The journey begins (original intro can be found
here):
Thorwal, City of the Free. One of the oldest settlements in all of Arkania. Populated with indomitable warriors and seafarers, rich in treasures from innumerable forays.
The orcs, furred hunters and warriors, always on the lookout for new hunting grounds. For centuries now, they have been the scourge of the settled north…
It is the year 15. This is the story of a sword. A sword lost for a hundred years, and yet it may determine the course of the future…
Many years ago, the Thorwalians pillaged the hade slave trader towns of the south. Their captain was Hetman Hyggelik, feared all along the civilized coastlines…
Loaded with treasure, the dragon ships returned home – all except Hyggelik’s. He went straight to the Cyclops Islands, to have a sword forged he was bound to need on his next trip…
That next journey led Hyggelik to the Orcish Lands, the only area of Arkania from where no one had ever returned to draw a map…
Neither would he… In a night of terror, the orcs attacked his camp and massacred them all…
And so, Hyggelik was laid to rest in a nameless place somewhere on the Orcish Steppes, buried by the last of his companions, none of which reached Thorwal with their mind intact…
But all that is history now. Only the present counts, a present where thousands of orcs are gathering on the steppes to bring death and destruction to the humans of Arkania.
But this time, for once, they are not feuding amongst themselves, they are united under a great chief pursuing no less than the utter conquest of Thorwal…
You do not know any of this, when your ship reaches Thorwal harbour. You are dreaming of adventure, of the big city, of hearing your names proclaimed by the skalds and bards on all corners of the world…
We start in a temple of all places. Here you can save without limits (otherwise it’ll cost you some EP. Not a big amount but it’s still a great mental barrier) and spend tons of cash in the small hopes that a deity will take pity on you. We on the other hand know what to do with our money. To the pub!
Two steps later…
Another two steps later…
I can already tell that this game and I are going to become the best of friends.
Seriously, I just want a beer
We are finally able to cross the street.
There is only one logical approach to deal with the fact that we just lost about 80% of our budget.
Main quest heading our way.
Since we presented ourselves as quiet likeable fellows, rumours reach us fairly easily.
Unfortunately however, they don't get any more useful. We decide to take our leave.
It’s high time to check for our map.
Quick tutorial: blue=inns&pubs, grey=stores, purple=healers, dark green= smiths, orange=temples, brown=huts although you usually don’t want to bother with those.
Holga is more in need of an inn than anything and more random events are bound to happen.
The orcs actually pose a real threat and, contrary to next-gen expectations, won’t wait for any special trigger before they start their invasion in about two years time which would mean instant game over for us.
Never understood the cheese toast bit to be honest.
Inns aren’t just a great place to cure a hangover but also a good opportunity for Murrow to bump up his wand level to a solid 3. His wand now glows in the dark and turns into a rope if such is needed. How come I can’t write this down without thinking of sexual innuendo? Anyways, time to gear up.
Fascinating.
Our treasury allows the acquisition of two helmets and 99 arrows (since toasboy can’t carry them all or anything at all for that matter, I thereby promote Murrow to arrow carrier first class). That obviously won’t get us very far so we ask around for some well paid jobs.
The money combined with Bee's fair haggling skills is barely enough to get some half-way decent armour. Further inspections reveal a hidden, yet important feature of Thorwal: the Academy of Magic.
It’s the only place where you can get curses removed. We might need that service later on.
Our first dungeon, ladies and gentleman. It’s a good place for beginners since it’s right in town so you don’t have to go far to the next shopkeeper to sell loot or inns if something goes sour. There are two or three bandits lingering around but they aren’t much of a threat at the start.
Our first chest which contains many mana potions for Murrow. Although you don’t need to identify potions, they all look alike which makes the progress of organising them rather tedious.
Some healthy advice: never anger a god in RoA. Otherwise chances are high that very unpleasant things will happen to you.
Our first door to open. I’m glad that the option to just bash the thing finally makes a comeback after all this time.
There is nothing of interest in that room. Further down the hallway however…
We escape through a fake wall and unwittingly jump out of the frying pan into the fire.
This is the toughest battle so far. Two goons start to surround poor little toastboy, who tries the calm spell, Bambaladam, to get them off of his back.
Further away from that scene are Bee and Murrow, who have two other attackers to deal with. Murrow casts the fear spell, Horriphobus, but that doesn’t work too well either.
It’s Korenzel’s turn. Now you’re going to dance, suga!
This goes on for a while until I decide to make reboot since going back to the inn to get all those wasted MP back would suck up too many precious hours.
This time we play it smart. A fight in RoA can be rather long lasting since everyone gets quiet a lot of HP and an attack has about four chances to go wrong on every try. What helps here, especially at the start and when ranged weapons are involved, is to draw as many opponents as possible to your best fighters, who can then use the defensive stance and turtle in, while you shoot arrows and bolts into their backs. Still, for the sake of science, I let Murrow cast Horriphobus until he runs out of mana but the result never changes. Either those bandits have an incredibly high magic resistance or Murrow just broke pretty much every rule of probability.
Toastboy in the meantime goes into a respectful distance while Holga starts to claim everyone’s attention.
First evil doer to cave in and panic under the constant barrage of arrows:
I put too much confidence into Bee’s combat abilities and she gets roughed up pretty badly. Korenzel jumps to her aid but his dagger breaks and he loses more than half of his HP on fumbled fist attacks alone so I rather put him on guard instead.
We are victorious in the end despite those minor setbacks and mostly due to toastboy’s steady aim with his bow. Here’s the situation of the party right after the battle:
Healing magic and skills aren’t enough to fix that. We still need to return to an inn for some healing :/
Yeah, that won’t help them much anymore. At least this first trip leaves us with enough resources to buy everyone the best equipment there is and Murrow uses his spare time to upgrade his wand one more time, allowing him to cast all his spells for two MP less.
The bandits were guarding the way further down into the dungeon. There is another supply room with two chests full of weapons, which we carry out and sell for quiet a sum, a hole leading to the beach and which is apparently intended for smuggling activities, and another locked door with a second big fight behind it.
Maybe a different mindset (i.e. spells) will help here.
We are starting out good. That’s one problem less to worry about for the next few turns.
Of course, Murrow, who has less chance to actually succeed than toastboy, manages to cast Bambaladam on his first attempt.
toastboy doesn’t get much time to complain however as there are again two bandits closing in on him.
Since toastboy can’t parry with his bow and is lacking a melee weapon as it would have been too heavy, his HPs are soon in the red. This calls for some desperate measures and Murrow starts swinging his big wand at those fiends. This goes surprisingly well.
The blind effect wears off and the bandit is able to hit Korenzel quiet painfully. Holga takes that bastard on. toastboy goes to help golgepapaz as his struggle has reached a standstill. The calmed bandit just stands around like a plant.
Last shot before flawless victory (after our current standards that is):
There is a inconspicuous that catches our interest.
Holga tries to pick the lock but the lock pick breaks and all the other remaining doors are locked as well, forcing us to resurface yet again. Might as well collect the reward while we’re at it.
This time we try the other doors first.
I make the tactical mistake of grabbing anything that isn’t nailed to the floor without considering that there may be random encounters after those messages. Facing one single bandit gets all the dramatic when everyone is left with only one AP and the bastard goes after your mage but I’ll skip this experience. Murrow is able to open the sinister door with a spell and we continue our descent.
It can happen that everyone in the party temporally loses one point of courage although I’m not sure why. The hallway soon ends in a dead end as the ceiling is collapsed with no way through. We search the side rooms for loot.
The game says that we will require a rope for climbing down safely but neither Murrow’s wand nor the rope from a shop, after we’ve gone through the pain of walking all up and down again, does suffice. For once we’re lucky and everyone reaches the bottom even without the extra help.
We soon have our first run in with the undead. Their HP are low compared to the bandits we faced before and they go down fairly easily.
Some events during our search:
Walking through the water isn’t such a dandy idea.
Ok, we’re out of here.
The guy is friendly enough to let us enter the dungeon from his cellar, saving us a lot of legwork. We soon find some stairs leading back up to the hall that was previously blocked by the cave-in.
You could have mentioned that unavoidable trap though.
Otherwise there is nothing but rotten bones lying around minus the animated ones.
There is only one last part in the level below that we haven’t explored yet.
Someone had to take the fall, I guess.
More skeletons, a few items lying around and not much of interest. Onwards to the next room.
Alright, a real demon! If I remember correctly, these can only be harmed by magical means so we have to ram up the special effects for this one.
Go team magic!
The demon provides over 500 exp and brings everyone close to a level up. Still no good loot in sight thought so we press on.
I was honestly hoping for some treasure room or something but at least I get a chance to make some screenshots of the undead critters before I forget it again.
That was the last room and even an intensive search for more hidden secrets afterwards doesn’t reveal anything of note. We still got a big pile of ducats out of this adventure although I wonder if the reward might have been greater if we would have slain the demon before going back to Master Dramosch.
We already wasted a month in Thorwal at this point, so there is no reason to delay our departure any further.
There are often instances in RoA1 where you can either say the right or the wrong thing. Turns out I say the wrong thing here
It's one of those wild goose chases then.
I predict that the journey will be long and full of hardship but that is of no importance. The shit is on now!
Well, you know what I mean.