Legends of Valour: A Man of Means by No Means

 

My character very slowly works his way up in the world.

      

Legends of Valour does about as well as a 1992 game could do in simulating the experience of a hayseed in the big city, trying to solve a quest but also having to attend to the base levels of Maslow's hierarchy. The character needs to eat, drink, and sleep before he can find Sven, and to do that, he needs to work. If he brings a lot of money with him from home, he might be able to survive for a couple of weeks, but he won't be as prepared to deal with the threats of a semi-violent world. It's a great setup. Everything about this game has been great in setup.

   

Valour is somewhat realistic in its use of variables, too. Your need for sleep drops faster the longer it's been since you slept. Thirst drops more quickly than hunger. All of them deplete at a sensible rate, which means that you can survive for a night or two without sleep and a day or two without food. When it comes to replenishing those bars, this is a city, after all. Your biggest obstacle is more likely to be an inability to pay than an inability to find what you need.

        

An inability to digest most of the food is a secondary problem.

    

As I began this session, I was a bit fatigued and hungry from my first day, but nothing that was an emergency. I decided to leap right into my second quest for the Guild of Men at Arms, which required a contribution of 36 gold just to get the quest. The guildmaster told me to go find Orlak the Warrior at the Casino, and that he would give me my next task. I had to return to the guild within three days.

    

As usual, I began by asking NPCs where I might find the Casino. My cousin Sven had told me he'd leave word at the Troll's Arms, so I asked about that, too. I eventually learned that the Casino was 103 poles to the southwest and the Troll's Arms was 93 poles west. This took several conversations, because NPCs often claim not to know or say something unhelpful like "none of your business." This gets rather infuriating when it happens several times in a row. It can get extra frustrating because you usually have to ask multiple times: once to get the initial direction and rough distance, and at least one more time as you get closer to the location. At first, I had some fun recording the names and professions of each NPC: Akura of Sogu, a student surgeon; Zelig the Unfortunate, a retired builder; Denby of the Valkyries, a manic bear trainer; Conan of the Norns, a journeyman bear trainer; Elvis the Terrible, master of the marines. Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter what their names and professions are because they're just interchangeable puppets offering directions (or not).

         

A bash a woman with my axe. She attacked first.

      

You occasionally find discarded items on the ground of the city, like potions, throwing daggers, or a few gold pieces. I developed a small inventory. You also get attacked occasionally, usually by someone who wanders up and delivers a stinging insult: "You remind me of a deranged boil"; "You look like a satyr's armpit"; "Your mother was a half-blown swamp leach." Fortunately, none of them have been very good. A couple of whacks of my axe, using any of the motions (although I gather that certain weapons and certain enemies respond better to certain attacks), was enough to kill them. They sometimes leave a few gold pieces when they die.

     

Some of this game's NPCs just look for trouble.

       

I found the Troll's Arms first, but it was closed, and it needs to be open to read the message boards. So I headed south until I found the Casino. Orlak greeted me the moment I walked in. He gave me the quest: go to the Mermaid's Rest and find the "salty captain." Follow him until he leads me to "contraband," then return the latter to the guild.

    

Finding the Mermaid's Rest wasn't hard. A few inquiries indicated that it was in the southeast corner of the city. The first NPC I spoke to inside was named "Captain Birdseye." I assumed he was the "salty captain." Problems began there. The game is not really well-designed for "following" an NPC, partly because NPCs cross the screen quickly, but it takes you 4 seconds to do a 180-degree turn, which is a lifetime when your quarry is scurrying down the street. NPCs enter and exit doors before you even notice what's happened. And if you're unlucky enough to lose one in a crowd, good luck picking him out among several identical-looking NPCs. Fortunately, I had met the captain in a tavern, and was thus able to save just before attempting the quest (you can only save in taverns, hostels, and inns), but I kept losing him on the street.

      

Thomas Crown'd again.

     

Ultimately, I solved the problem by just systematically exploring nearby houses until I found the one with the "contraband." I brought it back to the guild and was promoted to "trooper," which apparently entitles me to a wage. It was only 1 gold piece to start. I don't know if I get paid daily or weekly. The next promotion was going to cost me 48 gold, and I figured I needed to attend to some personal needs first, so I declined.

   

I had replenished my food and water meters in a couple of taverns, but my fatigue meter was getting dangerously low. I thus headed for a hostel near the entrance called The Traveler's Inn. I was dismayed to see that they charged per week, and the worst room cost 140 gold pieces, or about 30 more than I had at the time. They were even more expensive at the Dead Man's Inn, a hostel I'd noted near the Stone Circle.

       

Never stay in a motel with this name in real life.

        

I decided to see if I could get there through gambling. I'd previously tried my luck with a dice game at the Mermaid's Rest. Each die had only two symbols, and they seemed to have a 50% chance of coming up. You lose unless all three symbols are the same, which happens 25% of the time, at which point you get 4 gold pieces for the 1 that you bet. (Technically, the game doesn't take the 1 gold piece unless you lose, so you really only "get" 3, but the math works the same.) That means that the game has completely even odds.

   

Cockroach racing at the Hanged Man is more complicated. The amount you win ranges from 2 gold pieces to 11 gold pieces depending on which cockroach you bet on. The one with the least favorable odds (1:2) is the first one, but it almost always wins. Roach #4 is the underdog, but he pays 11:1. I tried to work out the win percentages of each roach, but the game would only let me bet about 10 times before the bartender announced that gambling was closed for the evening. I suspect the odds are about 1:1 for this game, too. Later, I found a three-card Monte game that also had 1:1 odds in the long run. I suspect that's going to be true of all of the city's gambling. Normally, in such situations, I'd try a Martingale strategy to ensure that I won repeatedly, but this game doesn't let you determine how much you bet. You can only bet 1 gold piece per round.

     

Nobody beats the Monte.

          

My character got so tired he passed out for a while, and when he woke up, he was so hungry and thirsty I needed to spend some immediate funds on sundries. Around this time, I remembered the game's "commodity" system, by which gold isn't the only type of wealth you carry. I had a couple of chunks of ore and a couple of hides from previous combats. I took them to the Customs House and sold them, and was thus able to afford a room for a week at The Traveler's Inn. When you rent a room in this game, you don't just rent a generic room. You choose specific one from a map. Each room has a container in it, where you can store excess money and goods, but I imagine you don't want to leave that container full when your rent runs out.

 

After 8 hours of sleep, my next priority was making sure I had enough money to afford to stay another week. The surest way to make money in this game seems to be taking odd jobs from message boards. I headed back over to the Customs House, where the current work notice said I should pick up a box at The Armoury and take it to The Thespians' Tavern (which, confusingly, is a hostel) for 24 gold pieces. During this mission, I noticed that my health was slipping for no apparent reason, so I ducked into the Temple of Aegir and saw the healer. "You have dehydration and combat injuries and weakness and vampirism and severe poisoning," he said. The cure would be 104 gold. I guess those random street combats aren't so harmless after all. I didn't have anywhere near that amount, so I reloaded to an earlier save that was hopefully before I had any of that stuff and repeated a lot of this session.

         

Making an honest living.

       

I spent the next few hours doing my best to put some money together. Five ways became apparent to me as I did so:

  

• Odd jobs. They change almost every day, but they all involve picking up an item from one random place and taking it to a second random place. Doing a few of these helped me learn the layout of the city. Unfortunately, these missions are sometimes bugged, with the receiving location refusing to acknowledge the item when you arrive. Fortunately, you can usually just go sell the item in a shop if the recipient won't sign for it.

     

Unfortunately, I dropped it, I dropped it, yes, on the way I dropped it.

      

• Killing and looting. The game is specifically designed not to allow you to get very rich doing this, but every time you slay someone, there's a chance he drops a few gold pieces, an item, or a weapon.

• Scavenging. You can find some pretty valuable items just sitting on the street, including bundles of unidentified "treasure." Once I figured out how to sell items to shops (which unintuitively involves clicking on empty boxes in the shopkeeper's inventory), I made a decent amount of money on a few items. Even rocks will sell for 3 gold pieces.

       

A bar of gold just sits on the ground.

       

• Commodities trading. I started recording the buying and selling prices of the various traders, and I identified a few places where I could buy low and sell high. Unfortunately, the traders don't often have a lot of an item in stock, so you can only buy a few things at a time.

         

I start an import/export business.

    

• Stealing. Stealing is just like finding, except that the items are in houses.

   

At first, I tried to avoid stealing for role-playing reasons. But I kept running into situations where I needed to wait a few hours for one shop or another to open, so it naturally made sense to poke my head into random buildings while I was trying to kill time. Near the entrance to the city, one of these incursions got me a pair of "Seven League Boots," which appeared in my inventory as a magic item. They make movement a lot faster when I hold down the SPACE bar. Unfortunately, this increase in speed does not apply to turning. If the name sounds familiar, Seven-League Boots are common in European folklore and have previously appeared in Hellfire Warrior (1980) and Omega (1988).

        

Powerful magic items, just sitting around.

          

I figured that since I was now a full-blown thief, I might as well go grab those special gauntlets that I saw in The Armoury during my first session. They appeared in another "special effects" window, so I guess I was right the first time, and the one "armor" item is the only type of equipment you get.

   

These missions took me to a lot of taverns and shops with notice boards, so I got a lot more messages from Sven even though I lost the specific thread of which message was supposed to lead me to the next. The messages started indicating that Sven, though he may have started as an opportunist, was starting to take a more active role in city affairs. "The only way to bring order back to this town," one said, "is by gaining power in the guilds. If I'm arrested, you'll have to take my place." Another was more directly helpful: "You must become a high priest as well as a guild master. It's the only way."

        

The source of yet another Elder Scrolls trope.

     

My travels also took me to the Fellowship of the Asegeir, one of the magic guilds. I spontaneously decide to join, as I wanted to check out the spell system. The initiation quest asked me to recover the Potion of Judegment [sic] within two days. There was no more information, but fortunately the first NPC I stopped outside knew about it: "It was stolen from the guildhall by Aldic the Illusionist prior to being committed to the asylum."

        

Some random passer-by knows the whole story.

      

I found the asylum through the usual method of asking directions. I didn't find Aldic, but the potion was on a table in an empty cell. I returned it and became a "spellbrewer's assistant." I still need to join one of the temples, apparently. I did wander into the Temple of Odin, but they didn't like that I belonged to the Guild of Men at Arms. I can still try the Temple of Aegir or the Temple of Set. The Temple of Freya won't have me because I'm a male.

         

I wonder what would have happened if I'd drunk it.

        

Miscellaneous notes:

   

• Everything in town closes on Sunday.

• There are a lot of special buildings that sound important but the game doesn't really do anything with them. The "theater" is just a large room leading to the Thespian's Tavern. The "Brewhouse" is completely empty. The asylum doesn't seem to have any patients. 

          

Maybe they haven't invented brewing yet.

      

• I've found at least one "dungeon" entrance. It leads to something called the Labyrinth with a minotaur prowling the corridors. I suspect this is a quest, though, and I don't want to do it prematurely. I took some shots and reloaded. 

           

This is not a game that fills me with confidence that they've anticipated players doing things out-of-order.

         

• Towards the end of the session, the Temple of Odin told me that I had mild poisoning. I don't know how this keeps happening.

• When you first load a game, the meters are all wrong. They're set for the default character. You have to immediately load the game again to see them for your character.

• Some of the shops have a picture of me on a poster that says "Wanted: for crimes against the state." I don't know if this is a joke or if I'm in honest trouble. Maybe I shouldn't have taken those boots.

        

How does a medieval society reproduce color graphics with such fidelity?

       

Messages come and go too fast. It doesn't help that the game regards every keypress as an acknowledgement of the message. I had to turn off CTRL's mapping in DOSBox because every time I went to take a screen shot (CTRL-F5), I would accidentally acknowledge and dismiss the message I was trying to capture.

    

I still like the setup of Legends of Valour, but I'm starting to see through it. It appears that the developers populated this map with a lot of buildings but then didn't stock them with anyone or anything very interesting. When all NPCs are procedurally-generated and none are special, exploration becomes boring quite fast.

   

I'm also concerned that the manual has outright lied about both inventory and skills. The only "character sheet" that the game offers shows only your status in the various guilds. It does not offer a place to change armor, and none of the shops I've visited so far have sold any armor. Worse, I don't have a lot of confidence that the game really has any skills. If it does, they're hidden behind the scenes with no way to track them, and I doubt they actually improve through use. That means the game isn't even really an RPG by my definitions (though I admit it's hard to identify another genre it belongs to). It's as if all the development money went to the open world and continuous movement, and there wasn't anything left for decent RPG elements.

   

I want to see how the spell system works, so my next goal is to save up enough money to buy spells in the guild. We'll see how it continues to develop.

   

Time so far: 10 hours