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I found one problem with unlimited actions during camping. Specifically, hunting. I imagine the same thing works for gathering herbs.
Everyone's carrying capacity is maxed out, we are all full of food. This took me like a minute and I think abut 16 hours have passed in-game.
No random encounters, in BoD HD they only happened during rest, so I guess it's the same here.
Note: We couldn't do this in BoD HD, atleast with one character. We would have to rest for some time before hunting again and that means we would risk a random encounter. So, by the time Codex Bros have enough food to last a lifetime, the BoD party would die repeatedly to swarms of random harpy encounters.
Not that we'd need to do this, since you can just gamble, sing or pickpocket in tavens for about a week straight to get rich (of in-game time). Who needs to raid dungeons when dancing in the taverns is the true path to riches?
Everyone save for MicoSelva gained 4 Life Energy. I'm still not sure if it's random or different characters have different set values they gain each level, but values were definitely more varied in BoD HD.
It seems 18 is the max value for skills, which is higher then needed for 99% standard chance. However, I still manage to fail the staff rituals 3 times in a row despite 18 Arcane Lore, so I guess there are some hidden modifiers in place.
We get way less Skill and Spell improvements, but still manage to get some nice improvements. We'll level slower from now on. Morkar also almost maxed out Ignifaxius, for those times we just need to oneshot some annoying boss.
Also, all of the Codexians already have max attack skill with their chosen weapon (well, except for the ranged ones), so the only thing left to improve is Parry Value. We can raise attack further by improving the correct attributes, ie. pumping Strength to stratosphere, atleast on the melee guys, since it governs all three values and also increases your damage with melee weapons. Atleast we won't miss constantly.
Wait, why is it suddenly morning?
The game says it's almost midnight, what the hell.
It seems that the campfire screen gradually advances the time of day the longer you stay camping, so while I was managing the level-ups, it gradually changed from nightime to daytime. No time actually passed in-game, as you need to perform some action to advance the in-game clock. It looks kinda weird. Not sure if it's intended or not.
Anyway, let's heal up!
Well, could've gone a lot better, but atleast it's something. Also, the campfire screen returns back to nightime, since the in-game time moved forward by an hour or so.
Unlike in BoD HD, each character can perform multiple actions during camping, instead of being limited to 1 action per rest.
This was my original opinion:
This might sound like another aimed to make the game easier, but I kinda like it. The time advances like always and certain actions are limited and have their own tradeoffs.
Like for example, each character can only be treated once until they rest, but now you can also treat the wounds of everyone else with the same character or maybe Treat Wounds of one character and Treat the disease of another one. It always felt weird to me that the druid couldn't keep watch despite 5 hours passing by and the druid already returning with the herbs since.
It "might" cause some balance problems, but I can't think of any right now. Ok, having just one specialist is even easier in this game, but you could do that in Blade of Destiny HD as well, it was just slightly more annoying. And the characters still can't treat themselves, so you need atleast two healers regardless. So, let's just say it's an and move on.
Ahhh, how naive I was. Well, I retract the . I still like the idea, but just like the skill levelling change, it's not implemented properly. Well, we'll just avoid doing that.
Reinhardt failed to be useful, let's hope our Rainbow Elf manages to get us some food.
Wow, 11 rations? Nice!
(If you've read my previous update, you can see how silly hunting can get).
Morkar meditates to conver some Life Energy to Astral Energy. This is probably the fastest way to recover AE. Afterwards, someone else can heal him to raise his LE back up.
Reinhardt manages to enchant his obsidian dagger, so it's finally magical.
We assing watch to the party members with highest Instinct and Perception. If we get attacked with no one keeping watch, then everyone will start the encounter sleeping.
We sleep for 18 hours and don't get any random encounter.
We continue on our way, after a while, we have to rest again.
During the next rest, Morkar turns his staff into a magical flashlight. MicoSelva tries to heal him with the Balm spell, but fails, so Jimmious heals Morkar to full instead. Reinhardt finally manages to find some herbs.
We have to camp for the third time in a row, no random encounters so far. Morkar meditates again and Reinhardt heals him. The healing is sure much more reliable then on low levels in Blade of Destiny HD. There, I was lucky if they managed to heal atleast 4 LE. I had to use the Balm spell to regain LE.
After one more rest, we finlly arrive at the Fork in the road and can choose our next destination. One is a town, the other one is another fork in the road. We go to the town.
During the next rest, Morkar tries to enchant his staff further, but fails even with his maxed out Arcane Lore.
We finally get to Hillhouse, which seems to be very windy. No random encounters so far, strange. In BoD HD, we would've to fend atleast 1 wolf or orc encounter to get this far.
Let's talk to the woman!
"What can I do you for?" :D
She points us in the right direction, but doesn't have any info concerning the Salamander Stone.
Let's chat some more, she seems to like Nevill. Maybe they could go on a date or something.
Or not. Also, turns out that "woman" was really a guy this whole time.
Let's take a moment to appreciate this beautiful, animated grass!
We can now also talk to the people in houses, instead of just being thrown out instantly. I don't think we can rob them though.
We can refill our waterskins at the "fountain" (actually a well).
By looking at the map, we can see that this town has a Tavern (Goblet icon), Inn (House icon), and General Store (Scales Icon). We can sleep and eat at the inn, while in the tavern we can talk to people, drink booze, buy food and drink, make money and play some tavern games. The tavern sounds fun, so let's go there!
As you see, we can earn money by dancing, playing cards (and cheating), playing music, stealing from people or using "arobatics". We can also play some tavern games!
Nevill finally finds some use and makes us a tiny bit of cash by stealing and cheating at cards (if you fail, you get thrown out of the tavern and can't enter it again for some time). Note that time advances each time you do this.
We can either take part in a knife-throwing contest, or "The way to Prem", which is a drinking contest. Let's try knife-throwing.
Nevill's got this! I hope, his throwing skill is as high as it can be at this level.
And it seems like he doesn't have much competition here.
Unfortunately, Nevill loses to the woman that "sometimes even hits the target". Unfortunately, there are no participation awards, or even a prize for second place, so we get nothing.
The amount of money you have to bet is random, as are the opponents. So it also depends somewhat on luck, you want the highest possible bet and the lousiest opponents.
Not 360 NoScope tryhards like these guys.
We play this game a bunch of times and eventually, Nevill manages to win the one game with the lousiest bet . Also, notice that no time passes while playing either tavern game, unlike when you gamble or pickpocket, an obvious oversight by the devs. Jimmious is drunk from playing that drinking game earlier.
Just like that knife throwing game, the opponent and bet is random. It alternates between Jimmious and the other guy and the first one to drink 5 mugs of beer wins (the opponent goes first, so you are at a disadvantage).
Each round, they either manage to drink the beer all at once or they have to finish it during the next round, falling behind.
Jimmious actually manages to win this on his first try! The character does actually get drunk from this, which is a nice touch.
Roxor's Commander Boreale also tries this, but he has to compete with a dwarf and thus loses badly.
Nevill steals something to cover our losses.
Overall, I kinda like the tavern games. The potential reward is nice and there's risk involved. The missing passage of time is the only bad thing about this, as you could play thousands of games without the gametime advancing by one second and thus you could repeat this as much as you like, without starving to death. Well, atleast the knife-throwing one, since you character gets drunk from "the way to Prem".
Jimmious and Nevill actually gain a title for their victory, which is a nice touch. Half of the title is written in german though.
We can also choose to sit somewhere in the tavern. Sitting at the occupied table allows us to talk to someone, but they won't tell us anything more then the people outside.
Let's celebrate. To our new champions! Round for everybody!
If you refuse to pay, you get thrown out of the tavern.
But Codexers are generous and don't care about money.
As you can see, Nevill just wasted 12 Ducats on this pointlessness, which is a lot, but we can always hunt if we need more money .
Anyway, the menu looks terrible, so we won't eat anything here, no, thank you!
The hell, we've spent 12 Ducats at this place, you still want more?
Note that we don't actually get thrown out of the tavern, which seems to be another bug.
We can even talk to him like nothing happened. Well, fine, we won't forget this insolence, we are leaving, never to return!
And you can be sure Nevill will give this place a terrible review on Yelp.
At the nearby Inn, we get some information about Salamander Stones.
We also rent a room to sleep in. The more expensive rooms boost LE and AE regeneration when resting. Obviously, Codexers are very , so prepare us a lavish suite, woman!
Well, I guess this will have to do.
Reinhardt enchants his dagger once more, then we go to sleep and get another cutscene!
I couldn't manage to screenshot it (all screens showed the loading screen instead), and there are no videos of it online, so I will just describe it for you:
Some creeper in black robes sneaks over to a window to spy on a sleeping, fully-clothed and red-haired human female sleeping in a bed.
I guess she was a placeholder supposed to symbolize one of the "adventurers", AKA us. Would've been nice if they actually showed one of our characters in that bed, since the graphical quality was about the same as normal gameplay and the sleeping animations are obviously already there, as seen on the campfire screen.
Anyway, after that it switches to full person view of that creep in our room, talking directly to us in first person. He introduces himself as a servant of Phex, the god of thieves. Apparently, the throwing axe Star Trail was stolen from his temple and he wants us to find it. Then it ends.
Also, I've tried the game in german for a time and that one still has that german "voiceover guy" from BoD HD. The german voice acting seems somewhat better, but I can't really judge as I don't know german very well.
Part 5: First Random Encounter
Fine, let's get out of this dump.
As soon as we step outside, we get another event.
Nevill is apparently Jesus Christ, our lord and savior! Or something like that. So, when's he gonna get canonised?
We avoid the signpost once again to explore the surrounding countryside.
The "river" looks really weird. There are no water sound effects, walking in the water has the same sound effects as walking on sand.
In this picture, Codexers go for a swim!
This time, we can't actually leave the ingame map, as proper boundaries are established. I guess.
We continue to travel south.
Yeah, we get lots of food with MicoSelva's amazing skills. We'll try not to exploit this. Maybe it's just that this part of the map has lots of game and once we get further, food becomes scarce. I certainly hope so. Still, the unlimited hunting makes that irrelevant regardless, so we'll just limit our hunting to once per rest.
Fine, I've dumped all of that food on Morkar, to make him "happier".
See? Everything's just perfect!
Morkar even gets to upgrade his staff further, while the edgelord druid fails with his dagger.
This is where we're going, since it sounds like a swell place. Afterwards, we will continue south to those dwarven mountains.
Finally, our first random encounter! Yay?
Well, I think it's random, atleast.
Wow, that's a lot of orcs.
Let's summon some help to even the odds.
Bwahaha, yes!
Each round, atleast 2 or 3 orcs will freeze in fear, most likely due to that Heshthot and maybe also Reinhardt's green ghost buddy.
Since we are already performing black magic by summoning demons, let's add necromancy to the mix.
It takes two tries, since Morkar actually failed to cast that spell the first time, but now we also have a huge skeleton under our command.
The Ghost and the Hesthoth are great at tanking, as they are both immune to non-magical damage and these orcs can't cast spells.
MicoSelva tries to turn one of the orcs into his minion, but fails.
Morkar Paralyses one of the orcs for a few hours and thus effectively "kills" him. Although the description makes it seem like a Petrify spell, the actual spell effect looks more like a Web spell.
Jimmious manages to deal 17 damage in one hit.
MicoSelva finally manages brainwash one orc with his pretty rainbow magic and turns him into our ally to further expand the Codex army. It took 3 tries.
The orc proves to be a surprisingly valuable ally and deals more damage under MicoSelva's control then Nevill did since we left the first town. Sadly, we can't recruit him as an NPC companion. Nor can we romance him .
Now that everyone else has either died, fled or is paralysed, the only one remaining is our stalwart ally, the still mind-controlled orc. We can't spare him, so .
We get a lot of battleaxes and some money. Also arrows for MicoSelva, which is handy, since he almost ran out of the 20 arrows he started with.
While the games seems really easy so far, keep in mind that we are fighting normal, run of the mill orcs. If we were in Blade of Destiny HD, they'd most likely slaughter our level 1 assess, but since we are level 5 with good spells and starting equipment, they are more of an annoyance then actual threat. I can't wait till we get to fight something actually dangerous to test the Codex team's skills.
On our way to Gashok, we encounter this charming fellow. Of course, we aren't gonna be antisocial, let's chat for a bit!
...did he just hit on MicoSelva?
Anyway, let's ask him about some stuff!
Well, what do you know, seems like he knows something!
: "I mean, I'd only accompanied her in the first place because I'm not the kind of guy who let's a woman go to her doom all alone. But, when I saw that, I made tracks and fast."
We have to select that option again and again and again to continue this conversation and it's just as awkward as it sounds. It doesn't help that the Topic turns white just after you click on it, as if they didn't have anything more to add, yet they still have waaaay more to say. Not sure if it was like this in the original Star Trail, but even if it was like that, the least they could do in the remake was to add a simple Continue button. I mean, they no longer have that stupid copy protection, where you need to write a random word from the manual, so...
Still, it's kinda funny that MicoSelva apparently repeats the same question over and over again.
Well, let's also question him about his stupid name.
Probably Jimmious.
This conversation flows better, since atleast your character asks different questions, instead of endlessly repeating "Would you happen to know something about Star Trail?"
We bid the man farewell and continue onward!
Not sure what this is about, as we I have the watches set already and the game remembers them. I guess it shows up to remind you that the option exists?
Another event. The elf on the right looks like MicoSelva's long lost twin brother. Let's greet him!
Well, that's rude! Someone should tell them it's not polite to stare. Or maybe they are just deaf. Try again?
They probably smelled Jimmious, which explains their retreat.
After that, Reinhardt manages to find some herbs!
Almost there!
We have no shortage of food, but MicoSelva still has to go hunting to replenish our water supplies. Also it's raining now, which means that everyone's most likely going to get sick, since I forgot to go to that General Store in Hillhouse and buy some sleeping bags.
Yep, called it!
Doctor Jimmious is on it!
We need herbs to cure diseases, fortunately I had Reinhardt gather a nice collection of them on the way there.
Ok fine, guess we will just rest and then try again.
Reinhardt is healthy once again, but unfortunately, he failed to cure Morkar. 2 times in a row in fact. Let's hope no one else gets sick.
Yay! Now we can-
Know what, I don't care if you're sick, go gather herbs, slave!
(As you can see, the illness lowers his attributes)
Now, we can rest and try to cure him once again-
Ok, this was unexpected. This might be our first actually random encounter, that previous one might have been a scripted ambush, but I'm not sure. Oh well, it doesn't matter. To battle!
Jimmious is the only one awake, as he was the one keeping watch. Everyone else is asleep, but since we had a watch set, they will awaken pretty quickly.
Morkar is the first one to awaken and summons our Heshoth slave to take care of these pitiful orcs.
By the start of round 3, everyone except Boreale is awake and ready to kick some orc ass.
Morkar casts Horriphobus on one of the orcs, who flees from the battlefield as soon as it's his turn.
It's kinda silly that you have to go around those bowls, but oh well.
That battle was pretty short and easy, we now have to find some weaponsmith to sell of those surplus weapons we've been carrying around.
Also, Reinhardt is no longer sick, so he doesn't have an excuse to be a slacker anymore. Go gather some herbs, slave!
MicoSelva starts to bring back somewhat less surplus food. Seems hunting is getting harder the further away we are from the fairy elf land, which is nice.
We've finally arrived' Woohoo! I'm sure that the locals are nice and friendly-
Seems they don't like charming and prestigious people from the Codex around these parts. Wonder why?
Also, that "well-aimed" crossbow bolt did only 1 damage. It's actually random, but it doesn't seem like it ever does enough damage to oneshot you.
I wouldn't call this anything close to a "good surgical strike". A pretty pathetic attempt, the bolt barely scratched MicoSelva.
Well, I'm sure everyone else is really nice and-
Alright, I guess this is an EHVUL town full of nihilistic jerks. We should fit right in then!
This happened at two separate inns, the first happened after a cutscene, the second one appears to be permanent, I spent like a week in that inn and each time, we got this "special room".
Part 7: Nevill Offers His Services (but can't into "handel abschließen")
We visit the nearby temple of Phex in search of information.
Ok, now we know where to go atleast.
But she doesn't give us anything about that lousy assassin.
In fact, whenever we ask someone about this, they either don't know or suddenly get very busy and refuse to talk to us anymore. I assume that's intentional.
We still have about 1 hour before the shops close, so we can buy something.
We buy some recipes, first a recipe for making "Hyggalian" Fire (don't remember the exact name) so that Morkar can mass produce throwing weapons for Neville, next we buy a recipes for healing and magic potions. We just have to find someone who sells an alchemy set for Morkar.
Also, you can sell axes to the herbalist, but I assume that she pays less then a weaponsmith would.
We can also "handel abschließen" to buy for less and sell for more. If you fail at "handel abschließen" three times, the shopkeeper kicks you out of the store. It depends on Persuade and also the hidden "German" skill.
Fortunatelly, Nevill is a master of "handel abschließen" and thus gets us 50% off.
The store closes as soon as we leave, so no more shopping for a while.
Looks more like cardboard to me.
We refill our waterskins with the dirty water from the river, shich is presumably where the inhabitants of this city dump their garbage. It feels marvelous.
We find some tavern, where Nevill immediately gets to work and earns us some money.
He then immediately loses it by repeatedly failing at knife-throwing and his eventual prize barely covers our losses. Seriously, his gambling problem is going to ruin us.
Atleast he gets another half-german title. Maybe if he collects them all, he'll become an honorary german!
Maybe even unlock mastery rank in "handel abschließen"!
We ask the inkeeper about the Ash Pile, but just like with the Crossbow Bolt, he refuses to speak to us further right after asking that. Same for all the other people in the tavern.
I asked you one question! You promised to fulfill my wishes, dammit!
This happens after we change table to talk with other people a bunch of times, but it doesn't seem to have any noticeable effect.
We find a general store, which unfortunately doesn't sell sleeping bags or really anything we need. I buy everyone a set of cutlery (no dishes, since they cost 6 ducats a piece and we aren't rich yet). He doesn't want to talk about that ash either.
Also, Nevill now can't into "handel abschlieben" and fails two times, so we have to settle for a 20% discount. For shame, Nevill! Spreche harder!
We'll have to raise his Language skill as soon as possible, so that his german and "handel abschließen" get a boost!
On our way from the store, we pass by a group of zombies.
We get to the marketplace, all the merchants are standing there in front of their merchandise, but they refuse to sell us anything, because they are only open on Praios Day.
If anyone here's familiar with DSA, could you please explain to me why the hell aren't they open on Market Day?
We come across a ruined building, but Nevill fails to find anything useful in there.
We ask someone in a nearby tavern about that and they tell us about Artherion, but when we ask about Artherion, they suddenly get very mad at us and refuse to speak to Nevill any further. Everyone else either does the same or only gives us incomplete info for this quest.
I don't get it.
Also, I think you can still cast spells even if the character is drunk. Hell, you can cast some spells better while drunk.
NEVILL??? WHAT THE HELL? YOU'D DO THIS?
FOR JUST 1 DUCAT?
Next time, "handel abschließen" that price waaay higher, or we'll kick you out of the party and replace you with a freaking JUGGLER!
(Points for trying, though)
We visit some random houses and finally learn something about Artherion.
We also learn that everyone here is racist against elves. And that miller was an elf.
We rent a room at the inn and Morkar manages to fully upgrade his staff .
When we go to sleep, we trigger another event.
Ok, some religious fanatics with pyromania are responsible, got it.
The cultists bring upon us a most powerful curse, the black screen glitch. Those fiends!
Fortunately, sleeping for 5 hours breaks that vile curse.
After leaving the inn, we come across some douchebag priest. No way are we moving, we like it just fine in the middle of the street, thank you!
Wow, an edgelord! Well, we can beat him at that! We have Reinhardt, the edgiest druid ever, we summon demons and dabble in necromancy and if all that fails, we will just run away, leave Nevill behind as a distraction and get a shiny new juggler later.
After that charming encounter, we return to the herbalist, who actually knows where to find that elven miller.
We spend a few days at this inn, and the inkeeper is a charming fellow who has the same hairstyle as Reinhardt.
Unfortunately, it seems he doesn't like us very much, as he always gives us the room that's located in Limbo. I guess we should've paid for a Suite instead of being cheap and getting a Dormitory, otherwise we'd get a nice room in the Seven Heavens with a nice view from Mount Celestia.
Well, let's get out of this place, it totally sucks. We take the western road from town. There's no signpost, but we just have to walk to the edge of the map and it should bring us to the travelling map view.
Or not.
Ok, turns out this whole place is located in Limbo. We have to escape from this nightmare at all costs! Onwards!
Farewell, Gashok!
We fall for some time, until the town disappears. We've escaped from that terrible pocket dimension, but now we are trapped in Limbo.
Unfortunately, we can't teleport anywhere yet.
But with our trusty map, we find a way out of this hellish place!
Yes, thanks to our trusty map we've escaped Limbo and are back in Aventuria! Or Arkania. Or Ethra. Or Dere. Or whatever.
They really should have spent more time in early access and testplaying the game after the first one. These are bugs you should stumble on just by playing the game...
It's "Handel abschließen" (= finish/commit to the trade) not "abeschlieben", a German thing...
It's odd with the traders standing at the market when closed. That was already fixed in BoD...
"Market Day" is just a name like Saturday. Not all villages and cultures may use the same day? Praios Day should cuturally be like Sunday in our world. Which would mean no work day aka not selling things... *shrug*
I'm starting to get a bit angry about this. It's a plot city ffs. Crafty Studio really tries hard to sabotage the game launch and their merits... Bug-free should be number one priority after BoD. Getting a bad reception for the game because of bugs is a shame and I guess cost a lot of sales in the end from new players and old ones alike.
aimed to make the game easier, but I kinda like it. The time advances like always and certain actions are limited and have their own tradeoffs.
and move on.
Unfortunately, there are no participation awards, or even a prize for second place, so we get nothing.
The character does actually get drunk from this, which is a nice touch.
The hell, we've spent 12 Ducats at this place, you still want more? 
, so prepare us a lavish suite, woman!
.
: "I mean, I'd only accompanied her in the first place because I'm not the kind of guy who let's a woman go to her doom all alone. But, when I saw that, I made tracks and fast."
