Completed Let's play Dark Heart of Uukrul! -- Dead and done!

[Crooked Bee]

4: Of Wolves, Skeletons, and Secret Doors

Okay, so our goal in this update is to make it from the first sanctuary, URTAS, to the second one, URLASAR. This ain't too complex or long a crawl since we're still in the introductory part of the game, so let me show you how easily it can be done.

Stepping out of the eastern exit of the URTAS sanctuary, our glorious party of low-level adventurers find themselves in a room with many doors (tm):

Two doors to the east, two to the north, and two to the south. In fact this ain't many compared to the number of doors per room we'll get later in the game. One step further to the east, we trigger a text event:

And Kalos gets to play a knowledgeable one for a change. Up til now, that has been spekkio's prerogative.
We decide to explore the closest of the south doors first:

Growls and grunts? Who do you think is there?

Woof woof!

So this is just a couple of doggies. I doubt two doggies could be much trouble to a party of four.
After the movement phase, spekkio casts AMRAS, the basic fire spell we already know from the last update:

Last time I forgot to post the description of the Arkana of Fire found in the manual, so here it is:

These Spells are weapons, to strike those who stand against you. They are weapons of heat and flame, which can burn deep wounds and cause great damage. The Spells of the First Arkana concentrate heat upon their targets, and will not touch large numbers of foes. Only those creatures born of fire will be resistant to the effects of these Spells.

AMRAS deals good damage to the dawg but doesn't manage to kill it, alas:

Lord Rocket swings his weapon, inflicting 17 points of damage on the other dog. Kalos tries to invoke Ufthu...

...but, just the way it was in the previous update, the warrior god can't be arsed to answer. Bee is more successful -- that is, she succeeds in landing a hefty critical:

After that, Rocket one-hit kills the remaining beastie, and we gain some exp:

And no treasure.

But, truth be told, the battle really was easy.
In the room we've now entered, there's another door to the south, which we also enter:

Uhm, dear readers, this is the first rotating plate we've met. There'll be plenty of them down the road. Here's an automap of the entrance to this room:

("T" is the teleporter, and the, uhm, penis sign stands for the sanctuary.)
Why can't we map past here, you ask? Well, because this is a puzzle area with rotating plates, obviously. Once we've stepped on such a plate it rotates, leaving us clueless as to which direction we're really facing. Also, this is but a starting area, that's why we're told that we've stepped onto a rotating plate; later, we won't get this message, which will leading to a lot of WTF? and frustration.
Luckily, we have a compass with us that we can consult by a heading check:

North is where we've come from, to the east is a dead end, so we go south. Turning around the corner, we reach another intersection with a rotating plate:

We've come from the south but now are facing west, which is the only way to explore this room further. There seems to be nothing in that part of the room, but we tend to use the "Search walls" option quite often and so discover a loose section of the wall:

spekkio again passes a perception check.
We're given three options; let's start by examining the wall:

Now we know the way to, uhm, properly handle this wall, and can acess the hidden passage it conceals:

There is but a scroll there:

We let spekkio have it, as he's our party magician.
The scroll is yet unidentified, of course:

And we go back to the room from which we started, the one right to the east of the URTAS sanctuary:

Let's enter the door we're directly facing:

So it takes a joint effort of Bee and Rocket to pry it open, and inside is only one copper coin!?

This game's trolling us! In that, it's a truly Codexian game.
Shall we now enter the second door to the north? Because, well, why not.

Hmm, looks like we've wandered into...

...a bat lair!!

Oh-kay. We try to position spekkio and Kalos as far behind LR and Bee as we can; this is what comes out of it:

Well, it could be worse I guess.
Lord Rocket kills the bat next to him, and then Bee does the same thing. Another bat tries to give spekkio a good biting...

...but misses. spekkio, for his part, doesn't:

So even a mage can sometimes kill things melee, huh? Good to know.
Oh, and Ufthu once again fails to answer Kalos' prayer. :/ All in all, this battle is easy, and we emerge from it almost unscathed:

Experience scales to the degree in which a character contributed to the victory, which only makes sense.
No treasure. Again. I am disappoint. :/
Our next encounter is with some rats, but we slay them easily, obtaining some experience points. Not many:

In the northeast passage, we come across a secret door:

Okay, I guess Kalos wants us to know he's no less perceptive than spekkio.

Looking for a device yields no result:

So we ask Lord Rocket to barge into the door:

And then again:

Inside the secret room, we find an ointment:

There's another door to the south:

("B" is where we found a single copper coin, "A" is where we encountered the bats.)
Going through two more doors, we find a small sum of money on the ground. I forgot to take a screenshot of that glorious moment, so here's an automap instead:

"D" is where the money was.
Now we can exit the secret area and explore the northeastern passage further:

Our next encounter is with rats AND bats. How ... varied.

We deal with the fuckers, no probs. spekkio, having 10 psychic points left, casts AMRAS twice, and Kalos, in a fashion we're already getting used to, fails to invoke Ufthu's aid. So it's all up to Lord Rocket again.

It looks like we've explored the northwestern passage:

And so we're back in the room with six doors.
Now we need to choose between the two remaining doors in the southeast, the eastern-ish one...

...and the southern-ish one:

Intrigued by the sound of footsteps, we enter the latter one:

Ah, rats!
This time, however, this ain't just rats. The rats are accompanied by a new type of enemy -- undeady skeletons! So the footsteps were those of the skeletons, I gather.

In the above screenshot, Kalos has already managed to damage a skeleton using his "Turn undead" ability. Finally Kalos is to some extent helpful in combat. Bee attacks the same skeleton...

...and manages to stun it. Good. Lord Rocket kills a rat. spekkio tries to hit one of the two remaining rats but misses. Kalos chooses to turn undead again, and the already wounded skeleton is destroyed.


Lord Rocket kills the second skeleton in one hit, and no challenge remains.

Nice, yay.
In the room we now enter, there's a further door to the east:

We enter it and...

I hope we'll be able to find another way out. To do that, we have to walk through a couple more doors; luckily, this area can be mapped so it's actually easy not to get lost:

(I hope you're able to distinguish simple walls from walls with doors in the above screenshot, o my perceptive readers.)

Along the way, we find a nice item -- a sword:

We trust Bee to pick it up:

Examining our party, we see that we've got 322 coins and 291 units of food left:

Let's brave the last remaining door:

An inscription is ahead:

It's in gibberish, but we succeed in translating it with spekkio's NGOS spell:

We face some stairs:

We climb them, then enter another door and stumble into another inscription:

Translating...

Oooh, scary. And evil. :twisted:
Next door hides something truly awful:

Shall we disregard Kalos' warning and proceed? But of course we shall!

Ouch!

A single wolf? So this is ... a boss battle!



Lord Rocket starts the fun:

The wolf isn't too bad either, though:

The fucker stuns our poor Rockety.
spekkio patches LR up by casting SHUM twice:

SHUM is the only iron spell in the Arkana of Healing.

No traveler could endure the trials of venturing forth without Healing. The Spells of the Fourth Arkana are devoted to these subtle and cunning arts. These are the true test of your skill, for the magic is the product of the caster's art alone. Know that no Spell is powerful enough to breathe life into the lips of one who has died: only the High Priests of the White Order can restore life where it has ceased to exist.

1 SHUM The Simplest Salve

This is the simplest and least draining of all the Healing Spells. On casting the Spell, a magic salve will form over one wound of one person and that wound will be closed.

One turn later Kalos is no longer stunned:

Bee hits the wolf for 14 hp. And then Lord Rocket seals the deal:

Not particularly impressive for a boss encounter.

There's even no treasure to loot. Meh.
In a corner of the room we're currently in...

...we find a small treasure:

Again, the character who discovers the money isn't the one to take it.
In a small room to the southwest...

...we find a dagger:

Bee picks it up.
It's time to be moving further east.

WHEN SUDDENLY

OH NOES A GHOST

Find the frozen hearts? What the hell could that mean?

And the vision indeed fades:

Woof woof!

Meh, it's just another random two-dog encounter. Nothing of importance. (Except that Kalos keeps miserably failing at doing his prayers.)
of priests.

And another set of stairs ahead of us:

And then, down the passage...

...we find the next sanctuary!

I hate this shit.

Since this is the first time we enter this sanctuary, our health is fully restored. Nice. We save the game and check just how many more experience points we need to progress to the next level:

Will we be able to make it to level 2 in the next update? And will Kalos be finally able to successfully invoke a prayer? It is a mystery!

 

[Kz3r0]

The Central Committee of Unity is pleased Comrade 11623.

~9531

 

[Crooked Bee]

We deem you worthy, number 9531.

~Uukrul

 

[Fowyr]

Will we able to make it to level 2 in the next update? And will Kalos be finally able to successfully invoke a prayer?

I hope we shall solve this mystery.

 

[Cenobyte]

Excellent updates Comrade No. 11623

The extremely cramped first person exploration window is a rather suboptimal though, the Wizardry system with the much larger window is overall much more friendly to the eye.
Do you always get a hint for secret doors, btw? Or does this stop after the starting areas?

Combat seems quite interesting, even though I kinda like the standard blob combat fare

 

[Crooked Bee]

, bro 11658.

Nope, you almost never get hints for secret doors. In fact, the northeastern secret door in this update wasn't hinted at; I discovered it through my obsessive searching of walls using the "Search walls" command -- which not only eats up food, but also attracts random encounters, so go figure. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna miss out on many secret doors in my playthrough. This game is quite hardcore in this regard as well.

Combat seems quite interesting, even though I kinda like the standard blob combat fare

I also like blob combat.
But this game's combat is nice, yes, in fact we haven't really witnessed its variety yet -- simply because this is still the very beginning of the game. It's also quite rage-inducing: you constantly miss or fail to invoke spells, etc.

 

[spekkio]

I bet my ass I could solo this shit. I mean lets face it, other party memebers' skils pale in comparison to my greatness...

That is all from #11282.

 

[Yeesh]

There's no I in 'team', 11282.

 

[spekkio]

 

[Crooked Bee]

I bet my ass I could solo this shit.

No. Not even you, o majestic #11282.

Also,

There's no I in 'team', 11282.

This.

 

[Crooked Bee]

5: Shopping and Leveling-up

Previously on this LP, we defeated some dogs, wolves, and skeletons, and reached the URLASAR sanctuary.

Our goal in this update is to make it to level two. So let's get started.
We leave the sanctuary by taking the eastern exit -- the one leading deeper into Eriosthe.

Something goes awry, however:

spekkio, you careless bastard!

Now Uukrul knows we're here.

Moving further...

...we're confronted by a highly suspicious stranger. It's all thanks to you, spek-kun.

Well, the most interesting option is definitely number two. Shall we engage in some cloaked figure diplomacy?

Okay, no diplomacy then.

I forgot to tell you, readers, that at the start of each battle, our party is positioned randomly. This time we get a very good starting disposition, with our fighters being in the front row, and spekkio and Kalos behing them.

Kalos tries invoking DROM, a fighting power-increasing prayer to Ufthu.

DROM Strength to the Sword Arm

Ufthu, Soldier of Misfortune,
Hear your humble Priest,
Send your strength to those on earth,
Who bear steel against the dark foes.

Have I told you that the exact purpose of a prayer isn't directly stated in the manual, and you have to make it out yourself? This game is too hardcore; redding is teh hard.

But back to the battle at hand. Of course, Kalos fails: Ufthu does not answer. spekkio casts AMRAS and damages Cloaked Figure a little. The foe strikes Lord Rocket for 6 damage, who strikes CF in return.
Next turn Kalos tries to invoke SIRDHE, a prayer to Golthur.

Golthur, Oldest of the Gods, Rulemaster, Keeper of Souls, Lamp of the Heavens, Carrier of Strength, Maker of the Many Little Candles, is a treacherous master. Golthur, the Spider of Time, lies in wait for those whose souls he can steal. Golthur, the Trapper, has given his Priests these Prayers; you who pray to him, tend your words, that your dark husbandry will not call forth your corruption. Walk the words well, for if you fall he will ensnare you and draw your soul through your nostrils. That is his due for heeding your command.

The Spider of Time? I bet Black Cat will like this god.

SIRDHE Patterns of Healing

Golthur of the Labyrinth, we ask your indulgence,
We who are weakened call you,
Send your strength to our weaned limbs,
And we will fight for your glory.

So SIRDHE is a healing prayer. It is basic and not particularly powerful. Actually, it heals all the party members at once if successfully invoked, but I didn't yet know that at the moment. Anyway, Lord Rocket's HP goes up...

...meaning that Kalos has finally succeeded. For the first time!


There is in fact a blinking symbol of Golthur that appears once you've successfully invoked a prayer to him, but, being blinking, it wasn't captured by the above screenshot.
Anyway, congratulations, Kalos.
After a couple more turns, the cloaked figure -- the Hooded Spy -- is at the brink of death:

Kalos tries invoking SIRDHE again, but fails. Lord Rocket strikes at the spy again:

Good, but not good enough.
The spy starts moving away from our party...

...and runs away!

Going further down the corridor, we find stairs leading down:

We descend and come across an inscription:

It's good to know that the market area is to the left (east), but we decide to go west for now.

We find ourselves in a large hall.

Exploring it, we find some money:

Bee takes it, yay.

Let's enter the door to the north now.

This doesn't bode well.

Uh-oh.

Four orcs and a wolf appear!
Our starting position is not quite good. Lord Rocket is blocked in the corner, and Kalos is in the front line -- a role not really suited to a priest's style. Still, we can't switch places or move around, being blocked by two orcs. Oh well. We'll have to manage somehow.

spekkio tries to cast AMRAS on one of the orcs blocking us...

...but fails miserably. of spekkio.
Bee strikes the adjacent orc for 13 hp, he responds by inficting 6 points of damage. Kalos has to go melee, given the failure his prayer-invoking ability is:

Not much. :/
The orc hits Kalos for 7 hp as well.
During the next turn, the AI goes stupid -- one of the orcs blocking us moves away, making place for a bit of repositioning:

But I failed at repositioning -- just because I like fucking things up -- and now spekkio is exposed to an orc's attacks. It doesn't take long for things to go bad:

Uh-oh. Hold on, Mirror-kun, please do hold on!
spekkio casts SHUM, the basic healing spell, on himself:

Okay, his HP is in the green again.
Repositioning goes much better next turn:

Now Bee and Rocket should take all the damage upon themselves. Good.
During the next few turns, Kalos tries to invoke SIRDHE thrice but fails ... thrice. spekkio has to waste his psychic points casting SHUM on Lord Rocket and Bee. Another orc is revealed as Blue Orc, a stronger version of the regular Brown Orc:

of Bee. Finally Lord Rocket finishes the Blue Orc off.
Then Kalos tries to call an elemental:

But no elemental spirit appears.
It turn out that another orc is a Blue Orc as well, and he hits Rocket hard:

spekkio casts SHUM again:

SHUM's efficiency seems to be random; sometimes many hit points get restored, sometimes only a few. The same goes for all spells in this game.
spekkio ain't got many psychic points left, so we better finish this shit quickly.
Then I finally realize there's an ointment in Lord Rocket's inventory:

His HP metre is restored to the full. Phew.
Then Bee stuns the wolf:

Good going, Bee.
And a blue orc runs away.

Got scared, feller?
Lord Rocket continues to take all the damage he can. But just when, after several more turns -- my, this battle is looooooooooooooooooooong -- the remaining orc's HP gets really low, the orc runs away. Now only the wolf is left. First Lord Rocket strikes the beast for 16 points, then Kalos, for 6, and finally Bee kills the wolf.

We get shitloads of experience, some money, and a dagger. Nice.
And we can finally enter the northern door:

There's a passage with one more door to the north here. To the west is a dead end, but it's worth exploring nevertheless.

We find some kind of gem. Let's brave the northern door now.

The room's empty, but there's one further door to the southwest.

And...

Oh no, not these fuckers again.

Well, at least we got lucky with our starting position.
Nothing particularly new in this battle, except that spekkio's psychic points are really fucking low. Oh, and the enemies are revealed as being one Blue Orc and four Brown Orcs. Apart from that, it's just an exchange of melee attacks with spekkio casting SHUM, our HP going down, and Kalos failing to invoke SIRDHE.

Lord Rocket goes critical:

Now THAT's what I call close.
Luckily, Bee and spekkio are there to help:

Ointment also helps. Eventually, we stand victorious.

A mace for loot is nice, yay. We let Lord Rocket pick it up.
Now that we've got no psychic or virtue points left, we'd better head back to the sanctuary. Once we enter it, a message tells us that Lord Rocket and Bee advance to level 2:

Yep, even if you have enough exp to make it to the next level, leveling-up is only possible at the sanctuaries. Whoever levels-up, gets his or her HP fully restored.

We see that Kalos and spekkio aren't far from level 2 either.
Let's take a look Rocket's and Bee's profile to determine if their stats have changed:

Comparing this to the starting profile, we see that Bee's Strength has gone from 10 up to 11, and her Dexterity, from 11 to 12.

Lord Rocket's Strength, Intelligence, and Vitality have all gone up by one point.


I don't remember if I chose to rest at the sanctuary, but anyway: we return to the meeting hall and storage area -- and enter the next door:

And then the door to the west:

Above? Well, not like we can access it now.
Nothing in this particular room though.

Back in the corridor, we go north, then turn around the corner and climb some stairs.

(Facing south now.)
A door? Let's enter it, then.

Exploring further...

...we run into another encounter!

Get your dirty little hands off me, you green pervert!

Small humanoids?
That's goblins, actually.

Lord Rocket kills the first one, and Kalos manages to successfully invoke SIRDHE for the second time:

The second goblin runs away.

We get a bit of experience and 76 coins -- and make it to the meeting room:

Yep, it's totally empty, but there's a further door to the east.

Inside it, we find an inscription:

spekkio manages to partially translate it by casting NGOS:

"Next meeting postponed until further notice". Oh-kay.
Oh, there's a secret door here:

spekkio again proves his usefulness.

Looking for a device yields no result.
It's time for Lord Rocket to act, then!

Nothing but a green gem inside:

Oh well, I believe we've fully explored this not particularly large meeting room.

Back to the corridor now.

It apparently leads to a storage area.

Some goo-ey monster appears!

Looks funny.

The "Shapeless Mass" turns out to be...

...an "Amorphous Glob"!
We deal with it quickly -- and continue exploring the area.

Nothing of interest so far.
A storeroom is here.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

Meh, just an empty area.
It's time to head back to where we started from!

Let's visit the marketplace this time.

Kewl.

We've got 559 coins, by the way.

We surely will.
First, however, we find ourselves in the Forge:

We have one broken weapon in fact -- a Hand axe. It got broken in one of the encounters, I don't remember which one.

Yep.

The next door is Sildar's Supply Shop:

Let's buy some food, shall we? Because we've got little left.

Two types of food here. What's the difference between them, you ask? Well, I dunno. No, really, I haven't been able to figure that out. Maybe I'm just not smart enough. :/

Good. 233 coins left.
We sell one of our daggers -- we don't need that many -- and something else that I didn't take a screenshot of:

Now let's take a look at what this store has to offer.

A lot of armour pieces.

Some weapons.

Crosses for the priest -- to make his Turn undead ability more powerful.

And some consumables, potions, and trinkets.
A whole lotta things. There're no descriptions for items, however, and the manual doesn't give them either -- so we'll have to play a guessing game for the most time.

We sell two more daggers, and buy Greaves...

...and Steel boots for Lord Rocket:

Once we've equipped them, Rocket's armour stat goes up from 6 to 10:

Nice.
It turns out our short iron sword is broken as well, so we reforge it:

Here's an automap of the marketplace area:

The shop and the forge are right in the center of it. The forge is the northwestern door of the center building, and the shop, the southeastern one. Let's exit the marketplace now and move further east.
We find ourselves in a corridor with two inscriptions:

Now that is ... confusing. :dizzy:
Is the game trolling us again?


To the north is a teleporter:

(Whenever I come across a new teleporter, I write its name down on a piece of paper, since you always have to input a teleporter's name manually -- and you don't want to forget it, trust me.)

And then we explore further north:

And stumble into a locked grate:

We don't have a key for it yet.
Another inscription tells us we're about to enter a new area:

Cool.

The temple area is down the stairs, but let's explore this floor first, okay?

We find a cache with money, yay!

Going further...

...we get attacked by a group of not very friendly-looking swordsmen!

They look kinda too cool for "villagers".

Yeah, Kalos tries to invoke RALKOR, a prayer to Ufthu, but doesn't succeed.
Then spekkio is hit, very hard:

And Bee fails to even wound one of the armed men:

Ah yes, they turn out to be ... "merchants". WTF is this shit!?

Bee lays hands on spekkio to heal him. After a few turns spekkio kills a merchant with an AMRAS, and another merchant runs away. And then another one runs away as well! (There sure is a lot of running away in this game -- so far on enemies' part only.) Finally, the remaining merchant also flees.
We get some experience -- but more importantly, a hefty sum of money and some kind of oil:

What the fuck is the oil for?
It looks like we've explored this area to the full.

Let's descend to the temple area.

We find ourselves in a corridor with a drawing:

Jumping a bit ahead of myself, let me tell you that this is a plan of the temple area layout: F is the temple of Fsofth, God of the Spiritual Self; D is the temple of Drutho, God of the Underworld; U, the temple of Ufthu, God of War; and finally G, the temple of Golthur, God of the Physical Self. Yes, we'll have to visit every temple by foot every time we think Kalos is eligible for a better ring to a particular god. Hardcore.

The temple area is actually to the south...

...but since I didn't know that at that point, I decided to head further east down the corridor:

We descend some stairs and enter an ordinary-looking door:

A new area. All right.

A catacomb? I'm trembling with fear already!

Oops.

Two zombie thingies, yay.

Kalos tries to turn undead but fails. (No message pops up when turning undead, unfortunately, so I can't show you a "failed" text or anything.) It takes a lot of hits to bring a corpse's health down -- maybe 4 or 5, something like that:

Kalos manages to invoke SIRDHE, and I can finally show you the blinking sign of Golthur:

Cool.
The second undead corpse turns out to be easier to bring down:

Good. Let's explore the catacomb some more.

We approach some really *evil* door.

I don't really think we're ready to face whatever it is behind it, so let's head back to the upper floor.

Okay, I totally saw that coming.

Two corpses and four rats.
Bee easily kills the first rat, but two of the rats turn out to be Large Rats, who are a bit tougher than the regular ones.

Meaning it takes two hits to kill them instead of just one.
Finally all the rats are dead and we can deal with the corpses. (The corpses are slow, so we were free to deal with the rats first.) We're already experienced in undead corpse-slaying, therefore it doesn't take us long.

We try to make it back as fast as we can -- but some more enemies ambush us along the way.

Easy as pie.
Except for the fact that Lord Rocket breaks his iron sword:

Which doesn't prevent us from winning this fight.

And we exit the catacomb. Phew.
We use the teleporter to, uhm, teleport back to the URLASAR sanctuary.

Kalos and spekkio finally level-up.

Kalos' Strength and Intelligence go up by one point.

spekkio, on his part, advances in Piety and Vitality.

Next time: we'll be exploring the temples and the magic circle and braving the catacombs again, which will be our first puzzle area -- and then we'll make it to the next sanctuary.

 

[spekkio]

I'm dissatisfied with my recent performance, but still:

 

[Fowyr]

I am awaiting new rings for your party.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Do you know what's the difference between the two types of food rations, Fowyr? I keep running into those "last longer" inscriptions; is there some kind of pattern or what?

 

[Fowyr]

I think this is only joke. In many games (M&M springs to mind) you have different prices on the different quantities of food. Wholesale is cheaper and so on.

 

[Kz3r0]

Great update.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Following this LP with great interest.

 

[desocupado]

I did the math, and it's slightly more advantageous to buy the 100 units kind.

It was something like 1,26 food unit per gold against 1,22 food unit per gold.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Okay, I'm officially stupid. Those inscriptions are obviously supposed to be the adverts for two rival companies producing food rations, Thurgood Inc[orporated] and Subterranean Sports. I failed my INT check.

I did the math, and it's slightly more advantageous to buy the 100 units kind.

It was something like 1,26 food unit per gold against 1,22 food unit per gold.

Thanks, Mr. Engineering Student!

And thanks for your interest, everyone!

 

[Fowyr]

Okay, I'm officially stupid. Those inscriptions are obviously supposed to be the adverts for two rival companies producing food rations, Thurgood Inc[orporated] and Subterranean Sports. I failed my INT check.

*scratches head*
But I thought it was obvious.
DHoU have good sense of humor.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Well, I said I'm stupid. And yeah, I failed my humour check as well. :/


I just wasn't paying enough attention.

EDIT: I thought those was actual hints, not freaking "humour"! Grrrr. Brrrr. Waaaaaah.

 

[Crooked Bee]

To redeem my stupid self a bit in your eyes, o readers, I must inform you that I finally made it to the URSHAS sanctuary today. No casualties. The final corridor I had to crawl through was bloody hardcore. Which means that this LP should get at least to URSHAS. Eventually. I won't have much time for writing updates in the next few days.

 

[Kz3r0]

To redeem my stupid self a bit in your eyes, o readers, I must inform you that I finally made it to the URSHAS sanctuary today. No casualties. The final corridor I had to crawl through was bloody hardcore. Which means that this LP should get at least to URSHAS. Eventually. I won't have much time for writing updates in the next few days.

 

[lightbane]

What? The 2nd update and no deaths yet? This game is not hardcore enough, I remember playing The Dark Spire and having my entire party exterminated on the first random encounter. Still, great job as always

 

[Crooked Bee]

Your love for gruesome deaths is approved of, lightbane-kun.

To redeem my stupid self a bit in your eyes, o readers, I must inform you that I finally made it to the URSHAS sanctuary today. No casualties. The final corridor I had to crawl through was bloody hardcore. Which means that this LP should get at least to URSHAS. Eventually. I won't have much time for writing updates in the next few days.

This game is not hardcore enough

Tell that to Blackadder.
This game is pretty hardcore, it just has a very different kind of hardcoreness compared to the Dark Spire. This is just a different kind of game imho, more of a thinkity think/puzzles/traps/exploration one. Plus the difficulty gets more and more steep as one goes; in fact, the game hasn't even begun yet. Also, Dark Spire is popamole as it allows saving anywhere; this game just loves rewriting your saves when something bad happens. There will be deaths, though, I promise.
Also, it is quite obvious you suck at Dark Spire. Perhaps I should do a Dark Spire LP next to show you the way it should be played?