25 October 2021

More on my DND campaign 2021

Last time they were in the semi finals of the Regional Tournament. There have been 12 more sessions since and a lot has happened!


The Regionals had only the barbarian player in the semis out of 4 players, the other 3 were cut down. The barbarian was unfortunately defeated in his semi final but would go on to defeat the treacherous Artificer who killed the fighter player. He showed the artificer lady mercy, surprisingly, but she was swept away by the Queens' people. The Agisu Queensman would fight the Queenhater and win, revealing shortly beforehand to the players he was in fact Gaius the Revolutionary Leader and would use the award ceremony to attack the East Queen.

In a somewhat epic bout the players would join in on fighting the Queen and her cabal, ultimately defeating the East Queen, with the final blow being delivered fittingly enough by the revolutionary leader. After she died, reality shifted and everyone was thrown far away magically.




The players awoke in the middle of a mountain, not sure where but definitely underground and dark. They made their way through and met Mo, who was the fighter player who had drawn up a new character. Joining forces they fought through some Ropers and Umber Hulks as well as a small army of Trolls of various sizes who were making their way into the dungeon. A weird barrier prevented them from exiting but not entering the dungeon. They would have to figure out the source of this strange barrier to get out...

They briefly entered the Plane of Earth via another portal in the dungeon and almost ran out of air but quickly figured out how to get out of there but were harrassed by a Dao and its Mephit buddies. They came across a room full of Earth Elementals and were subsequently sandwiched between the two forces but came out victorious. A strange altar and setup was being guarded by the Elementals, which they eventually found the reason for - a great locked stone door at the bottom of a great set of stairs. They figured out the ritual with the help of some handouts scattered in the dungeon and opened the chamber....

A Stone Man and Xhardja awaited them and after an epic battle in which the rogue player 'wished' for all of them to be full health again, they won and discovered the Crystal of Earth in Session 38. The 'second' Crystal which they inadvertently skipped and found #3 instead, the Crystal of Air in Session 13. All this after Session 8 and the Crystal of Fire. Mo snatched the Crystal of Earth, just like their deceased fighter who nabbed the first Crystal!





Exiting the dungeon they encountered a really long, stone bridge. Marching across it was an army of Duergar. A parley ensued with the party almost negotiating the Arch Mage and Duergar Warlord to back off for now but then the Wizard player threw a Dawn at the baddies! A very interesting fight ensued which almost got one or two of them thrown off the bridge and a surprising near death or three. The evil band were defeated.




Back in the valley they had found the Crystal of Fire in a few weeks of ingame time ago, it was now snowing unnaturally and a great lump of ice was dominating the skyline. Uh oh! They were almost going to ignore this and went on a brief shopping spree in the starting village which was nearby until they discussed amongst themselves that they must investigate this 'ice palace', which at the minimum would be the right thing to do and at the maximum net them a Crystal of Water if such a thing existed. Onward!




They wandered around the valley and got lost in the snowstorm. They encountered the bodies of kobolds everywhere and other stuff... A Remorhaz attacked at one stage. A halfling sorcerer named Kettle decided to tag along with them and they managed to negotiate their way past some frost giants which guarded a frozen waterfall, then past a bunch of abominable yetis. A small army of kobolds was at the heart of this complex, engaged in training exercises or something. A fireball put an end to that and the slaughter began. One kobold out of like 50 survived and swore to follow them. His name is Phlegm. He showed the party how to teleport to the 'ice palace'. Inside there was an Ice Devil, a representative of the Confederate Demon Army, who stood aside. Lots of not-fighting but it was good policy. After that a lair of White Dragons followed, 1 Ancient, 1 Adult, 3 Young Dragons and 4 Wyrmlings. A mighty battle!




Soon after ridding the world of White Dragons they marched north to Moonwheat once again just in time for the great battle. A war council was held in the local pub (biggest space) and they resolved to attack the Confederate HQ head on. The Queens' Army would be on one flank and the Revolutionaries the other while the misfits marched up the middle.



A great force of demons faced them but they received assistance from the gods (Planetar) from old friends (a Death Knight, priests for healing), enemies (a blue dragon) and 'nature' (an Acid Phoenix made its debut). A cleric-paladin sister duo who they travelled with before near Moonwheat assisted them as well as a guest player's Elven fighter and various other bits and pieces. They systematically pulled apart the demon army in part 1, part 2 saw them fighting the elites and killing the Marilith commander only for her Balor partner to appear, then part 3 saw them fight the true commanders, a Sibriex and a Molydeus. The barbarian, wizard and paladin were all Feebleminded at one point and the barbarian has had his head cut off by the Molydeus and died! But they won the day in the end.



So here they are celebrating the win, what's next? The land to the east of the town of Moonwheat is being slowly drowned by water. What on earth is causing that? The Dwarflake is now 10 times its original size. The barbarian is now dead but will surely be revived soon. The Crystal of Fire is still AWOL. The war between the Queens and the Revolutionary is sure to come crashing back. And strange laughter is being heard in the distance...

Updated for Sunday 24th October 2021 session: they are now level 13 having gotten the 18000+ experience for killing all those demons. This was reduced by all the help they got. Anyway... barbarian raised from dead, they went back to Moonwheat and were turned away by the Queen's army, so they rested in the ruined farmhouse they fought the demons in before on the hill and then resolved to break into the town and get the 'foldable boat' the wizard there alluded to. This will somehow help them resolve the rising water levels of the nearby Dwarflake, which now surrounds the city and floods much of the savannah. As of this writing they are attacking the city, defended by the Queen Army and a coven of hags that were allied to the army and being used to dispose of prisoners and political enemies...

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Updated kill log:

Session 349
east queen, 2 semis, third place, final23300
kinga5900
6 guards700
lex sbuckler700
Session 357
Water Ele 11800
Roper 47200
Umber Hulk 23600
Session 366
Troll 35400
Dire Troll10000
Rot Troll5000
Venom Troll2900
Session 3718
Galeb Duhr 12300
Rust Monster 6600
Earth Ele Myrm 12900
Earth Ele 11800
dust mephits 6600
trolls 23600
dao7200
Session 382
Xhardja10000
Stone Man5900
Session 3921
Duergar Warlord2300
Soulblade 2400
Kavalrachni 31350
F steeder 3600
Duergar Spy 41800
duergar s gua 62700
archmage8400
despot8400
Session 4053
remorhaz 17200
kobold 25625
kobold underling 15375
kobold d shi 91800
kobold mage 3600
Session 419
wyrmling 4450
young 32300
adult 110000
ancient 125000
Session 4274
Barlgura 35400
Manes 712400
Session 43132
Manes 842100
Tanarukk 410800
Marilith15000
Barlgura 11800
Hezrou 311700
Vrock 24600
Chasme 613800
Armanite 514500
Shadow Dragon10000
Shadow 252500
Session 4412
Armanite 12900
Cambion 11800
Balor 122000
Flameskull 44400
Sibriex20000
Molydeus33000
Glabrezu 110000
Vrock 24600
Session 4537
lakour soldiers 361800
annis hag12300
Some more stats:

Ingame DAYS:47Rations
Ari8000210
Ephrim1342068
Erin1342068
Scorch1342068
Kills1108Session 45
Current Time22:00
Houses2Land/Farm
Cards drawn13-
Wishes castSc 0/2 Mo 1/2-

So after 47 ingame days and about 500+ real days they are level 13 and a half. 

session #levelRoyce/EphrimCathy/AriMoErinCian/Scorch
11
22
32
+guest
43
+guest
53
63
74
84
94
104
115
125
135
145
155
165
176
186
196
206
217
227
237
247
257
267
278
288
299
309
319
329
3310
3410
3510cathy as a druid
3610cathy as a druid
3711
3811cathy as Mo
3911cathy as Mo
4012cathy as Mo
4112cathy as Mo
4212cathy as Moguest+
4312cathy as Mo
4412cathy as Mo
4513
4613

^ Session #, level of players, name of players. Interesting how reasonable the levelling up has been, I am a bit worried about my sticking to experience points BUT it has worked out in the end. 5e accelerates toward the end anyway 10-20 levels it gets very fast. I am currently projecting the game to end mid-2022 and am looking at the next campaign. There are still the Crystals and the Queens War to resolve which should take us to 20 and fin. Factoring in breaks for Christmas into January and the odd week off between January-April it's looking like a June 2022 finish, 2 years after it started. I'll type it here: 17 by March, 20 by June makes sense. There will probably be a session or three at 20 to fight tarrasques and whatnot but that will probably be the end. Maybe take July off or so and then back into it. 

01 September 2021

Love/Hate #31 Final Fantasy II - fresh from the drafts at 100% completion

 OK so I started this around the end of July and managed to beat it yesterday at time of writing the 20th of August. Not that it was ever in doubt as I had the walkthrough the whole time but my will to soldier on and finish this game as fast as I did FF1 wasn't quite there. It was both comforting and painful to see it was basically just FF1 again in a lot of ways. Then it was kind of sadistically pleasing that it was allegedly a much tougher game than FF1 due to various changes. Interesting. But that died down a bit when I saw how user friendly they made it.


All in all there is a bit more character, dialogue and plot to this one but not much else has changed. The appearance is the same. The music remaster is great, like FF1, some bangers. I did mute it at times and listen to other stuff as there are a lot of grind-y sections and its hard to listen to dungeon theme and battle them over and over. No minigames really.

The gooey

The mechanics are different: notably no Black Mage>Black Wizard job upgrade and no Vancian spell slot magic, which is a shame. You start with Fire 1 and Cure 1 etc and level them up by using them to a maximum of Cure XVI etc. Notably you level up your weapons as well - Swords, Axes, Spears etc start at 1 and end at 16th level.



This was perversely exciting as I said as there were various ways to game the system from the old SNES days BUT they had largely refined and fixed a lot of the old broken stuff and now everything works as intended so it was not particularly difficult and I was very conservative as I type below in my party composition and strategy.

My party:



Firion - I read various guides that stated either make him an 'evasion fighter' or a 'heavy armour fighter' with the other role going to Guy but instead I made him sort of my dedicated fighter and just equipped him as best as I could. I taught him some spells like Cure later to act as sort of a Knight but he only used those outside battle. Small aside but I liked this guy as a protagonist, he got shit done. Oh and he was sword and shield the whole game, or sometimes sword and sword.


Maria - they all start with similar intellect which governs magic but her one is slightly higher so black mage and done. She initially helped out with casting spells either at one target or several and then for bosses she would dole out the Haste and the Berserk to the others but she spent the latter 50% of the game casting Flare over and over. She spent 99% of the game Unarmed as well, even though I never saw a spell 'fail' due to armour or weapons so maybe they removed that old mechanic.




Guy - though I at times regretted my decision I made him the dedicated White Mage. I gave him a club or staff or whatever and heavy armour but he spent most of the game casting healing spells. You could tell he was a good warrior but feck it. I did spent the latter half of the game casting Ultima with him, as it was White Magic and empowered by his stats. There was a glitch in the old versions where Guy would be targeted more and due to being hit more his HP would go up but they changed all that so it is moot.



4th person - This was the real anchor half the game, not having a dedicated party member. I actually really liked some of them but sadly they would leave me. After seeing Leila carve stuff up with dual wielding weapons I just had the 4th member the guest character cut stuff up with dual wielding all the time and nothing else. They were often too far behind in one field or another and temporary to put too much investment into. When I finally did get the dedicated 4th party member he was relegated to dual wielding a spear and dagger and clothed in heavy armour and nothing else. Attack only!

---




So in conclusion not all that much to think about or plan for. Firion hit stuff with swords all game and occasionally cast Cure outside battles, which he got to like level 11 by the end but his MP never rose much as he never really used it in battle so he had like 50MP. Maria blasted stuff all game and would buff during boss battles but sometimes that was not necessary. Guy healed and sometimes casted defensive buffs but also, not necessary. He also used Ultima a lot. 4th person just attacked because fudge it.

Plot



Without spoiling the whole thing my gods what a miserable plot for a good portion of the game, which I liked it was refreshing. You seem to stumble from one failure to another while the Empire hound you constantly. Was great! Things kind of pick up near the end but yeah it always seems to be mired in failure and defeat. So that makes final victory all the better!

Villain


The Emperor is the real bad guy and he is delightfully prickish. And yes I used the Blood Sword on him at the end I threw it on the final 4th character so he could do like 3000 damage a pop.


Music


Those who know, know. What was apparently a good soundtrack from the SNES and GBA remaster is now even better. I really enjoyed listening to it. The overworld theme, the Middle-Eastern esque Boss theme, the battle theme itself, some of the dungeons and towns... good stuff.

Achievements



Many of them were the same as FF1, complete the Bestiary, get all treasurer chests, several plot milestones and so on. The only awkward ones were the mastering a weapon to level 16 and mastering a spell to level 16.




I stopped right before the point of no return and made sure to clear the bestiary to the point where everything was ahead of me and I wouldn't miss anything later. The only annoying one was the Iron Giant which has a tiny chance of appearing in the final dungeon so a lot of grinding and a party death or two.




The treasure chests were fine with a guide and there is a great simple one on Steam but without it there is no way I would have gotten all almost 300 chests some are just Super Nintendo level hard to figure out, invisible walls and stuff, missables.
This reminds me: there is a concept in FF2 of 'trap rooms' doors in dungeons that go into empty rooms with super high encounter rates and you're a few steps in when you enter them so you're bound to fight a few monsters before getting out. The walkthrough kills that dead you don't have to do any.




I cleared the game and got the bestiary and whatnot but was still missing weapon tactics and spell tactics so would need to do them after the game ended on the overworld:




The spell to 16th level was fine I actually rigged up a system for myself which I was proud of. I would go into a battle, have everyone dead except Guy and have the auto battle on versus 1 monster and just cast Cure over and over until he ran out of MP, then he would usually whale on the enemy until they were dead. I would then use Ethers, Cottages or Elixirs to get my MP back and repeat. I tried very hard to get Flare or Ultima to 16 through the course of the game but the highest they got was around 11.




The sword to 16th was tougher but I figured out something myself. Firions had like sword 12 by the end of the game with the Masamune and Excalibur equipped. In FF2 there is the Blood Sword, which has terrible stats but takes 1/16th of the enemies health and gives it to you if you attack them. The guides were like use the Blood Sword and attack yourself or something but NO I read that Undead enemies don't get hurt by Blood Sword when attacked and instead you lose HP and they gain it. So I got into fights with Ghasts and Vampire Girls and had Firion attack them and Guy cast Cure and just auto battled for maybe 30 minutes to an hour and after maybe half a dozen battles sword was at 16 and the achievement popped and the achievement for having every achievement popped as well. Done!




September #9 Shadowheart Origin #6 Honour Mode part 3 Act1:2 almost done

Finishing off Act 1. The party Shadowheart Trickery Cleric 7 Nothing too exciting, my MC is usually fairly balanced and not too specialised ...