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

Eriador · Aug 11, 2017

to the developers for sticking with that game and working to fix it instead of abandoning it. Maybe I'm praising them for common decency, but in this day and age, it's become scarce.

Disclaimer:

I've never played the original Star Trail and I'm not sure how far this LP will go. Consider this more like a preview of this game, to see how much it's improved since the HD edition of Blade of Destiny. We'll see if I manage to complete this, or it's gonna be abandoned at page 2.

Nvm, I actually completed this! :dance:

Now, let's make a Codexian party!

Characters (Pick your favorite!):

Warrior - The best melee fighter by far, can use two-handed swords.

Hunter - Decent character, but elves are better in every way.

Rogue - Pretty bad at actually fighting, but has useful skills like Haggle, Lockpicking and Perception. Useful, but not essential.

Thorwalian - A decent viking fighter with some nature skills, can't use two-handed weapons for some reason.

Dwarf - A badass, tanky fighter that's also good at lockpicking.

Warlock - A pretty crappy spellcaster. Has a broom that can attack on it's own if can manage to cast that specific spell. Also has some nature skills, but druids are better.

Druid - A decent spellcaster that specializes in Domination spells. He also possesses great nature skills and is the best at gathering herbs.

Magician - The number one spellcaster, they can pick their specialisation and are almost required to have.

Leaf Elf, Silvan Elf, Ice Elf - Basically the same character with minor differences, mostly in spell ranks. They are simply awesome. Good at ranged combat, can cast spells, have some magical musical instruments they can play while camping to bestow various effects (for example, they can protect you from random encounters while sleeping in the wilderness). They also have great nature skills, which comes in handy while travelling.

Juggler - Jester from the original Realms of Arkania, basically a Rogue that's good at dancing instead of stealing or lockpicking (so, basically just a troll character)

Skald - Basically a Thorwalian version of the Juggler, instead of the nature skills, they can sing and play music to earn crappy money.

So, any volunteers? We have 6 slots open!

Codex Team

Commander Boreale - Thorwalian (survived all the way through!)
Grimgravy Meekness - Silvan Elf
Morkar of Riva - Warrior
Azira the Enchantress - Sorceress
Ylleh the Evil - Hunter
Vazha the Second - Juggler

Our Fallen Companions:

Nevill Codexer - Rogue (Killed by Forest Spiders during auto combat at 100x speed, then breathed his last while the party was busy talking to Artherion)
MicoSelva Rainbow Child - Leaf Elf (Killed by Undead Dwarves from Hell)
ERYFKRAD Codexer - Warrior (Killed by Undead Dwarves from Hell)
Reinhardt the Black - Druid (Choked to death when we set something on fire underground)
Morkar the Red - Magician (Choked to death when we set something on fire underground)
Reinhardt the Jolly - Juggler (Killed by Orcish Archers, then Azira failed 20 times in a row to revive him)
Jimmious, son of Gimli - Dwarf (Died of Battlefield Fever and Swamp Fever, also from Azira's terrible medical abilities)
Azira Blood Song - Ice Elf (Died of Blue Wheeze)
Reinhardt the Witcher - Warlock (Knocked out by swamp rantzy, died of unidentified illness, probably Swamp Fever)
vazha Borealesson - Skald (Fell off a mountain)
Nevill of Codexia - Magician (Died of Blue Wheeze and thirst in Blood Pinnacle)
da-rays Codexer - Rogue (Died of starvation in the Blood Pinnacle)
Reinhardt v4.0 - female Dwarf (Starved to death in the room before the final boss while I was trying to recharge our Astral Energy)
Helly 360 No Scope - Hunter (Starved to death in the room before the final boss while I was trying to recharge our Astral Energy)

Saved From Boron's Empire:

Jimmious, son of Gimli - Dwarf (Fell down into a pit while holding the Salamander Stone, saved by reload)
Helly 360 No Scope - Hunter (Fell off a mountain, saved by a mistaken reload)

Most Embarassing Party Wipe

Everyone died due to travelling without shoes

Darth Roxor · Aug 11, 2017

UH-OH

I volunteer as Commander Boreale, a bald and bold Thorwalian.

MicoSelva · Aug 11, 2017

Sign me up as a ranger or any type of elf - someone with a bow anyway.

Nevill · Aug 11, 2017

Signing up for Rogue.

Jimmious · Aug 11, 2017

I want me Dwarf

Eriador · Aug 11, 2017

I'd really appreciate it if someone actually wanted to sign up as a magician. Or someone that can actually cast spells.

Jimmious · Aug 11, 2017

Magic is for pussies (I'm getting in character

)

Eriador · Aug 11, 2017

Eriador · Aug 11, 2017

So, do we take along one of those fine, level 19 badasses, like that Archmage, or do we just rob them of everything valuable and proceed with a full Codexian party?

...I think I know what you'll say.

Darth Roxor · Aug 11, 2017

So, do we take along one of those fine, level 19 badasses, like that Archmage, or do we just rob them of everything valuable and proceed with a full Codexian party?

look at this joker

Morkar Left · Aug 11, 2017

The level 19 chars are part of your Deluxe Edition and represent famous aventurian heros/celebrities/mighty npcs.

Eriador · Aug 11, 2017

Yeah, figured out as much as soon as I saw Phileasson and Megalon.

Ok, it's just me being stupid, turns out I've loaded some save called aventurianlegends instead of my own. Sorry!

Still need 2 volunteers!

Morkar Left · Aug 11, 2017

I'll do the magician then

abnaxus · Aug 11, 2017

Dwarves are 1.45? Yuge

Eriador · Aug 11, 2017

Max height for dwarves is 1.50 meters, minimum is 1.25.

Reinhardt · Aug 11, 2017

Druid if there is still room for one.

Eriador · Aug 12, 2017

Alright, let's do this!

Part 1: Character Creation

Unlike in BoD HD and the original, you no longer roll for attributes and assign them in order, instead, you start out with a set pool of points, kinda like in Neverwinter Nights and assign them however you wish. Increasing a positive attribute costs 2 points, decreasing a negative attribute costs 1. You can gain additional points by pumping up your negative attributes or lowering your positive ones (down to 8).

On one hand, it's no longer possible to just reroll the character a hundred times and start out with a party of characters with 13 in all positive attributes (totally doable), and it's no longer a pain in the ass to make a character with the right stats. On the other hand, the characters might feel a bit samey and playing a character who rolled 7 on most of his negative attributes could be a nice challenge. Not sure if :incline:

or

, but let's be generous and say a slight :incline:

for now. Atleast they are trying new things this time.

Also, the player character models no longer look like plastic dolls made in China, so that's a massive :incline:

. Not that the graphics are great, mind you, but compared to Blade of Destiny, the models are marvellous.

The negative attributes mostly influence random events. Like, if the party tries to climb up a mountain, a character with high acrophobia could freak out and fall off. Superstition, Necrophobia and (in the remake) Claustrophobia also have additional effects. Superstition lowers the characters resistance to magic (so you want Superstition as low as possible), Necrophobia comes into play when the party fights against undead, characters with high Necrophobia can freeze in terror and thus lose their turn. In BoD HD, Claustrophobia also has a gemeplay effect, if a character with high claustrophobia is underground, they have a chance to freak out and gain a debuff to their stats until it either wears off or they return to the surface.

Also, it sems they've tried to give each character type something special this time around, so another slight :incline:

.

A lot of the randomness in character creation has been eliminated. You can now just choose your character's birthday (and gain a small skill bonus), instead of the game randomly selecting it for you. Also, you no longer randomly generate your character's appearance, now you can do it yourself!

It's kinda like in Oblivion.

And you can even make Oblivion characters. :smug:

Unfortunately, the interface is simply terrible :decline:

. And also slightly buggy. The beard color defaults to the color of the characters underwear, so long as they didn't start with one.

Here is our Codexian party at the temple of Peraine! They all start at level 0 and gain 5 levels instantly.

Bireale, Jimmious and Nevill all got 20 LE for leveling up, so I'm not sure if everyone just gets a set amount of Life each level, or if it's still random and this is just a massive coincidence. The magic users seem to get a random amount. MicoSelva had 20, I think, Reinhardt 30 and Morkar 25. The magic users can also convert some Life into extra Astral Energy instead and Magician can sacrifice some spell increases for a random amount of extra AE.

The randomness has been eliminated further, in improving attributes. In BoD HD (and I believe, the original, if I'm wrong then please correct me), you could try to increase one positive attribute and lower one negative each level. If you failed, the attribute stayed the same and the chance of failure was higher depending on it's value. So, raising Strength to 19 was very risky, while raising Charisma to 10 was almost guaranteed. Yes, you could just save/load to get the stats you want, but it was next to impossible to lower Superstition to 0 (I've tried) or raise the stats really high, so atleast it forced you to spread the points around. Now, you can just minmax to your heart's content. Definitely a :decline:

.

The Skill and Spell increases also eliminated randomness, but in a much better way. In Blade of Destiny, you've gained a certain amount of skill/spell increase attempts each level, which you could spend to try to increase the ranks of your skills/spells. Once again, the higher the skill or spell, the lower the chance you succeed in rasing it. Also, if you've failed to increase the skill too many times in a row, you couldn't try again until the next level up. Here, you have the same amount of increases, but instead of pumping increase attempts into the skills until the RNG favors you, here, higher ranks simply cost a set amount of attempts.
It's a nice idea, but you end up with higher skills then in Blade of Destiny. In Blade of Destiny, I went by several levels without increasing Arcane Lore to 10, despite pumping all possible skill increases into it, here, you can easily start out with Arcane Lore around 18 at level 5. So a slight :decline:

. Yes, you could save/load to abuse the old system, but I did that and I don't think my BoD party could hold a candle to the Codexians.

Also, you can no longer highlight a skill and instantly see which attribute improves it and by how much like you could in the BoD remake, so another slight :decline:

.

Here's Roxor's Commander Boreale, who'll likely be our frontliner. He can also treat the wounds of his comrades when camping, if neccessary.

Jimmious the greedy ginger dwarf, our other frontliner. Also the party's designated lockpicker and medic.

Nevill the rogue. He's pretty much just gonna stand there and look pretty.

MicoSelva the ~~Rainbow~~ Leaf Elf. Our archer, hunter and guide. Not sure if I've built him right, but hopefully it works out.

Reinhardt the Emo Druid. He had black robes during character creation, not sure why he's wearing a green shirt now.

Morkar, our main spellcaster. Didn't know what specialisation to choose, so I picked Combat.

Anyway, tune in next time when we finally set out on an epic quest!

:incline:

Count: 3

Count: 4

Eriador · Aug 12, 2017

You know, guys, I think an additional month or two of early access would do this game some good. Still, I actually have fun!

Part 2: First Glitches

The intro text.

We rearrange the party a bit, so that Nevill is now the leader. The leader's skills are checked the most while travelling, so with his social skills, Nevill will take the lead in towns, MicoSelva in the wilderness and either Nevill or Jimmious in the dungeons.

Also, the player characters now actually comment on certain things, like when they are made leader or level up. It sounds like they were voiced by 2 dudes trying to do different voices (which is probably true), but atleast they are trying to make them sound like elves and dwarves. It's not terrible and kinda gives the game some cringy charm, like you are watching some high school tabletop campaign, where everyone actually tries to roleplay. And it's waaaaay better then the "voiceover guy" from BoD HD, so a small :incline:

I guess.

Speaking of "voiceover guy", the text dialogue isn't voiced so he's not in Star Trail (he might be one of the two dudes voice the PCs, not sure). The dialogue system has also changed. I guess it's an :incline:

, as now you don't have to go through several screens of Choose your own Adventure-style text just to find the dialogue option to buy food and you can now talk ask people about different topics. The CYOA format is still used for other things.

But even though you can ask about it, that doesn't mean the people will have something interesting to say.

They are also greedy as fuck.

And there are still some typos in the english version.

If you talk to them for too long, they suddenly get very busy and refuse to talk to you further, not sure how long that lasts. I guess that's somewhat realistic, but I'm not sure what the point is. I think it doesn't happen if you have a Skald in your party.

Well, since that woman doesn't want to talk to us anymore, let's get out of here.

As soon as we step outside, we meet an elven ambassador, who immediately takes us to the local tavern.

Afterwards, a short cutscene starts, which you can watch here in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvT2IrpzH7k&feature=youtu.be

Basically, he wants us to deliver the Salamander Stone to the dwarves to establish an alliance against the invading orcs or something like that.

Afterwards, the party is approached by another, EHVUL guy and another cutscene starts (watch the video) and this one has the funniest voice acting.

This guy wants to persuade the brave Codexians to screw the elves and dwarves, bring the magical D20 to someone else for "power" or something and he promises us 1000 ducats for the job.

Afterwards, we get a nice little tutorial about taverns!

And as soon as it ends, the UI suddenly vanishes. I'm pretty sure I didn't press anything that might've turned it off, so I guess that's our first glitch.

Fortunatelly, leaving the tavern fixes the bug.

We also get some more tutorials. Thankfully, the UI doesn't disappear this time.

I don't know what this is supposed to represent. I guess a swamp, but the "water" looks pretty terrible and walking in it produces the same footstep sound effects as walking on grass.

Here's the quest journal.

Walking around town, we experience a cute, but pointless random event.

When we get to the marketplace, we get another tutorial about shops. You can haggle and the shops are all have the same opening (8:00) and closing times (19:00).

Unfortunately, we got here too late, so everything's closed and we can't buy anything. Well, let's get out of this dump then!

We venture past the signpost, deep into the poorly-textured swamp. A quick check of the ingame map reveals that we've ventured far beyond the intended gameplay area.

Well, screw that! Onward! Towards the darkness! Hopefully the game doesn't crash.

Oh, NOW it shows up :rpgcodex:

.

After leaving ~~purgatory~~ the town, we are taken to a nice overworld map. Some location names seem to be in german though.

As soon as we venture forth, we trigger an event, where we can try to save some priestess of Rondra. We of course help the damsel in distress. Hopefully, she will show some gratitude. :smug:

To battle!

Eriador · Aug 12, 2017

Part 3: First Blood

As soon as the game loads, we are transported to the battlefield!

It's much bigger and nicer then the horrible, tiny battlefields in BoD HD, so :incline:

. But it's pretty hard to see anything through those giant trees. Anyway, Morkar goes first! We have to save that priestess from the orcs.

Let's attend the Combat Party, sounds fun!

FOR CODEXIA!

After taking 2 more steps, Morkar can finally unleash Ignifaxius at one of the orcs, at maximum power.

1W6 means 1 six sided die, it's a german thing.

Morkar kills the orc in one hit, but his model glitches out and thus, the dead orc remains standing.

Afterwards, Reinhardt uses his ~~emo~~ druidic powers to inhale some green stuff and summon his imaginary friend, who presumably died of radiation poisoning.

It hugs a nearby orc and deals 1 damage.

Relentless blow, that's new.

Basically, you can sacrifice accuracy for more damage.

The priestess does manage to wound the orc pretty badly, but if we don't kill them soon, she's dead.

And with our luck, that seems like a highly probable outcome. :negative:

Still, it does get better.

This is the glitched dead orc, btw.

Another artillery strike, courtesy of Morkar.

Now, our all-powerful emo shall curse the orc with Confusion!

Instead of casting any more debuffs, Morkar and Reinhardt gang up on another orc and beat him up.

Nevill, Reinhardt and some orcs also sometimes freeze in fear and skip their turn, most likely due to their low Willpower.

Reinhardt's green friend deals a surprisingly high 13 damage to the orc and Micoselva finishes him off with his bow.

Unfortunately, it seem's we've failed to save the priestess. :negative:

The only one near her is that glitched dead orc.

Reinhardt critically fails his parry roll, while Morkar continues kicking ass and taking names.

Morkar casts Horriphobus on the Orc. If he flees the battle, we still get the same experience and loot as if we'd killed him, atleast I think so.

Reinhardt casts Mad Dance on the other orc. Sadly, there's still no silly dancing animation in the game, so the orc just stands there :decline:

.

Reinhardt's glowing friend causes the death of another orc :salute:

.

The last orc ran away due to Horriphobus, so we've won! Yay!

Yet all we got for it were 3 "baton" sabres and a broken axe :negative:

.

Well, atleast the priestess is okay. Seems she just fainted or something.

She gives us enough XP to level up and leaves.

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, our edgy druid needs some medical assisstance.

The campfire screen is really cool, as you can see all of your characters doing things. MicoSelva is cooking dinner, Nevill is talking with him, Morkar stands by the tent, Reinhardt and Boreale eventually went to sleep and Jimmious finds the nearby rocks really attractive. That, or he wants to piss on them.

Oh, he was just tired and went to bed. Ok.

Like in BoD HD, you can listen to the party banter at the campfire, this functions mostly to give you some tips or warn you that the group lacks something vital, like warm blankets, but there are some nice random RP events, like the one where the resident elf sings a song about a battle that happened several thousand years age, in which his grandfather fought.

Anyway, tune in next time for more next gen Star Trail (hopefully)!

Excidium II · Aug 12, 2017

Eriador said:

Are those tits in-game?

Eriador · Aug 12, 2017

Sort of

Excidium II · Aug 12, 2017

Damn those are some big...feet.

Darth Roxor · Aug 12, 2017

You know, guys, I think an additional month or two of early access would do this game some good.

Speaking of "voiceover guy", the text dialogue isn't voiced so he's not in Star Trail

Pfff, he was the best part of RoA1 HD for sure :decline:

Also, I see this isn't very much different from RoA1 HD in essence

Morkar Left · Aug 12, 2017

The adjustments to level up is pure decline... :argh:

There was a reason why it was decided by dice and not point buy.

Eriador · Aug 12, 2017

Darth Roxor said:
Pfff, he was the best part of RoA1 HD for sure

He is definitely one of those two guys that voice the party members. "Oh my gawd, this is BORING!", "I'm starting to get depressed from screwing around here!", "I'll be back, AS A NIGHTMARE!", "IgniFAXIUS, SPEAR OF LIGHT AND FIRE!"

Darth Roxor said:
Also, I see this isn't very much different from RoA1 HD in essence

Well, so far it's definitely better then Blade of Destiny HD, despite the :decline:

in the character creation and the fact it still seems somewhat buggy and unfinished. We'll see how long that lasts.

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

If a party member dies, we should:

Replace him with another volunteer.

Try to ressurect him.

Just reload, noob.

Arbiter

Rattus Iratus

backlog digger

Arcane

Arcane

Arbiter

Arcane

Arbiter

Arbiter

Rattus Iratus

Morkar Left

Guest

Arbiter

Morkar Left

Guest

Arcane

Arbiter

Arcane

Arbiter

Arbiter

Arbiter

Self-Ejected

Arbiter

Self-Ejected

Rattus Iratus

Morkar Left

Guest

Arbiter