting having played in a tabletop game for years but one thing that annoyed me about these games was that no matter what weapon you were wielding it wasn't reflected on your avatar so it always looked like you were pounding people with your fists.

I always saw it as a feature, it looked so badass to see your half-giant hitting ass and leg oh god its heavan.
 

Cryomancer

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I always saw it as a feature,

And the game doesn't have much resources to implement everything...

Glad to hear that despite some changes that fans of the original didn't like, it's not all downhill. Besides, it's not like we're swimming Dark Sun games...

Yep. When I mentioned Wake of the Ravager, a lot of people who din't played and somehow din't liked mentioned bugs and assumed that the game would be too "mage focused" as D&D is past lv 12 but as I've explained, the game is not near a magecentric game. As I've explained, you get very few spells and scrolls for tier 6/7 spells aren't easy to find and you can easily beat the game with zero preservers on your party.
 

mkultra

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Loved the Dark Sun setting having played in a tabletop game for years but one thing that annoyed me about these games was that no matter what weapon you were wielding it wasn't reflected on your avatar

yeah... so fun to animate additional hundreds of frames with all the different weapons varieties, for every character, and from every side. Also games were on floppy disks, that kind of work is both extremely time consuming, many hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of work + takes lots of additional space too. I'm honestly impressed by the 2D games where this is actually reflected.

Not sure how many weapons are in this game though, if it's just a few it was absolutely doable because the characters doesn't have too many animated frames.

Edit: just stating facts, maybe ed123 is butthurt 2D games are time consuming to make or that you can't come up with a decent argument... Not much anyone can do about how 2D games works, it's a pretty neutral view.
 
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Ol' Willy

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yeah... so fun to animate additional hundreds of frames with all the different weapons varieties, for every character, and from every side. Also games were on floppy disks, that kind of work is both extremely time consuming, many hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of work + takes lots of additional space too. I'm honestly impressed by the 2D games where this is actually reflected.

Not sure how many weapons are in this game though, if it's just a few it was absolutely doable because the characters doesn't have too many animated frames.
Each weapon class gets its own sprite - sword, dagger, mace, etc, there's not too much weapon types in DS anyway. Bow already has an animation.

Ever played Fallout?
 

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