EFFORTPOST Darklands LP VI: We actually start a quest!

[Apparently I forgot to save the game at the end of the last episode or I saved it under some really esoteric name I don't remember so we're still halfway to Wesel. It doesn't really affect anything.]

Notice how the seasons actually change in this game! If you want a game that's really really good about seasons, look up Shadow Empire. You can play on planets with radically different axial tilt and it actually matters.

Oh no. These people chose to frick with us. You want my briefcase. I'm not giving you my goddarn briefcase.

Like Michael Douglas I try to have Sasha talk them out of this. Didn't work.

We're faced with some ordinary bandits who we should make short work of. But they have a leader who is wearing cuirboulli armor (the same as our people). He's got a shield. He's got a longsword, which is at least comparable to our weapons. And they're of fair quality. This is the first relatively tough opponent we've faced. If you've been made to read a few pages of Clausewitz by some tard you might think this guy is the enemy's "center of gravity" so we'll attack him. Heck no. Anybody who knows anything about fighting knows you go for the enemy's weakness. We'll try to kill off his loser companions. Then when we're in a 4v1 one with him, it will go exactly like in real life. He will die really fast.

The bandits try to hit us from two sides, trying to throw us off. Big mistake. All four of us go east to hit those two. We only have a few seconds alone with them, but double-teaming them it doesn't take long to cut them down. After that it was kind of a blur. We engaged the other three guys but Redactor got the heck beaten out of him and knocked unconscious for reasons I'm not sure of. Must have been a really lucky hit. The rest of the party won the fight though. I think we really need better armor.

Redactor is banged up really bad but the upside to this is that the equipment that tough guy had will get us a good price when we sell it. (Unlike Rimworld, you can stab a guy to death and still sell his clothes to the local thrift store for full price.)

We're hurt bad so we'll go to the nuns for help. It's a different city so they'll help us. Wait. WTF??? Story of my fricking life. I think we got enough money to heal up at the inn but it's going to take time. And as every 40 year old boomer can tell you, time is not on our side. (Literally. Our older characters will lose strength as time goes by.)

I don't know if we're ready for this yet, but let's try to get some quests. Various people have quests but the bankers are the most likely. There's the Fuggers from Austria and the Medicis from Italy. Also the Hanseatic League aren't really bankers but they need to get some tasks done in the same way. The problem is, how are we going to get taken seriously? We haven't done any quests so we're not famous yet. We need someone to talk these people into giving us one. Sasha is very charismatic, but she's not yet 2006 Torino level.

Maybe we can give her a little boost? Redactor knows St. Anthony, who can boost Charisma and Speak Common (the skill of just knowing to speak German well enough to talk people into things). He can pray for St. Anthony to help Sasha. But religion in the 1400s is very transactional. If you want something, you're expected to pay for it. That's where Divine Favor comes in. This is, in terms of gameplay mechanics, your mana. You can't just constantly pray every time you hit a speed bump in your life and expect your problems to be solved for you. When you pray you pay Divine Favor points.

And you're not guaranteed anyone is going to listen. The other crucial number here is your Virtue skill, which appropriately is the most important skill in the game by far. It increases your chances of saintly intervention. You increase it by doing good deeds as a Christian. The higher your Virtue the more likely it is that saints will actually listen to you. Even Yuna has saints that she has no chance with right now. When we combat the forces of Satan and do charity to the poor and oppressed we'll bump that number up.

For the purposes of this LP I'm going to just spend all her DF to make sure she has a 99% chance of being heard.

Wow that's a pretty big impact. Let's see if any of these bankers care. Many of them just will not give you a quest because not everyone needs a party of four bold individuals to solve a problem every day of their life.

Fetch quest. This is actually close to us! The locations for these are apparently completely random so half the time they want to send you across the Empire for 4 florins. But this is near Bremen, in the northwest corner of Germany, close to where we are on the lower Rhine. We can actually try this one. The money is nice but what's even better is gaining Local Reputation in this city and Fame (how well you're known across the country).

I would try to buy some better armor but all they got here in Wesel is 24-quality and I refuse to pay for that. I stop at Osnabruck and at least get something slightly better for Nathan. You have armor for your torso and armor for your limbs. I think my people (barely) have adequate protection for now on their torsos but they still have virtually nothing for their limbs. I think that's where we're getting most of our damage.

On our way we run into a monastery. Huh. This doesn't seem quite right.

Capitalism? As a 1400s guy I find that pretty unseemly, especially in a monastery.

They have a library so we can learn about another saint. The only two I remember are Thomas the Apostle and Margaret. Margaret is some girl who died under horrible circumstances. She does a lot for you in-game because she was widely venerated at the time. But Darklands encourages you to roleplay. Thomas is my favorite apostle. I'm the kind of guy who would insist on literally reaching into the guts of my god to prove He's real. So we'll pick him.

Actually he's gonna be useful sometimes. Just like you'd expect from someone that pragmatic.

I'm gonna quit now just because it is incredibly time-consuming to upscale all the screenshots and put them in the right place. Next time, we're going to that place north of Bremen to get the fetch quest artifact. But we are gonna run into a challenge and it's not gonna be "somebody wants you to kill 20 mobs".

!christians