SureAI's new project: Enderal - The Shards of Order (Mostly about Enderal SE now)

[thesecret1]

Alright, I'll see if I can get to it in the next couple days

 

[Yosharian]

Imagine not playing Enderal: My Way

 

[thesecret1]

So I'm playing it and almost every book I find in this supposedly super-religious society mocks religion in one way or another What gives? Were the devs such atheistards that they just couldn't help themselves? The various fanfiction about stronk womyn and gay marriage and shit like that I can ignore, but this is straight up running counter to the world building.

 

[Jasede]

Gotta admit, I didn't read any of the books. And it seems that was for the better. The main game has some atheistardism but it's not too bad.

 

[Zibniyat]

Were the devs such atheistards that they just couldn't help themselves?

If Nehrim is anything to go by then yes. I enjoyed Nehrim still, but it was obviously and overtly filled with anti-religious sentiment(s). I still have to play Enderal.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

So I'm playing it and almost every book I find in this supposedly super-religious society mocks religion in one way or another What gives?

 

[thesecret1]

Gotta admit, I didn't read any of the books. And it seems that was for the better.

It sure was. They're laughably terrible for the most part, really. Some of them are downright high school-tier... Actually I just read one glaring example, here's the plot:

A bastard girl is born to a queen and a lowly sergeant, and is subsequently given to foster parents to prevent a scandal. She grows up and is absolutely amazing at everything, including swordplay. Boys are jealous of her being better at swordplay than they are, so they bully her. In doing so, they awaken her massive secret magical powers and are severely wounded. Locals want to burn her at the stake for it, but mommy queen intervenes and instead has her burn her foster-mother (because reasons). Girl decides she hates monarchy as a result, and literally destroys every kingdom in the world (because she's just that amazing). Finally she reaches mommy, who reveals to her she's her daughter. So as to eradicate every last royal, she kills her mom and herself. The End.

I'm not shitting you, that's the actual story in the book, and I'm not even embellishing.

 

[thesecret1]

thesecret1 could you be arsed to tell us the name of the book, I kinda really wanna read it on the wiki now. xD

It's called "Mother's Pain" and you can find it in the undercity marketplace, in the apothecary basement on a shelf there.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

earliest references to the book I can find are 2020 meaning it was probably added much later

 

[Paul_cz]

I don't know about "Mother's Pain" but I read most books in Enderal and quite enjoyed them.

 

[Popiel]

Similarly, I never bothered to read any of the books except for Butcher of Ark story, and this one was quite decent. Honestly, books which you can read in TES games are not especially brilliant as well, so one could say they were following the master's footsteps.

Funny how you describe this game as made by atheistards. I never got that feeling and I'm not a particular fan of said tards. It's a quite specific setting and quite specific theme which they wanted to create and tell a story with, and IMHO they executed it very, very competently. It's a bleak world, is that bad? I never played Nehrim though.

 

[Sharpedge]

thesecret1 could you be arsed to tell us the name of the book, I kinda really wanna read it on the wiki now. xD

It's called "Mother's Pain" and you can find it in the undercity marketplace, in the apothecary basement on a shelf there.

Damn it, it's not on the wiki. xD However, there's a thread about it on reddit:

Is the book "Mother's Pain" based on Narathzul's story?​

So I came across the book in Apothecarii's cellar, it tells a story about a royal couple giving away their daughter to foster parents due to the husband's class status not "noble" enough.

The child later developed magic talents and grew severe hatred for all royals and started to kill them and burn their houses down. She got captured once but only prisoned due to her mother's great influence.

The final target is her biological mother's family at which the truth is revealed and the child kinda commit suicide.

While not every detail is a perfect match, this sounds awfully like Narathzul's story, like how he is born of a lightborn mother and a human father, the father insisted on giving the child away, the child's talent and hatred of his own kind,imprisoned instead of executed, also the final show-down with truth along with death.

You don't see the author named in the book, kinda wonder how many people knows about the truth about Narathzul?(I only see some footage and general stoy summary of Nehrim.)

https://www.reddit.com/r/enderal/comments/j9ks73/is_the_book_mothers_pain_based_on_narathzuls_story/

Also paging our resident Enderal scholar Sharpedge for his input regarding the quality of the books in Enderal.

As far as I recall, the book quality is all over the place because they were written by basically anyone who wanted to submit one, (they were crowdsourced). The ones which specifically relate to a quest were ok, but the others which are just there to act as filler are just that - filler. Butcher of Ark and a couple of other books were written by Nicolas Lietzau (the lead writer), but most of the books are not.

 

[thesecret1]

As far as I recall, the book quality is all over the place because they were written by basically anyone who wanted to submit one, (they were crowdsourced). The ones which specifically relate to a quest were ok, but the others which are just there to act as filler are just that - filler. Butcher of Ark and a couple of other books were written by Nicolas Lietzau (the lead writer), but most of the books are not.

Well, that explains a lot

 

[thesecret1]

Well I delved deeper and thoroughly explored Farmers' Coast. Really good exploration design – there's always something interesting around, it never feels like I'm in some blank spot of the map with nothing to do. That said, NPCs seem weirdly ignorant of the surrounding dangers. They literally have basements full of skeletons and vatyrs and are just chill about it, harvesting hay right in front of a barn with a pack of vatyrs in it – like, nigga, you realize they can just open the door and slaughter you, right? Hell, they don't even deem it important enough to mention it as you stride past them into an inconspicuous house to check it out, and are subjected to surprise gangrape.

NPCs in general feel rather lacklustre, really. Almost none of them actually talk to you, bar generic lines, even ones you'd expect to (such as landlord Borek, the de facto ruler of farmers' coat... Doesn't even ask me to do something about his cellar being full of Lost Ones and giant, maddened rats). Quests are also pretty rare and far between. Reading books actually seems to be the only way to actually learn something about the world, because NPCs just aren't gonna talk to you. Makes me really miss morrowind where any retard you met on the street could talk your ear off about basically everything if you decided to quiz him.

In-game economy seems to be working alright so far. I have plenty of money, but aren't drowning in it, and deciding to upgrade my gear is a sure way to quickly deplete my monetary reserves. The fact you can then also upgrade the gear of your apparations then constitutes another money drain (albeit an optional one). It's not perfect as aside from crafting components, I find I never really want anything from any shop, but with how shitty in-game economy usually is, I'll take what I can get. Also I have zero sympathy for beggars in this game – there is no excuse for begging on the streets when they could just loot the bajillion of freely accessible crates and barrels, all of them containing free food, goods, or even spare change.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

The biggest issue with this game, imo, is that it uses Skyrim assets. It keeps making me thing I'm in TES universe and it undermines immersion.

 

[Paul_cz]

There are shit ton of quests and NPCs. They are not in the starting location though. The game significantly opens up in Ark.

The biggest issue with this game, imo, is that it uses Skyrim assets. It keeps making me thing I'm in TES universe and it undermines immersion.

Using ENB helps immensely with this. Assets actually look lot different with it due to different lighting. It made it lose the overwhelming Skyrim feel for me.

 

[thesecret1]

voice actors

I'd rather have plenty of dialogues unvoiced, than few but voiced, tbh.

Whenever you see a beggar in Ark, give him or her as much many as the game permits. =)

Alright. I hope you aren't trolling me here

 

[Jasede]

German VA, while hit or miss in places, is very good overall (but not excellent the way Archolos is in Polish.)

 

[Paul_cz]

German VA, while hit or miss in places, is very good overall (but not excellent the way Archolos is in Polish.)

So is the english one. The early characters are weaker and Lishari sounds a bit cringey, but most characters (Jespar, Catia, Tealor, Father, Daddy..) are fantastic.

 

[King Crispy]

Be aware that using an ENB injector is going to drastically affect the game's performance, however. Unfortunately there are no mods for Enderal SE that provide the same kind of effect that Skyrim's Better Lighting mods do.

There is a basic ENB available that, through some basic tweaking, can achieve almost the same effect, with minimal performance loss. Just avoid the ones that try to do everything.

 

[King Crispy]

By the way, in case anyone's interested, here's the list of mods I'm running now:

Some are specific to Enderal SE, some are Skyrim SE. All are working perfectly.

 

[Popiel]

such as landlord Borek, the de facto ruler of farmers' coat... Doesn't even ask me to do something about his cellar being full of Lost Ones and giant, maddened rats)

Borek was one of the biggest letdowns of my entire playthrough(s). If you explore the Coast starting from Ark (as you should, because the game is clearly designed in a way which facilitates such a route) you can actually hear about him – farmers complain about his ‘taxes’, people go around doing stuff for him. He is a major political player, one of the most powerful people in all of Enderal, and then you meet him and... ‘have a nice day I guess’? It’s a very blatant case of either cut content or bad design. There’s more of that in the game, like Apothecarii monastery, which gets talked about in a way which hypes up a major dungeon delving questline, but it obviously gets nowhere. Or Thalgard, which is as a whole wasted on one sidequest (a good one to be fair, but still). In the main mod (before the DLC, which is integrated into Steam copy of Enderal SE edition) the Rhalâta were such a case as well, they were a clear case of cut content (everybody talked about them and they were very politically important, yet you couldn’t go anything with them, not even basic interactions). I wish they had more time and resources to devote to other things. Mod is awesome as is, though.

 

[Eyestabber]

Who the hell ran the math on this game? Lmao, magic is completely, utterly, absurdly busted. It's like everything else was nerfed to the ground...except magic. And enemy mages never run out of mana, for some reason (they do in vanilla skyrim), so they can mow down the player like it's D-day. Progression is also god awful. FUCK grinding for shitty books, whoever came up with this system deserves a painful death. Quest design is...good old fetch quests, BUT you don't have Skyrim's fast travel because "muh immurshun", so what was once awful, but relatively quick is now awful AND time consuming. Ho-ray! The story is also something about "religion bad, fedora tipping good", pillows of eternity would be proud.

Essentially, there is nothing motivating me to continue playing. The post-Ark power spike (for enemies) is disgusting and I won't waste my time doing chores in order to save up money for books. This is gamey, unrealistic and DEFINETLY not fun.

 

[Jasede]

I did not use magic and there was more gold than I knew what to do with so buying books was not a problem.
And while the story has some atheistard elements, that is really not the main thrust.

However, if the music and artistic design of the areas has not kept you motivated, then I suppose you might as well save your time.
You can fast travel with scrolls.

 

[Popiel]

Folks, please, someone explain to me: what exactly is atheistardy about the plot and/or the setting...? Or do you just throw this around as people on the 'Dex tend to do.