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In Progress Let's delve into the Depths

Krraloth

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Nov 20, 2009
Messages
1,220
Location
Boringland
Wasteland 2
Here we are, a turning point in the life of every Codexian who's ready to take it to the next level.
A bold step that will for sure expose every little bit of decline and perversion of the writer.
Many unsung heroes have decided to end their life and/or leave4eva because their endeavor has failed or met with lower response than the hunger could tolerate.

A hunger so powerful that leads to butthurtness, arrhythmia, shivers, fever, rabies and madness.
A scene so ruthless that many do not hesitate to employ cutthroat schemes, marketing ploys, hostile takeovers, simulation of IRL problems and in some cases, gender change, unholy rituals and death.


The Let's Play.


It comes as a surprise even for me, the poor bastard who's finally decided to join this abhorrent arena, this horrid creative manifestation of the self.

And yet the signs were there, dreams of popularity, a healthy and sizeable boost in brofists, a chance to bring to the spotlight a game that was unjustly put aside by some Codexites because of its retina-damaging color palette.

Well, I am here to show you, TO SHOW YOU faithless bastards how much good this game is.

Here we go.

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Depths of Peril is a Diablo-like/4x-light hybrid made by Soldak Entertainment that gave us the recent and good Drox Operative (read the very own Codex review if you have not yet, you wretched heretic you).

This is a game unique in its genre, although the only comparison it can frankly be made about some of its mechanics is with Hinterland, a very obscure game that Ashery shamelessly masterfully abandoned never to pick it up again.
I mean this comparison in the broadest sense and it has to do about the exploration found in Hinterland and the way that game at some point gives you hard objectives and overwhelms you with things to do.
Except Depths of Peril does it better and it's more fun, a feature that seems to be lacking in recent games, go figure.

For now though, fuck Hinterland and let's concentrate with the issue at hand.

There are 4 classes in Depths of Peril and we're gonna need to choose one to start.

Warrior
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He's powerful, hard to kill but extremely dependent on food and potions to survive, with the right recruit and a good set of elemental resistance elixirs the Warrior it's extremely Easy and rewarding to play. Can use all weapons and learn to wear Plate armor. He can tank, deal damage, taunt and hit multiple opponents.

Rogue
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She can poison, create distractions and exploit them, hide in the shadows and disarm traps. A bit squishier than the Warrior, she cannot wear more than Leather Armor and daggers and swords are their only choice in weapons. A good recruit is mandatory especially when dungeon delving and/or hunting packs of named monsters as she's bound to go down quickly.
Medium Hard depending on gear and skill development, but extremely rewarding to play.

Mage
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Squishy as fuck, a Mage is best accompanied by a tough Warrior or a tankish built Priest. You will spend most of your time managing his mana reserves because it will deplete very quickly, especially when you are up shit creek without a paddle (ie your recruit is dead). He can only wear Cloth armor and wield staves, but his magic more than makes it up for this drawback, just don't get surrounded or you're fucked. If you like to blast things to the other side of the veil before they have time to act this class if for you.
Challenging difficulty and mayhem are guaranteed.

Priest
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The Priest is a powerhouse, it can do anything you want as long as you know what skills to bring in any occasion. She can learn to wear up to Mail Armor and can use shields and blunt instruments of death. The playstyle for this class is entirely dependent on how you build her and what recruit you want to bring along. She has access to melee skills, healing, buffs, elemental resistance and magic damage spells.
Easy to Challenging, if you make a healer type your survival depends on the recruit.


Vote, vote NAO!
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
This is a game unique in its genre, although the only comparison it can frankly be made about some of its mechanics is with Hinterland, a very obscure game that Ashery shamelessly masterfully abandoned never to pick it up again.

Not my fault the game was so shitty. Loved the premise, but the execution was...yea. Barely finished the game I was doing for my LP, and even at the end of that first game I was already bored.

My vote's for rogue.
 

Qatesh

Educated
Joined
May 16, 2013
Messages
61
Location
Rome,Italy
Oh God!
At last you did.
Choose the mage, i wanna you see you suffer, deeply.

Ofc good luck.
 

Krraloth

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Nov 20, 2009
Messages
1,220
Location
Boringland
Wasteland 2
I don't like the spoiler tags galore that has been going on in the last let's plays so I'm gonna say fuck it and do it the original way, I'll of course spoiler tag books and other exposition related shit so it's not gonna fuck up the page too much, but the core experience I want it pure and sweet.

Good, you voted Mage, so mage is what you're gonna get.
I have a limited experience with this class, so there are more chances I'll die.

"I am a mage, the greatest wielder of magic there is. My elemental magic is frightening to behold, and I enjoy watching most of an attacking horde fall before they get too close. My claim to magic prevents me from any but the simplest of armor, but the magic is worth the meager price. My ability to survive depends on concentration, often promoted by the drinks I carry in my satchel. The others can't hold a candle to my power!
Select me, and have a drink."

Basically a drunk.
I have the perfect names for him and the Covenant (bonus points if you know what it is).

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There two other options in the character creation screen.
Not gonna go with Hardcore (it's greyed out because you need a character over level 25), it's more entertaining to see how bad things will go while we are trying to get back to the Soulstone. Loner Challenge just prevents you from recruiting NPCs to your Covenant, can be fun.

And the perfect portrait.

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Right after the character selection screen, we are given a few options before crating the world we'll be playing.

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Enemy Covenant Power dictates what level the Leaders of the covenants will start the game at and it can make for a very challenging game seeing as you could not possibly overpower them if you chose say, 20 levels above you. For Attempt #1 we're gonna go with 5.

Enemy Covenant Aggression lets us chose how likely they are going to adventure, raid each other (and our ass of course) and lowers the overall impact of diplomacy in the game, we're not gonna crank this up because in my experience makes the leaders a bit too hard-headed and I feel not having the options too restrictive. Average will suffice.

World difficulty is gonna sit on Normal until we reach level 25 if we ever gonna reach it. It's an option that increase the likelihood of named monsters sending scouts in the town, how many champions and elite monster spawn and so on, basically it's the Shit Hits the Fan multiplier and believe me, it's good enough as it is.

We can have up to 6 enemy Covenants competing with us and against each other, I usually put it on random and just play but for the purpose of showcasing the game we're gonna have 6 of them, that will make for some entertaining situations.

Here we go!

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In Depths of Peril, you command the barbarian leader of a Covenant, in a power struggle to rule Jorvik, a frontier city at the edge of the wilderness. It's an harsh world in where unspeakable horrors unleashed by the proverbial miners who dug too deep dwell. All the lore is told by books you find or buy in game, as well as explained in the main quest, while it's nothing to write home about, it's still nice that a lot of effort was put into the worldbuilding.

I realize I had the Perspective View option ticked and to me it looks like shit while showing even less of your surroundings, so back to isometric we go.

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Much better.
This is our Covenant, our home, the place where we can kick back and down a mountain of booze while our recruits will scuttle about bringing us loot, gold and...yeah right.

The red gem in the middle is the Life Stone. If that is destroyed we lose the game, we can click on it to have health regeneration anytime we want (it will not harm the Stone) and if damaged, it will slowly regenerate health. Needless to say, if we are being attacked the Stone won't regen until the attack is over.

Clockwise we have Shared Stash, Bookshelf, Personal Stash, Pedestals and finally the Covenant Gate.

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The Shared Stash is full because I have been playing the game, you know?
Hardcore characters have a different shared DB, so you can't gear up without risking your ass, much like every Diablo-like worth their salt.
I'm not gonna use anything that comes from there though, it would not be fun and as you can probably see, I play a Warrior and a Priest, so the awesome gear I have in there is totally useless for this puny little fucker.

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Hey! I'll have you knowshs that I am powersh ic...incr...inscranate!

Moving right along

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Here we have the bookshelf, the book in it is part of the equipment you start with, I just put in there. Note that books add +stats so it's always welcome when you find one or when you have enough money to buy some from Oslo the Vendor. This tome is called Great Wars of Aleria and confers a +1 in Vitality, for the Lorefags in you here's the contents
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To sum it up: barbarians ain't too bright, a lot of shit happened and now it's our turn.

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You can purchase or find bags that go inside here but they are somewhat expensive, they can contain other empty bags but for now we can only fantasize out it.

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We have nothing here for now, but we will eventually put Artifacts in the 4 central slots, they can add a bunch of +stuff and also %tax and %influence modifiers, but we'll go over that a little later. The 4 outer slots are for guards, in this game you can hire monsters (all Elite class) to protect your Life Stone. I learned the hard way that you want some as quickly as possible, because monsters in this game can and will open fucking portals inside your Covenant and start wrecking shit.

And finally we have the Covenant Gate (the white dildo on the lower right corner) clicking on it brings up the map and shows our activated gates.
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Depths of Peril is pretty relaxed when it comes to teleportation and gates, you can pretty much fuck off in 2 seconds from anywhere using the free teleport stone that you are given at the beginning of the game. To some people at the Soldak forum this was a bad idea, but I support the choice and it makes me think that those people have never played Hardcore. Given the nature of the randomness in the bonuses on the Champion/Elite monsters, you can find motherfucking juggernauts of pain that will oneshot you, fast and hard. No amount of preparation save a natural predisposition for cautiousness can save you there. The ability to fuck off in less than 2 seconds is the only way you have to even try to survive.
I'd love to mod inside my game the Semi-Hardcore option from Din's Curse, in which death removes permanently one Vitality point, I find it a fair compromise for people who want the challenge but do not want to be killed somewhat unfairly by the RNG god, but I don't think it's possible.

Of course, I fucking love HC.

There are plenty of mechanics, the game is deep, so for now let's see what this maul wielding woman wants from us.
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Hhhhh...Hhhhhh...Hhhhhgrlabhrd?

Our brave hero is in no condition to follow tutorials that have you equip stuff, touch everything and go meet every vendor, not even for an item (color code for set item) which will probably be used to wipe his ass or something.
But he will use his magic focusing staff to support his weight while he staggers in the vague direction of Katla's dwelling.
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She always knows what to say to snap Drunken Stupor to attention, she hardly ever wastes poultices on him.
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I...I need some water.

Every NPC in Depths of Peril has one of the 4 selectable classes, I always thought it was a nice touch. In some ways it makes feel the world more consistent with itself, she will in fact, use Priest skills against enemy invasions, and more importantly you can get a free Vitality buff when she learns it. NPCs gain levels as you level up and equip better gear.
You might have noticed that Katla is not a merchant, in fact she is one of the three primary quest givers, and she will ask you to collect ingredients to remove diseases, purify the well when it gets poisoned, resurrect NPCs if they die, cure petrification and so on. There are consequences for each problem she will ask you to help her solve, but I'll explain more when we get one of those quests.


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In the center of the city we have Varin the Armorsmith (Warrior) which sells armor and will send you to find ingredients and pay you with a random armor, gold and some experience. The payoff is not that great but sometimes he will give you good stuff.
Ginna the Weaponsmith (Rogue), most of her weapon selection will reflect the class choice you've made. She'll have you go around gathering stuff for her in exchange for weapons, very much like Varin.


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Here we have Airik the Warmaster (Warrior), who will bug us incessantly about named monsters starting uprisings, named monsters forming groups with other named monsters and in general all combat-related quests.
For now he will give us our first main quest.

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I must kill the Orc? Only if there is enough coin to buy some booze!

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Torston the Steward (mage) will offer us quests related to Jorvik's ever dwindling supplies, theft cases and package delivering.
Here's the real meaning of what he says: "swing by later and I will give you so much shit to do at the same time that you'll pray you'd be kicking Vakoil's ass.
He is also a liar, because he just gave us the task to collect 5 Pottery Shards from the nearby Grimalkin Forest.

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Oslo the Vendor (mage) lives a little bit to the right of Torston. He sells food, drinks, books, potions and bags.
I forgot to show you the inventory and equipment windows, but well, they are very much alike every other game, so I'll just go over the contents real quick.
The flask is the first tier mana recovery item Water, it's cheap and is best activated before actually casting, as it's a regen.
Fruit is the first tier health recovery item, same as Water but for health, duh.
Then we have a Tumbler of Minor Healing. Those are good because they will instantly replenish your health (there is a mana version too) but they are expensive as fuck. For comparison a fruit costs 20cp (copper pieces) and a TMH 98cp.
The round object is the Teleport Stone, you can use it anywhere and it works exactly like the Town Portal scroll in Diablo.


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I'm sure I'll see you a lot, Oslo.

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Dorvia the Beastmaster (priest) sells guards. In the Random Guard section can sometimes be found very powerful creatures that will kick a lot of ass, they can be pretty expensive though. You can buy guard using crystals, which is a currency that you gain every tax period and increases/decreases depending how much influence your Covenant have. Guards have a buy price and an upkeep one, as usual more details will come later on. Oh, they are enchanted so they only attack enemies of the Covenant, but guess what? There is a chance they can break free! Awesome.

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Are you sure it's a good idea to risk it like this?


Well it depends, do you want an army of Mud Amorphs merrily gating in the Covenant unchallenged while you are shopping for booze?


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If I am wasted, I am sure we can sing together the Ballad of Dirty Ciglio!

Yeah, I'm sure it'll end well.


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Lastly there is the most horrible NPC of all, the Gambler (rogue, yeah, I really couldn't tell), she will make you hate her as you desperately waste all of your hard earned money hoping for the last piece of the set that will forever elude you.
Seriously, don't do it.

Since I am pretty new at this LP thing, I am still slow, as it is, it took me 4 hours to do this update so I'm just gonna post 2 more sshots and call it a day.

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Don't you have some beer you can drink while you keep writing? Man you sure are sloppy.
First you update late, then you make excuses and now you want to rest? Ha!

I'm just gonna leave this here, so you think very carefully what your next move should be.
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I'm pretty tired so I might mis-click and send you deeper in the dungeon rather than back up to the surface.

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Point taken. Let me have a beer while I check the Diplomacy report.

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I love this shit
:yeah:
 

Ashery

Prophet
Joined
May 24, 2008
Messages
1,337
Looks like we'll be sharing the crown after all.

:troll:
 

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