Arena: Unreal City

Entering shops gives you a title card specific to the season.

         

Note: for symmetry purposes, I so wanted to offer a posting here titled "Arena: Star Trail." I tried to think of any way I could thematically work that subtitle into an entry on the game, and I came up with nothing. The outdoor scenes don't even show stars at night. 

 

Let's take a deeper dive into Arena's cities. I covered them a bit in my second entry, but I understand them better now. Perhaps the  most important thing to know about Arena's cities is that when you're analyzing them, it doesn't really matter what city you cover. They're pretty much all the same. But if it helps, the city that makes up all the screenshots and examples below is Lillandril on Summurset Isle. Let's first talk about how I got here:

   

• When I rested in the Halls of Colossus after finding the fourth piece of the Staff of Chaos, Ria Silmane appeared in my dreams to tell me that my next stop would be "an ancient stronghold of sorcery called the Crystal Tower." All she knew about it was that you could see the southern tip of the Dragon's Teeth from it. The Dragon's Teeth stretched from High Rock to Valenwood, Since I had already found the staff pieces in Valenwood and Elsweyr, it seemed likely that the Crystal Tower would be on Summurset Isle.

• I tried to travel directly from the Halls of Colossus to Summurset Isle, but the game warned me that given "my condition," I might not survive the journey. Apparently, I had gotten diseased at some point and not noticed. 

     

Thanks for the heads-up.

     

• Thus, I traveled to the city-state of Senchal, practically next door to the Halls of Colossus in Elsweyr. Jagar Tharn appeared in a waking vision shortly after I arrived and sent two nightblades to kill me. I made short work of them.

     

Aw, thanks. You seem cunning and worthy yourself.

       

• I got cured at a temple, then fast-traveled to Skywatch in Summurset Isle. (The game shows the character riding a horse, even though it's impossible to read the island purely by horse.) There, I sold my excess equipment, bought a "Cure Disease" spell at the Mage's Guild, and started asking around about the Crystal Tower. A couple of NPCs said they'd heard something about it in conjunction with Lillandril, on the far western side of the island.

    

Let's talk first about:

   

The Province

 

Summurset Isle is a province in the southwestern part of the empire of Tamriel, the only province not attached to the mainland. It's actually an archipelago of several islands; later Elder Scrolls lore will call the province "Summerset Isles" and will make Summerset Isle the largest of them. The manual says only that it's the home of the High Elves. Fans of later Elder Scrolls games know it as the seat of the Thalmor Empire, but that's a long way in the future.

    

Major cities are Lillandril, Firsthold, Skywatch, Dusk, Sunhold, Alinor (later, the capital), Shimmerene, and Cloudrest, Minor towns (which, it must be reiterated, are no smaller than major cities when you actually visit them) are Archen Grangrove, Belport Run, Corgrad Wastes, Ebon Stadmont, Glenview, Graddun Spring, Holly Falls, Karndar Watch, Karnwasten Moor, Kings Haven, Marbruk Brook, Marnor Keep, Old Falls, Riverfield, Riverwatch, Rosefield, Sea Keep, Silsailen Point, Silverwood, Thorheim Guard, Vulkhel Guard, Wasten Coridale, West Guard, and White Guard. I might have even missed one or two.

      

The islands and cities of Summurset Isle.

      

That's a bizarrely large number of cities, and it doesn't take a particularly savvy player to realize that there's no way a 1994 game was going to populate three dozen cities in a single province with anything approaching meaningful handcrafted content. But I'm not sure that, as a 1994 player, I would have suspected that none of the cities would have meaningful handcrafted content.

   

No mainline Elder Scrolls title has been set in the Summerset Isles, so the only thing a player of Daggerfall through Skyrim would know about them is what's written in books and spoken by a few NPCs. I understand, though, that you can visit the province in The Elder Scrolls Online. After I wrote that long list above, I assumed that the game (as it did with Skyrim and Morrowind) kept the major cities but ignored the minor cities. I was surprised to see how many of these names were, in fact, put to later use. I suppose as names, they're good enough. They're a lot like American or British city names—a mixture of descriptive toponyms, pleasant-sounding portmanteaus, eponyms, and references to history or lore that would require some later (retconning, of course) explanation.

    

The City 

     

It takes me 16 days to reach Lillandril from Skywatch. I arrive in the month of Sun's Dusk, towards the end of the year. I am greeted as I enter the city by this title card:

     

Is there a mechanism by which I could "challenge your land"?

      

The player gets a similar title card when he enters any city, and the only things that really change are the dates and the final lines, which never say anything truly unique about a city. A sample from other cities:

   

• "The village of [village name] seems quiet, unaware of your arrival. The people here seem very friendly."
• "Although weary from travel, you find the place seems to beckon for exploration."
• "The streets seem strangely quiet."
• "Know that the guards hold this city, and will fight any who challenge to keep it."

        

Sometimes, the title card gives the name of the current ruler, but not here. Occasionally, I've gotten a message to the effect that some festival is happening in town, but if it has any effect on gameplay, I haven't noticed.

      

Note the building shapes.

       

The player always starts by the gates of the city. The cities are all very large, at least 100 x 100 if the game used tiles. There are about 100 buildings in each one, most simple shapes like rectangles and Ls, some vaguely circular, a few very odd. They're all procedurally-generated, of course, but with rules such that the Mage's Guild is always a fairly complicated building with a courtyard and some surrounding walls. The nature of the procedural generation allows for large, open areas, parks, waterways, and of course elements such as lamp  posts, statues, fountains, wells, and trees. The specific "furnishings" and overall textures are province-specific.

     

A city scene with trees, a river, and mountains rising in the background.

       

Each city and town has:

    

• One Mage's Guild
• One palace
• Around 10-20 inns 
• Around 3-6 temples
• Around 8-15 equipment stores

           

A shingle designates this location as an equipment store.

        

These locations all have shingles hanging out front and are open during the day. Inns are open 24 hours. Every other building is an unnamed place that is never open during the day, but you can burgle it day or night. 

   

The Inhabitants

    

NPCs in each city are randomly generated. Their names mash together prefixes and suffixes, with different races drawing from different libraries for both first and last names, and different sexes drawing from different libraries for first names. For instance, in Elsweyr, I noted that Bara, Sol, and Za were among the prefixes, and davi, kar, and spoor were among the suffixes, so you could have Baradavi, Barakar, Baraspoor, Solkar, Zaspoor, and so forth.

    

Like . . . furry stuff?

                

Also drawn at random are NPC professions and then a little tagline they give to themselves, appropriate to that profession. These elements are all combined when you ask, "Who are you?" These are the results I got from the first ten random NPCs I spoke to in Lillandril, all of whom were probably supposed to be High Elves:

First	Last	Job	Tagline
Morlia	Gaeire	Interpreter	I speak thy language fluently.
Vallisephona	Caemius	Servant	I used to be a successful merchant myself.
Sarullan	Spellian	Fieldhand	I have calluses the size of saddlebags on my hands.
Lilina	Highthar	Mercenary	I move around a lot, but right now I'm working for the king doing odd things.
Vallisephona	Highal	Nomad	I mostly travel around, doing odd jobs.
Lilimia	Larethor	Poet	I don't have very many friends.
Saurtha	Thromwatch	Bodyguard	I am one of the king's private bodyguards.
Andrasara	Larethorin	Thief	I was thinking about picking this Breton's pocket. [I'm sure this changes based on player race.]
Cana	Silinor	Weaver	I hope to be hired to make a new tapestry for the palace.
Andrasara	Ador	Guildmaster	You know, I had to kill a lot of people to get where I am today.

      

If you ask NPCs for their information a second time, they get snarky. 

      

Burn.

          

There are five types of NPCs:

   

• Outdoor wandering NPCs. These make up most of the NPCs in the game. They regenerate every time you leave the city and return (or go in and out of buildings). They wander all over the city, quite fast. They're only around from around 06:00-20:00.

• Outdoor fixed NPCs. These guys don't move. I think their presence is tied to specific buildings; for instance, you might find a fixed wizard outside the Mage's Guild or a priest outside a temple. Other fixed NPCs include jugglers, beggars, and alchemists. They stay where they are even at night, which makes them a nice resource for finding an inn if you happen to arrive in the middle of the night. Their introductory lines are a bit different than wandering NPCs; some of them don't give their names, for instance.

     

A fixed priest on the streets of the city.

     

• Shopkeepers. These NPCs are found inside special buildings and have options related to their services, as below.

• Tavern patrons. Inns are full of patrons who stand in one place and only offer one line of dialogue, usually rude.

• Rulers. Found in palaces, these kings and queens are the only NPCs whose names (I think) don't change. They usually offer a paragraph of platitudes about their cities, unless they're giving you a quest. 

   

Outdoor NPCs have three dialogue options:

  

• Who are you? That's how you get the combinations in the table above.

• Where is... Here, you can ask about the location of a specific store or service or the location of "the nearest" one. The only reason you'd ask about a specific one is if you got a random quest to go there. Either way, if you're very close, the NPC will mark it on your map. Otherwise, he or she will tell you to go in the general direction and ask someone else. This mechanic is drawn from Legends of Valour (1992), incidentally. 

• Rumors. This option subdivides into "General" rumors, which at best will get you a useless bit of "lore" drawn from a random database that has no consequences for actual gameplay at all, and usually doesn't even tell you anything real about the game world. "Work" is how you get leads on randomly-generated local quests or, occasionally, artifact quests.

     

At first, I thought information like this meant something. It does not.

         

Except to follow a string of them to a destination (e.g., the nearest inn), there's never any reason to talk to more than one random NPC per city. The game really dropped the ball here. They could have subdivided the utility of NPCs by their professions, the way Morrowind does.

   

Wandering NPCs disappear as it gets later, and monsters start to replace them. There's no explanation for how orcs and minotaurs are getting into these walled cities just because the sun goes down, but I guess that's why the land is called "the Arena." 

       

Inns

     

Inns are for drinking and sleeping. Lillandril has ten of them: Dancing Jug, Flying Chasm, Green Castle, Green Giants (ho, ho, ho!), Haunted Goblin, Haunted Helm, King's Eagle, Laughing Jug, Red Griffin, and Thirsty Goblin. As you can tell, inn names are always just random selections from two word lists, often nonsensical, although so is "Elephant and Castle." Entering an inn gives the player a title card that varies a bit by location and season:

   

Inns are always constructed to have a large common area with two wings of rooms, storage, or both.. Some have second floors with more rooms. The common area is populated with drinkers (fixed NPCs) who say nothing but rude things.

         

"Upwind?" In an inn?

        

The innkeeper is always standing at the head of the common room, wearing an apron and polishing a glass. If you've been given a rumor as to the availability of work starting in an inn, someone (off-screen) will interrupt you as you're about to speak to the innkeeper.

   

Otherwise, the innkeeper offers four options:

   

• Buy drinks. You can choose from a menu of drinks. It's a complete waste of time and money. Drinks don't make the bartender more or less likely to give you tips, and don't change the price of the room. If you drink enough drinks (way more than in real life), you can get drunk, which increases strength, willpower, endurance, and luck, but decreases intelligence, agility, speed, and personality. The amount of the increase or decrease depends on the number of drinks you've had (if you keep drinking, then can go to 0 and you can die). Even if there weren't better ways to manipulate your statistics, the effects don't last long enough to make any difference. They always wear off when you fast-travel, which is the only way to get to a dungeon for the next quest.

       

It's a cute pun, anyway.

       

• Get a room. Lets you rent a single room, double room, suite, or king's suite for base prices of 10, 20, 35, and 50 gold, respectively. (There's a haggling mechanic, but it would be such a waste of time to bother with.) The quality of the room is supposed to affect heath and mana regeneration rates, but even in the cheapest, both regenerate so fast that you don't notice the difference when you pay more. Once you pay, there's no way to tell which specific room is "yours." You hit the "Camp" button and wake up in one of them.

• Sneak into a Room. You can avoid paying by just entering a room and going to sleep. If you literally try to do that (e.g., walk your character into the room and hit "Camp"), it doesn't work. You have to do it through this menu option. Curiously, if you fail, you're attacked not by guards but by monsters like zombies.

• Rumors. It's the same as asking an outside NPC.

   

I spend a lot of time in inns because I often arrive in town after dark, and there's nothing to do while waiting for shops to open in the morning.   

 

Temples

     

There are a limited number of temples in the game, their names drawn partly randomly. There are three in Lillandril: the Brotherhood of Temperance, the Conclave of Charity, and the Order of the Golden Tomb. There are three temple types ("Brotherhood of," "Conclave of," and "Order of the") followed by about a dozen possible objects, including Baal, Charity, Faith, Golden Tomb, Gideon, Justice, the One, Red Rose, Riana, and Truth. I don't think that some combinations exist, though; for instance, I've never seen Gideon appear with anything but a Brotherhood, nor the Knights of Hope appear as anything but an Order.

   

Temples are perhaps the most jarring element of Arena if you have foreknowledge of future games. The developers had not worked out the "Nine Divines" religion. Daedra are also absent. This leaves us to wonder who Baal and Riana are and why they never reappear (Gideon is not a person, but rather a city in Black Marsh). 

       

That's more ankhs than an Ultima game.

         

Temples are easy to identify from the outside because they have stained glass windows. Inside, there's no sign of those same windows. Instead, they are weirdly full of ankh crosses and tapestries. A single priest works the main hall. He offers healing, curing, and blessings. It would be absurd to go to the temple for healing. Now that I have a "Cure Disease" spell, I'll never need them for curing again. As for blessings, you're asked to donate some gold, after which the priest says, "Receive our blessings." You get this message no matter how much gold you donate, so I'm not sure how to tell when you've actually received a blessing. I'm told online that a blessing doubles your chance to hit for 24 hours. If so, a) it's never been reflected in the "To Hit" statistics on my character sheet, and b) big whoop, because it takes more than 24 hours to get to the next dungeon from just about any city 

 

Stores

     

Lillandril has Cyrellon Gaeaire's Tool Store, Elite Equipment Store, Lovimon's Quality Equipment Store, New Supply Store, The Basic Provisions, The Practical Tool Store, Unearth Sundries, and Unearthed Weaponry Store. Again, you see some combinations of random words. The names mean nothing; all stores have the same services and sell the same types of items.

   

Inside, all proprietors are burly, shirtless men working a forge. With them, you have options to buy, sell, repair, or steal. The items you can buy are always very basic gear, never magical, and thus a bit underwhelming. They are the only people who buy your looted equipment, so they're invaluable for "sell." As with rooms in inns, you can haggle on the prices, but there's too much gold in the game and too little time on this Earth.

      

In the modern era, this guy would be on YouTube selling his "Anvil Fitness Plan."

      

If you try to repair something, he'll ask to take it for 10 days. You can negotiate this, down to a single day, but at a significant increase in the cost. You can similarly object to the cost and get a proposal for a longer time frame. 

 

"Steal" has a chance based on your attributes and class to deliver a random item to your possession. Perhaps to make it more of a risk, you can't save the game inside shops. 

  

Stores are primarily valuable for selling and repairing, and I find myself visiting the one nearest to the Mage's Guild often.

  

Mage's Guild

     

The game sometimes gives this location without an apostrophe and sometimes the way I have it in the title, but never the way I'd do it with the apostrophe after the "s." In any event, there is only one of these per town. As with temples, the building is quite visible from the outside, as its walls are covered in arcane symbols. It's also inevitably one of the more complicated buildings in town, with walls or hedgerows making it difficult to see and access the main entrance.

      

The mage's guild from the outside.

        

I would say the Mage's Guild is the most important building in town. Here, you can:

   

• Buy potions. As I mentioned last time, since potions are cheap (relative to the amount of money you make) and have no weight, they are almost a game-breaking mechanic. Maybe not even "almost." 

     

I could buy 785 of these.

       

• Buy magic items. This is primarily how non-spellcasters get magic abilities, though the selection is always small and it may take several visits to find what you're looking for.

• Buy spells. Buy a selection of pre-created spells like "Light," "Heal," and "Levitate." 

• Detect Magic. This is the only way to identify magical items in the game. 

• Spellmaker. This is how you make your own spells, which can combine effects and make use of effects that aren't available under the "Buy Spells" option. More below.

• Steal. Does the same thing here as inside shops, although you have to choose whether you're going for potions or other magic items. I've clicked it accidentally a couple of times.  

   

After every expedition, I typically go to the Mage's Guild first, identify things I'm not sure about, and then go to the nearest equipment store to sell them.

  

As for spells, the following conditions are available:

 

• Cause: disease | poison | paralyzation | curse
• Continuous damage to: health | fatigue | spell points
• Create: shield | wall | floor
• Cure: disease | poison | paralyzation | curse
• Damage: health | fatigue | spell points
• Designate as non-target (make enemies ignore you)
• Destroy: wall | floor 
• Drain attribute: strength | intelligence | willpower | agility | speed | endurance | personality | luck
• Elemental resistance: fire | cold | electricity | acid | poison
• Fortify attribute: strength | intelligence | willpower | agility | speed | endurance | personality | luck

 

Here, you see me breaking up a long list with a screenshot.

       

• Heal: fatigue | health
• Transfer attribute: strength | intelligence | willpower | agility | speed | endurance | personality | luck
• Transfer figured attribute: health | fatigue | spell points
• Invisibility
• Light
• Lock
• Open
• Regenerate
• Silence
• Spell absorption
• Spell reflection
• Spell resistance 

      

It's an impressive list, foreshadowing the spellcrafting and enchanting options in later Elder Scrolls games. That said, it's hard to imagine that anyone has ever wasted time creating spells that, say, drain an enemy's willpower or cause curse instead of just damaging him. You'd also have to be quite a min-maxer to bother with "Regenerate" instead of just casting "Heal." Maybe some players find some value in locking doors to prevent enemies from chasing you, but I don't think I'd use it unless I was going for a pacifist run.

     

Spells have both an economic cost (when you first create them) and a casting cost (in spell points) dependent on the power and (sometimes) the probability of success. 

     

One of two spells I created this time.

        

There are notably no spells that cause a specific type of damage (e.g., fire, cold, shock), making me think that the pre-created spells that sound like they do (e.g., "Firestorm") are just generic "damage health" spells with cool-sounding names. Do enemies in the game actually have resistance to damage types? I'd have to go online to find out.

  

During this visit, I bought "Spell Absorption," which some of my commenters have opined is practically game-breaking, as well as "Destroy Floor" just because I want to see what that does. 

 

Palace

    

The palace is curiously never part of the main city map, so you never see it from the outside. Instead, you access it from a gate in one of the city walls. 

     

The palace gates.

      

As you enter, a title card reminds you of the name of the ruler (in this case, King Corridalf), which is not procedurally generated. What is randomly generated is whether the city is at peace or war with its closest neighbor. In my case, Lillandril is at war with Alinor.

     

I imagine all this intra-province warfare didn't happen when Uriel was around.

        

The palace always consists of a long hallway, flanked by guardsmen standing at attention, leading to the main hall. The ruler stands at the apex of the main hall. He or she usually says something generic about the city and then cursorily dismisses the PC. I understand that rulers sometimes give side quests, but I haven't experienced it yet.

     

Approaching the king.

      

Palaces have "restricted areas" off the main hall. In the case of Lillandril's palace, there is a wing with cell doors and deep pits in the middle of the cells. I assume that if you explore these restricted areas enough, you'll find treasure rooms or something, but I just keep getting swarmed and killed by armored guards each time I try. 

 

Conclusions    

      

It's hard not to be a bit impressed by the results of the procedural generation: hundreds of large cities with unique layouts and enough buildings and NPCs to mimic real-life locations. I don't know what Daggerfall is like, but nothing in the later Elder Scrolls games comes close. Naturally, however, since so much is procedurally-generated, the actual experience of "exploring" the cities leaves me uninspired. Not only are they thematically boring, but they're also geographically boring—all perfect squares, no hills, no unique monuments or architecture. For all the effort that Bethesda put into them, they may as well be menu cities.

   

It's still an interesting experiment, and one that continues to this day. Varied content is one key to replayability, and a little randomness isn't always a bad thing. Other games have used it for years with the spawning of monsters and the distribution of treasure with no complaints. I enjoyed some of the radiant quests of Skyrim and Starflight. It's likely that in the future, AI will be able to generate random NPCs with characteristics that aren't simply plucked from a database table but rather offer some real depth, hard to distinguish from handcrafted NPCs. It will also likely offer unscripted NPC dialogue that responds to exactly what the player has the character say, creating experiences unique for each player. I don't know if I'll like the result, but I do want to at least see what that looks like.

    

Finishing This Session    

      

The head of the Mage's Guild, Corim Ashlen, gave me the beginning of the quest for the next piece of the Staff of Chaos. The Mage's Guild was recently sacked by followers of the Mad God, who made off with an important diamond. The diamond will allow its user to see the location of the Crystal Tower on a special map. I agreed to go find it, and Ashlen marked the location of the Temple of the Mad God on my map.

     

The series uses so many of the seeds planted in this game, I was surprised to find that we never hear about Zaraphus again.

       

But rather than head right there, I was tempted by the thought of going on another artifact quest. I left the Necromancer's Amulet for repairs at the Practical Tool Store and began asking around for hints. The first hint I got was for the Lord's Mail, which I don't think I can wear. I kept asking and got a lead on the Oghma Infinium, a "book of incredible power."

     

A reference to the reavers of Skyrim two decades before Dragonborn.

       

A few minutes later, I was in the Haunted Helm, buying a tip from an informant. He gave me the location of the Catacombs of Skulvor in Skyrim, where I'll supposedly find a map to the artifact. Whether I want to prolong the game by going for the artifact is something I'll decide next time.

   

Time so far: 22 hours 

 

Star Trail: Arena

 

Art imitates art.

         

As I began this session in the Blood Peaks, I reflected on our reasons for even being here:

    

• In Lowangen, an NPC said he thought Ingramosch, the dwarf to whom we were supposed to deliver the Salamander Stone, had gone to the Blood Peaks to "take care of the orcs."

• The party of mages who stole the Salamander Stone from us were last seen traveling through or near the region.

• At least two fixed encounters lead to the party being hogtied, stripped of equipment, and carried to a cell in the Blood Peaks.

• I explored the entire map during the last session, and it is literally the only available map that I haven't already explored.

         

A typical chest during this game session.

        

We had also received some history on the region from a smith in Lowangen: An ancient dwarven prince named Tordol conquered the area from the orcs. They had been called the Great Peaks, but the conquest was so violent that they were renamed the Blood Peaks. I guess the orcs must have moved back in after he left.

     

Despite promises from commenters that the party could recover its gear this time if I just rolled with the capture-and-imprisonment, I looked for another option and managed to find an alternate entrance to the dungeon. This is where we pick up.

      

Thirty seconds later. This is a bad start.

         

Many times in the past, we've seen odd parallels, always coincidental, between the two games that I'm playing at any one time. This pairing is no exception. Just like the recently-finished Halls of Colossus in Arena, the Blood Peaks offered numerous "arena" themes, including holding cells and a bloody battle floor. It's interesting to see how the two games take the same basic assignment ("make this arena feel like a real place") and approach it very differently. Arena focused on graphics—though this being 1994, not terribly good ones—while Star Trail adopted the slightly more timeless approach of relaying most of the environmental context in text. (The environment isn't completely devoid of furnishings and such, but it's more suggestive, like the occasional barrels and bookshelves in Gloomhaven, than truly evocative.) Star Trail's approach is better in that they were able to weave some encounters and role-playing options into that text.

     

Okay, those holes are in the walls, not the floors. And they're enormous! Who uses this latrine?!

         

The dungeons in the two games are similar in that they're both three levels and have a number of doors that require about half a dozen keys to open. They both thus require quite a bit of backtracking. At about five hours, the Blood Peaks took me a bit longer than the Halls of Colossus, but that's entirely because of Star Trail's slower (but more tactical) combat system.

       

One final weird coincidence: Both games make it hard to see secret doors, but both of them annotate them on the automap. 

    

Given what I just said, you'd think this would be a screenshot of the automap. But I forgot to take one. So it's just a battle with some ogres.

                

The game sets up the Blood Peaks as a living dungeon. The orcs actually reside here; they're not just marauding through. There are kitchens, sleeping areas, latrines, forges, meeting halls, trash heaps, and storage rooms. Lots of storage rooms. A party that was stripped of its equipment could mostly re-equip itself here. I have numerous screenshots showing chests, shelves, and tables with dozens of pints of beer, wine bottles, hundreds of rations, scores of arrows and crossbow bolts, other weapons, armor, writing utensils, throwing knives, ropes, torches, lanterns, flasks of oil, snowshoes, hatchets, crowbars, mattocks, hammers, shovels, pitons, rope ladders, grappling hooks, blankets, winter coats, glass flasks, and many vials of poison called "golden glue" that I never found a use for. I found an alchemy set to replace the one I lost ages ago, and Toliman replaced his flute with a lute. Because of all the liquid and rations, I felt free to rest often and restore health and magic.

      

We had to answer about two dozen questions like this.

      

There was also a lot of jewelry: gold, silver, and orc. I started by taking all of it, but when I ran out of inventory space, I had to prioritize the gold and silver. It later turned out that gold jewelry sells for about 10 gold pieces each, while silver jewelry only sells for a couple of silver pieces. I wonder if I would have done better with the orc jewelry. 

           

Jewelry items do not stack. This was painful.

       

The hallways were crawling with orcs and ogres, plus a few adjacent caverns that had spiders. At first, the game noted that I saw the orcs and hid, and they passed by. Eventually, I failed one of those checks, and from then on, any time I ran into orcs, there was a battle. A lot of them were with only two or three orcs, and my habit in such circumstances was to put the combat in auto-mode, no magic, and let the computer duke it out. Korima, my NPC fighter, was a big help in these fights. I did have to take control of two or three battles, one of them notably longer than the others, which I'll talk about below. In contrast to the many chests and shelves and such, most of the battles offered no material rewards, and during the entire six hours I spent in this session, only one of my characters (Gnomon) leveled up. 

       

This happened a few times. Then we lost it.

   

Without going in chronological order, here were the major features and mysteries of the Blood Peaks:

   

• Numerous hallways with traps, most of which my characters were able to avoid with Gnomon's high "Perception" and "Danger Sense" skills. The spider caves had some exceptions, where we repeatedly ran into "an avalanche of stones" from the ceiling, causing us to stop and rest several times.

      

Why couldn't I get this to stop!?

     

• Several doors and chests I was never able to open. One of the problems is that I forgot to buy more lockpicks last time I was in town, so I was relying exclusively on force and "Foramen." Perhaps there are some locks that you have to pick to open? 

• A wall that looked like it had a secret door, but every time I ran into it, the game just said, "Wow!" 

• A box contained a mummified hand and a copper disk. I took the disk, although I don't know what it does. When I tried to take the hand, it started glowing green and did damage to Gnomon, who dropped it. 

• A lever. The game asked if I wanted to flip it. I did. It said: "En voila! A perfect triple somersault . . . No, wait a minute, that's no good. Let me rephrase that. Do you want to move the lever to a different position?" Ha ha. Anyway, when I said yes again, nothing happened.

• A huge barrel of beer. Toliman became obsessed with something at the bottom of the barrel that he could only barely make out. He ended up spilling it all over the place and reducing his charisma for a while. It was a dead rat. I assume he failed a "Curiosity" check?

• There were a few wells where we could fill up our waterskins. For some reason, we got +1 "Courage" doing so. 

     

I supposed it takes a certain amount of bravery to drink out of a cistern in a dungeon.

     

• A couple of cages with war dogs (again, going with the arena theme). We had an awful role-playing choice to stab them to death through the bars (which we did not take). Later, other dogs attacked us when we opened a couple of rooms. 

       

It occurs to me that I might have done this in Skyrim. Why does choosing it as an option feel so much worse than doing it in an action interface?

      

• We took several opportunities to hinder the orcs. We destroyed a statue to the orc war god, Brazoragh. We destroyed a couple of catapults. ("The gods only know how the blackpelts ever got hold of these war machines.") We smashed up a cache of weapons. We sliced open sacks of grain meant to feed an army. We burned an orc war flag.

      

I hope this doesn't come back to haunt us.

     

• In the main arena hall, we found a statute to Brazoragh. It had gold plating, and Korima became fixated on scraping the gold off. Failed an "Avarice" check, maybe? 

• In a pile of dog feces, we found a Ring of Magic Resistance. 

• Under some straw in a jail cell, we found an Amulet of Mirroring. On the way back from this dungeon, I returned to the basilisk to see if it would do anything, but we just died again. 

• There was a large, cavernous area full of spider webs. We had to hack through them. We had multiple easy battles with cave spiders in the region.

      

For once, my characters give voice to my own thoughts.

         

• The spider area culminated at a nest where we had the option to destroy baby spiders and eggs. When we did, a Queen Spider arrived and (in a scripted event) killed us all with her poisoned stinger. We had no option or ability to fight or avoid it. I had to reload. The best I could do was only get one party member killed if I split the party before destroying the eggs, but I didn't even want that.

     

The way The Return of the King should have ended.

       

• A skeleton wrapped up in webs had a magic sword on him. I was unable to identify it. Casting "Analyze" just tells me that it has "evil influences," but I'm reluctant to get rid of it, as it's not like the game is over-stuffed with magic weapons. 

         

That might be for reasons having nothing to do with the sword.

       

The largest battle occurred early in the session when I ran into about a dozen orcs and three orc veterans in a large courtyard. I hate large battles in this game because everyone forms a tight cluster and it makes it impossible to see what's happening. If any of my characters gets caught in the middle of the cluster, I can't even see the selector when his or her turn comes up, let alone which enemies are within his or her range. I just have to guess. It also encourages me to eschew regular tactics in favor of clearing as many enemies as possible from the southeast side of the cluster. Paradoxically, these large battles are the ones that most require the player's attention.

    

Go ahead, make anything out of that mess.

      

I like tactical combat, but I haven't really enjoyed Arkania's approach to it. In my final entry on Blade of Destiny, I outlined what I thought were its biggest weaknesses of the Arkania. I'll repeat them here because they're all still relevant here:

   

• "The axonometric perspective doesn't work well for combat. It's hard to separate the characters and enemies from each other and particularly hard to move to a specific tile." I think I already covered that adequately.

• "Everyone misses too often." Aaargh, is this infuriating. With my characters at Level 7, having pumped their primary weapons skills to 10 or 11 (which involves sacrificing a lot of points to failures), the default response to any of my attacks is still to do no damage. Even my best fighters hit and wound the enemy maybe 40% of the time. Where with most RPGs, you only have to pass one accuracy check to hit and then roll for damage if you do, Arkania makes it possible to fumble the attack at the outset, for the enemy to parry the attack, and for the attacker to hit but do no damage. I think there might even be a fourth one, where the attack simply "fails." Not to mention that "fumbling" carries a chance that the attacker will wound himself. Now, all these things are true of enemies, too, so they don't necessarily make combat harder than the typical RPG; they just prolong it. 

           

The most infuriating message ever.

       

• "Attacks don't cause enough damage." This one has either changed or I just got better at combat. When my attacks actually do any damage, they usually seem to me to do sufficient damage. Orcs die in about three hits, sometimes two. And the animation where they stand rigid, turn to the left, and then dissolve into bones never stops being fun.

• "Spells, which would make the whole thing go faster, eat up so many magic points that you can rarely cast more than three or four before needing multiple nights' rest to recharge." Still very true. Later in the entry, I made the point that even though the game offers a few dozen spells, you're not really encouraged to experiment with them because of the comparatively low number of mana points. At the same time, I'll allow that I probably could have exploited the economy and potion system better, bought or made more mana potions, and maybe gotten more use out of spells. My defense is that potions don't stack and inventory space is extremely limited.

 

Because of the spell issue, I think that players are highly incentivized to find one or two strategies that work and just stick with them. I spent most of my spell points on "Bambladam" (a kind-of charm spell makes the enemy stop attacking), "Balm of Roond" (healing), "Lightning" (blinding), and "Ignifaxus" (direct damage). During this particular battle, I had some success with "Horriphobus" (makes enemies flee). I wish I'd been able to experiment more with summoning spells, but none of my characters started near 0 with them, and I didn't want to waste a dozen spell increases getting them competent.

     

An old reliable.

        

I have a few other complaints that I didn't think to levy in my Blade entry:

    

• You have no control over your character distribution (vis-à-vis the enemy) when combat begins. 

• If you've nailed an enemy with a status spell, there's no way to see that condition, so you have to keep careful track of who you previously targeted.

• Unless I missed something there are no spells at all that target multiple enemies.

• Using items during battle sucks. Instead of just opening up the regular inventory interface, you have to switch items into your off-hand (putting down a shield, if you have one) via a menu.

      

But having said all of that, I will allow that the game basically scratches the tactical itch and gives the player those moments of agony and ecstasy that a good tactical combat system evokes. I just wish it were a little less annoying.

      

I should also mention that encumbrance has been an issue for most of the game, so much so that even with the Girdles of Might I found earlier, I've been having every character take strength with every level-up, so as to offset some of the limitations caused by their heavy armor and shields. Given how often those armor and shields block enemy attacks, I still think they're better than having extra movement in battle, but I haven't experimented enough to be sure.   

     

I think we're going to make it!

      

I won the orc battle after three tries, mostly by ganging up on individual enemies (as well as I could, given their sheer number), casting the spells listed above and restoring my mana with the few potions I had, and healing with herbs and potions in the middle of battle. Lyra and Lilii, not great fighters, ended up surrounded by enemies, and after I exhausted their spell points, I basically just had them use healing potions or herbs every round. They each kept four orcs occupied while the fighters cleaned up the rest. It was a bit thrilling to slowly winnow them down and realize that I was going to win.

     

We eventually found the cells where we would have started if we had sucked up the orc ambushes. There was an orc named Thurazz in one of them and a human named Praiodan vom Tann in another. They both offered to join, but we would have been forced to get rid of Korima.

       

He didn't care for our rejection.

      

A couple of the cells had graffiti scratched into the walls. I looked dozens of times and rarely got a duplication. Some of it is clearly procedurally generated.

     

• "Up the III. Regiment."
• "Shite!"
• "B. J. Blaskowicz was here."
• "Up the 11th Banner."
• "Help Rondra!" (or any of the other gods)

Get her out of your heart?

• "The Polar Diamant is in the temple of aaaarrrghhhh . . . "
• "Sadrak Whassoi is a XXXXX."
• "KiL aLL OrG SkuM!!!"
• "Long live Emperor Hal!" 
• "Beware of Belgor!"
• "No one gets out of here alive!" 

     

Finally, the game noted that we found a mage on the floor of another cell. He appeared to have died of dehydration. Gnomon recognized him as one of the mages who stole the Salamander Stone from us. We searched the body, and sure enough, the stone was in the pocket of one of his robes. Unbelievable. 

      

I suppose we were due.

      

When we exited the caverns and headed back to the north, we kept getting "the pursuers are getting closer" messages, just like we had near Lowangen the first time we had the Salamander Stone. Commenters suggested that casting "Without a Trace" was the way to avoid getting attacked by these pursuers, but I could never find the right moment to cast it. If I tried to interrupt travel, I just got attacked by the pursuers anyway. If I cast it at night, the message suggested that only the caster's presence had been masked, and anyway it didn't seem to have any effect on the pursuing party. I thus had to fight long, difficult battles with druids, mages, and rogues twice on the way back.

      

These guys are harder than the orcs in the Blood Peaks.

      

We stopped at a couple of inns and briefly at Tiefhusen, but our ultimate goal was Tjolmar. Once there, we healed up and then went to Ingramosch's house. As I suspected, the Salamander Stone dissipated the magical aura on the door.

      

I wonder if we could handle "the truth."

        

Some random dwarf answered the door and refused to tell us anything about Ingramosch. We were forced to barge inside and fight a battle with dwarves and spellcasters. Unfortunately, Korima refused to go with us and took off.

      

You're much too young to die for one silver piece per day, I'll grant you that.

       

When we were done, we found ourselves in a "Vault beneath Tjolmar." At this point, I exited the building and ended the session. Next time, I want to sell excess items and load up on potions and herbs before going back. I trust this dungeon will be the last.

   

Time so far: 54 hours