Update time!
So, we missed out on two turns, during which we didn't have any major battles but got some free wins, and did a number of quests.
The map now looks like this. Caerleon is pretty fucked, with Cai holed up between us and Esgares. He can't perform a proper retreat from there or move back to his base or anything either.
Thanks to our extra holdings, we actually have a decent income finally, and can start outfitting more of our knights.
golgepapas inclined himself into a new class by reaching level 10. Though it's basically just a slightly better version with no significant improvements.
Cortina is still level 1, because the battle we put her in ended before she could do anything.
God what a boring army this is. Need to sacrifice a bunch of those plants.
Lucia performed another special quest and experienced some
, however, she still sucks. But maybe she's worth using now, kind of. With 60 in all 3 main stats, she can switch to any of the base classes. Though she'd make an awful caster with MP that low. But mastering one to have access to certain spells can be nice, so you have an archer with heal or frost or whatever. Not many characters get the base stats to do this, especially this early.
Her profile changed too, but I never took a shot of the old one anyways. Anyways, here's her quest:
Lucia is back in the village in the deep mountain.
Boy: Lucy! I have great news!
: What is it? The boy slowly stands up and walks toward lucia with firm steps.
: My God!
Boy: See! I can walk! I can walk now, Lucia!
: Thank God!
Boy: I didn’t tell you, but I have been practicing. I knew you looked sad because of my legs, because I wasn’t able to walk. I practiced so that I could start walking again and I don’t have to see you being sad anymore.
: Oh...
Boy: Please smile, Lucia! i’m all well now. I can walk!
: There is something I must tell you... It’s about your injury...
Boy: I know it was you.
: What?!
Boy: I have known it was you all this time. You must hate me for what I did... I know it’s too late, but if there is anything I can do, please...
Boy: Don’t say that. I don’t hate you. If it wasn’t for that incident, we wouldn’t have become friends like this.
: I’m sorry... I’m really sorry...
Boy: Hey! Don’t apologize anymore! I will practice more and when I grow up, I will become a Knight and fight alongside you.
: Thank you. I’ll look forward to it.
Lucia has regained her ability.
STR increased by 5 points.
INT increased by 5 points.
AGI increased by 5 points.
Rune Power increased by 20 points.
Nothing more happened to Miguel but I figured I'd take a shot of his profile in case it changes later on.
Enemy situation hasn't changed much. Zemeckis left and Esclados is here now, which is a bit better since Esclados can't nuke half my army for ~200 damage in a single turn, or hit a unit from 3 hexes away after moving. And he has shittier rune power.
Cai's army is still kinda tough looking, with that druid hiding under the enchantress there.
Oh, and Gallo hit level 10, so I changed his class to Grappler, which is the upgraded version of Ranger. Onwards to battle!
Other countries have finally started attacking eachother.
This ought to be pretty one sided. Meleagant is way tougher than Yvain and Lance has his dragon backing him up, while Noie's got fuck all.
I think you can set an option to view the battles in more detail, but who cares really?
of New Almekia.
Time to bring some
to ourselves.
Fuck, this is an annoying place to attack. Especially from the south.
And of course we don't have much in the way of high sky units that can cross the mountains, or a hydra to use the lake properly.
Our lizardmen do get a nice bonus for fighting in the shallows.
But not nearly as nice as what this fucker or that hydra will get. We're better off fighting on land. The problem is, the pass between the mountain and the lake is pretty tiny, and their griffon and wyverns can circle around our flank, while the mages nuke our guys bunched up while they form a concave formation around us. Double plus ungood.
The enemy is waiting for us to get as close as possible before moving, just biding their time and putting on buffs. I guess the AI knows it's a shitty spot to be in too.
We end up setting up here. I throw the plant here to hopefully lure the hydra into attacking it from the water instead of circling around to our rear.
They'll definitely start some shit this turn.
Though apparently not from Cai.
We throw protect on Gallo and our Roc before the fighting starts.
The first attacker is a wyvern against our left scorpion.
Actually got some nice battle shots for once.
It's roughly an equaly exchange damage-wise, but of course the wyvern has way more hp. OTOH, the wyvern got poisoned, which is a pretty sweet advantage this early in the fight.
They also get one of their ghouls petrified. This is actually annoying, since it'll make it harder to kill and it won't be getting itself murdered by attacking our units either.
They send in their lizardman to fuck up our plant, but we get no dice on paralyze.
Really glad I didn't try going into the water. I forgot these things get a special attack there.
Gallo uses statues as punching bags because he's hardcore like that.
We actually have access to charm for this fight, and Archaeon is here...
However, Charm only has a range of 2, and that pussy is hiding back there again.
We swap out our plant for a fresh one to fight their lizardman. This game has lots of nice little touches- when fighting in the water, monsters make little splashes as they move and their footsteps sound different.
We send our Roc hoping to stone the griffin but get no luck.
Well, there are other options for dealing with griffins.
Not the most devastating attack ever, but Frost spells are cheap.
Well, we got the fucker onto dry land at least.
Though, thats not really what I wanted it to attack...
Ow.
Our critical isn't nearly as impressive.
They seem to want our scorpion dead.
In fact, they want it badly enough they attack their own hydra to finish it off.
Well, it's just a cheapass scorpion actually, I don't really give a fuck.
At this point I realize I have made a grave tactical error. That hydra is in perfect position to use it's breath weapon (yeah they get one too) on our front line. And their druid is in range to use power on it. Fuck.
I can't really do anything about it with Ulster though, so I settle for blasting the fuck out of this Wyvern.
We'll finish it off with this scorpion.
Though in retrospect, this is pretty stupid since this thing is probably going to die from hydra breath.
It hit level 6 though. Ugh, I lost like, half the screenshots this time to glitches like this. I'm going to have to figure out how to fix it, it's getting really annoying.
I try paralyzing the hydra out of desperation but no luck.
I can't silence the hydra from here so I throw protect on the scoprion instead.
Though even with that, it's probably still a goner.
Luckily, their bishop wastes his turn casting Halo and we're not close enough to the water for that Triton and his insanely high evasion to matter.
Well, thats better than Power I suppose.
Our front line was still in pretty good shape.
So this isn't that problematic.
Oh man :lol
Well I guess he's not a pussy after all, just not too bright.
Our turn lets us pick off the griffin.
Though what I really want is to get rid of that hydra and fuck up one of their knights.
Well, more high levelled Djinn wouldn't be such a terrible thing.
I try for some petrification...
No luck again.
Well, I ended up deciding to have our little girl retreat. With only 2 units to breath on, maybe the hydra won't bother. Plus she wasn't going to contribute much anyways at this point.
Argh. This is what I was expecting though.
The scorpion actually takes more damage here despite being red, since it's int is so bad.
Hmm, not looking so good for Gallo.
Well, at least the hydra isn't breathing. Probably because the dragon got in the way. Lucky the hydra didn't move before it.
It pointlessly chomps on one of our walking veggie burgers.
Wyrmlord Wyver1C gets schooled by a more
scaly. We don't get to kill it though, since we're lacking in ranged support and it's Ulster's turn to run away like a little girl.
Well shit.
It's ok, we got this totally under control
Well fuck.
Next time...
Schutleis gets the rabbit quest again, oddly enough, and finds a different item. Though it's also a fairly crappy one, like the forest amulet was.
Due to an exhausting voyage, Daffy stopped in a bar in the town.
Drunk Man: Aren't you a Rune Knight?
Daffy reluctantly confirmed the question.
Drunk Man: Yeah! I was right! I thought so! I was saved by a Rune Knight long ago. I can't say enough good things about you guys! Of course I'll treat you! hey guys! The next round is on me!
Cries of joy echoed through the bar. Daffy enjoyed being take care of.
Victoria met a Dwarf in a forest.
The Dwarf spoke to Victoria as if they were old friends.
Dwarf: Hello, would you like to have this? It's free.
Then the dwarf reached out with a strange mushroom.
Dwarf: Hey, what's wrong? Don't you like mushrooms? It is unlikely that a Knight is afraid of a tiny mushroom, don't you think?
The dwarf was staring at Victoria with a smile. Then, Victoria ate the mushroom... The mushroom tasted strange, but the taste was not bad.
Dwarf: How's that? That was my best one. Well then, I'll see you later.
So the Dwarf disappeared into the forest.
Afterwards, Victoria felt energy rising from inside.
Great, only another 60 turns and she might be useful to us
Oh, and we missed this during the timeskip, but we can pretend it just happened now:
Castle Patio
: We're in debt again this month.... Half of it is due to King Dryst spending too much money on pleasure... It's such a headache...
: Ou..ch...
: What happened!? What's with all the blood!? Are you going to be OK? What's in that bag you're carrying?
: ...Where's King Dryst?
: I think he's on the top floor... You need to get your wound treated first.
: No...
: Wait!
Top Floor
: Your majesty, I have returned. I have this...
: Huh..? ...Oh! Iria!
: (He's drinking during the day again..?)
: Wow! Is that the head of a cannibal bird? That's the biggest one I've ever seen!
: Just leave it somewhere around there. Ulster, tell Hula to change the feathers in my hat, OK?
: Hat..? Your majesty... You didn't send Iria to the Valley of Death just for feathers, did you?
: That's right.
: Excuse me?
: I sent her to get the feathers.
: What!? Your majesty, Iria is a very important Knight for our country. And you sent her to such a dangerous place only for feathers?
: Ulster, are you questioning me? Who gave you the authority?
: Ah... but...
: You're wrong about Iria. She is not a Knight for the country of Iscalio. She is my Knight. I can do whatever I want with her. Isn't this right, Iria?
: Yes sir...
: That's insane... She got away with some injuries, but she could ahve been killed.
: Are you blind?! The blood on Iria is not hers.
: Huh? Really?!
: Iscalio does not have weaklings that can be kileld by birds! If they die, so be it! [Here Dryst is sounding a bit like Vince Lombardi...]
: (What?!)
: Get out of here! Looking at the weird hat you're wearing is making me sick!
: Hua, hua, hua! Weird looking hat, huh? It really looks weird...
: Excuse me.
: ...Excuse me...
Inside the Castle Corridor
: But... I don't understand what's on his mind. Why does he always give you those dangerous orders? Doesn't that bother you, Iria?
: Orders from our lord are absolute.
: Indeed... But what if you get killed?
: That's OK with me.
: Officer Iria...
Archaeon is nearly level 10 after chomping on Gallo, the lucky prick. On the bright side, now it'd actually be sort of worthwhile to capture him (or kill him for xp.)
Our new bling.
We got this during the missing update. Very handy for when you need to upgrade a monster but don't have the runepower to spare yet.
Gallo is going to be out of commision this turn, but we need a knight to defend that castle.
We throw the armband on Schutleis and give him some monsters before sending him over. He inclined himself a bit on a quest that gave him +4 STR so he doesn't feel quite as trashy now. And we could use a knight that can cast heal.
Caerleon is in pretty dire straits. I'm guessing they don't have enough encome to replace their monsters since they've lost so much territory but Cai is still sitting on a full army.
They've split their knights into two squads of 2 to try and defend both locations. We could easily attack on or the other for a free win and they'd retreat right away.
But this seems like it'd be more fun. Iria should be able to handle one group alone since she's got 3 level 10 monsters with her. In retrospect I should have given the black monsters to the other group and had her go after Dinadan with that spear of hers. Oh well. Baggy and Hula should be able to handle things too.
We won't be able to hold both locations for long, since Almekia will be able to attack us from here. But hey, it's worth it just for the xp.
And I think it's time Dryst got off his ass and fought some more.
This'll be a pain in the ass and we might take some losses, but I'm sick of the stalemate between us, Esgares and Leonia around here. We need some stronger monsters and knights to break it.
So, this should be interesting.
We're pretty well suited to an open field battle and have 4 units that can heal. If we can avoid them all ganging up on something before we can heal it we should be ok.
Now keeping an extra save incase I forget the screenshots again. Won't be reloading for any other reason though.