EFFORTPOST Darklands LP XI: The Main Plot

Darklands Series

1 - Darklands LP Part I

2 - Darklands LP Part II: Charles Bronson Edition

3 - Darklands LP III: Nuns and Coins

4 - Darklands LP Ep IV: Introduction to Equipment & Combat

5 - Darklands LP Part V: We finally briefly go out into the dark lands

6 - Darklands LP VI: We actually start a quest!

7 - Darklands LP VII: We reach our destination

8 - Darklands LP VIII: Raubritter confrontation & learning how combat works

9 - Darklands LP IX: I'm not giving you my goddarn alchemical materials

10 - Darklands LP X: We actually do some alchemy!

One of the few weaknesses our party has now is Sasha. She's not well armored enough and her longsword is pretty useless against most of the enemies we're starting to run into. I head back to our old home turf in Westphalia. I know Paderborn makes good weapons and Soest makes good armor. I buy her a poniard, basically a dagger. That might seem like a big step down as it has a base damage of 5 down from the longsword's 12 but it has 4 penetration (matching chainmail) and is much faster. With the poniard we should be able to get her into full chainmail eventually.

Level Scaling & The Main Plot

Darklands does have level scaling but don't jump to the conclusion that it's a bad thing. Some games like Oblivion are notorious for doing this the wrong way. All the enemies in the world are pegged to the same level as you, so theoretically if you could teleport to the end boss at the beginning of the game he would be at level 1 and the fight would be no more difficult than if you had played the whole game out to being level 20. In Darklands it calculates how strong it thinks your party is (I'm guessing based on skills) and as you get more powerful it upgrades the enemies, I believe twice. For example those street thugs who fought at the beginning of the game used to have just ordinary clothing on their limbs. Now it's padded armor. Presumably their attributes and skills are boosted too. But it still matters who they are. We're still going to slaughter those guys. But now a raubritter's henchmen will actually have some decent armor and are a challenge to us again. Since we're playing out the same quests over and over again, this is a way to make sure they don't get too stale.

Another thing that's triggered by your party growing stronger is an event calling you to stop just wandering around and take on mid game challenges. This definitely should have triggered by now. Either there's a bug or I got my saved games mixed up. So let's pretend it just happened now.

Well now we've got a real quest. Not from some banker or mayor but from God. Let's get on it.

I happen to be outside Magdeburg again. Let's check out this castle.

Oh it's not a castle. Yuna prays to St. Dorothea for guidance and we get this result.

Okay, let's go in.

(They act like I've already been here before. This must be a bug. She's an enigmatic astrologer who can see fleeting glimpses of your destiny. The first time you go here, she should either tell you that you're too weak and need get stronger or that you're ready to take on the Satanists at their Sabbat.)

Investigation

The Sabbat is where the pagans meet to celebrate their obscene rituals on one of their holidays. But when and where will it be this time? What would Crockett and Tubbs from Miami Vice do if they were hunting down a vast Satanic conspiracy in 1400s Germany? They'd start by picking up a low level Satanist and find out who his boss is.

We go to another Satanic village (there's quite a few) and slaughter everyone without even taking a single hit. Now what's this? Southeast of Goslar on June 21? It sounds like something important is going down. We should check it out. Today is June 5 but Goslar happens to be very close by so I should be able to get there in time. We'll want to avoid all combat if possible because we don't want to lose time healing wounds.

On the 15th we find this interesting Stonehengey type place southeast of Goslar. As we approach the music turns from adventurous to ominous.

I haven't been to a place this disturbing and depressing since I quit reddit.

A severed finger

I was thinking yakuza but actually Satanists would make more sense. So we've found the place we're looking for. There's not much to do but camp out here and wait a few days for them to show up. Maybe Redactor can stir up a few more potions. We're going to need them.

Nothing Happens

Somehow I missed them. Maybe I got the dates mixed up or something. Happens to me in real life all the time. Whatevs. We go to another Satanic village and get the next date: SE of Teschen on Halloween. Teschen is in Silesia near the border between Bohemia and Poland. It's pretty remote, but I think we've got plenty of time to get there.

Along the way we run into this place. It's a good reminder of just much history already existed back then. Germany had been Christian in Roman times but was then conquered by pagans who eventually were converted. This whole process took centuries, so there's ancient Christian ruins now that are long forgotten. In terms of the game, somebody probably sent us on a fetch quest here and I never bothered to go because I was far away at the time. But if we get his item maybe we'll run into him again someday.

See, I told you those Thunderbolt potions would be useful someday. I use one to blast open an entrance.

There's gotta be skeletons in every game.

This is the first time we've been in a long multi-part combat. There are groups of enemies around this dungeon and if I run into them I'll have to fight, but between fights we can walk around and go wherever we want. I'll have the party travel in single file so we don't get stuck every time we reach a doorway. But wait, Sasha, our weakest fighter, is pointman. I change the party's marching order so Nathan is in front. Now it's time to search for an exit.

Well that was easy. I find some stairs guarded by just one skeleton. He goes aggro on us when he sees us, kind of like a pod of enemies does in Nu X-Com. We make short work of him and walk off with the ancient crown.

I go after another one of these evil castle lords. For the first time we run into enemy archers. Everyone does fine except Sasha. Their armor blocks most of the damage, so it's only about 3 points for each arrow. A 3 point hit probably will only hurt endurance, not strength. Most of your lost endurance is regained after each fight so that's not huge problem. Restoring strength requires either rest, prayer, or alchemy so it's much more serious. Did I mention that when strength goes down to 0 your character is dead? Like completely permanently dead and you have to replace them with a new one.

I got plenty of time to kill before the Sabbat so I wander around the region, doing my usual thing, learning new saints and new formulas. In Pressburg the local alchemist trades to me the formula for Essence of Grace, the most important in the game as it's the healing potion that restores lost endurance and strength.

Teschen

Here we are. It's October 11, so that gives us plenty of time before Halloween to find the site and do some alchemy while we wait for the Satanic horde to show up. It's supposed to be SE of Teschen but Teschen is at the extreme eastern edge of the map. It must be this place. Yuna knows St. Raymond now, who can boost Redactor's Alchemy skill up to 99, so he can make huge batches of common potions. We'll settle down and let him do that for now.

Today's the day. Let's see what they're up to. WTF? This better not be Burning Man. I'll slaughter everyone if it is.

I'm going to chat up some of arriving weirdos and try to blend in with them.

Well obviously there's only one answer to this. They're a bunch of goths after all.

See, I still know my high school subcultures.

Uh oh. Instead of bomb-sniffing dogs for security they have Christian-sniffing dogs. Fortunately we don't have to try to bluff our way through. St. Aidan will help us. He was an Irish monk who converted the Anglo-Saxons of northern England and also really liked animals.

Good dog.

What in the heck have we gotten ourselves into? We'll find out in the next episode.