Worlds of Legend: Paying to Win

Three-quarters done!

     

Before continuing on to the next dungeon and the third of four amulet shards, I decided to fully explore the overworld and catalog its various locations. It turns out to consist of 22 locations. Fifteen of them are relatively generic cities, with some combination of apothecaries, temples, blacksmiths, and artificers. Each apothecary has a different selection of herbs and at different prices, so I took note of those for when I needed to stock up.

     

The "artificer" of each town sells magic items.

     

Five of the locations are cities with "Vaults" (dungeons). Each of these also sells horses, but none of the cities with vaults have any other services. Each vault except the first, in Imperia, is gated by a key that you have to get from Sushiana when you turn in an amulet shard. The order of exploration is thus quite linear, with the only "side" dungeon being the Mad Monks--more on them at the end. The Mad Monks are the 21st location, and the last is the "odd shrine" in the center of the map, where I suspect the endgame is going to take place.

          

I need the reunited amulet to "call forth the eternal champion."

    

I was going to list all the locations here with their rough coordinates, but I guess that would just take up space for no reason. Suffice to say that they all have vaguely oriental names (e.g., Sengrosiah, Tokiama, Insomyai, Guidato, Goshiata) that don't follow the linguistic rules of any real nation. No problem there; it's a fantasy world, after all.

     

Legend had a mechanic by which cities could change hands through conquest and such, and you had to defend your own faction's cities by paying for defenses or defeating the enemy armies yourself. This game removes those elements and just has the enemy armies roaming the maps. Sometimes, they're hard to avoid. If you stand still, they'll pass by without incident, but if you encounter one on the move, your only options are to show a pass, which you lose, or fight--which I, at least, almost always lose. I think I fought eight banner encounters this session and only won three of them.

         

Cities do change hands, but I don't think it has the same consequences as in Legend.

    

I don't think I've made one thing clear about combat in earlier entries. The game only allows a certain number of enemies on the screen at once. As you kill each foe, he's replaced with someone "waiting in the wings." There's no way to tell how many enemies are waiting to join the battle, so you just have to keep killing and hope for the best. In dungeons, the number of off-screen enemies is rarely more than double the number on-screen, but in banner encounters, it could be five or seven times the number you initially encounter. No matter how well you seem to be doing at first, the bastards just don't stop coming.

   

The difficulty of the battles gave me an excuse to try out some more spells and spell-related tactics. Most of them didn't work out well. The first thing I tried was "Surround-Thrall." "Thrall" is the only offensive spell that has no effect on allies, so you don't have to be careful about where you cast it. The results were mixed. When I cast it, I definitely saw an immediate change in enemy behavior, but it didn't last long. The spell might be short-lived, but also I don't think the party recognizes the change in monster status from enemy to ally, so they just keep pounding away at whoever is closest. This seems to dispel the "Thrall" status. Overall, the game provides so little feedback that it's hard to tell what's happening. At best, the spell provided a momentary respite.

       

Preparing to cast "Surround-Thrall" during a banner encounter.

     

I also experimented with more "Continuous" fields, but the impossibility of navigating characters--getting them to take certain paths, getting them to stay in place, getting them to follow orders at all--doomed the effort. Enemies would inevitably end up in "Healing" fields and allies would inevitably stumble into "Paralysis" and "Thrall" fields. Someone last session suggested that if the Runemaster was the only character, it might be easier, and there's something to that, but even in a later battle when I decided to focus on the Runemaster exclusively, I couldn't get her to stay where I wanted.

    

I did discover, however, that I can win just about any battle with three spells. The first is 16 instances of "Healing" strung together. Each one absorbs 16 units of hedjog venom, but each one restores about a quarter of the Runemaster's health. The second is "Forward-Disrupt-Disrupt-Disrupt" which kills most enemies in one hit and any enemy in two hits. With these two spells, I can keep my Runemaster alive and blast enemies one by one until they're all gone. The third spell is "Missile-Vivify" for resurrecting the other party members after the Runemaster saves the day.

        

I think this is just a random battle shot. It's hard to capture spellcasting in screenshots for this game.

       

Now, this strategy costs a fortune, so I was careful not to use it in every battle. But with those spells, winning combats becomes an economic problem rather than a strategic one. That's not a complaint. I like that the game gives an expensive "out" for players like me who have trouble with other tactics.

   

That's mostly how I won the three banner encounters, all of which provided new passes and very nice equipment upgrades like Ethereal Swords and Crystal Plate. 

   

When I was done with my overworld explorations, I headed for the city of Tokiama and the next dungeon. It turned out to be two more levels, the first quite large. It had the usual linear progression of keys and doors, but it also introduced some levers that rotated a central room, changing the configuration of corridors every time you pulled one of them. It took a few minutes to figure out.

        

The room beneath the three at the top rotates, causing different corridor configurations to appear depending on what levers are pulled.

     

I found the enemies easier in this dungeon than in the last, but there were more of them. They respawned faster than the previous dungeons and didn't give me much peace when I tried to linger in a room to let "Regeneration" do its job. The number of enemies was good for my finances.

     

The puzzles were a little bit harder. This room required me to have someone standing on each of the teleporter destination pads on the east side while another character walked onto the teleporter in the water. The problem is there are five pads (including the one in the water) and only four characters. I wasted all kinds of time trying to paralyze an enemy on one of the pads (a spell that wears off quickly) before I managed to get one to just keep attacking me from one of the squares. 

       

As long as that little kobold stays where he is, I'm good. (There's an invisible character on what looks like an unoccupied teleporter.)

       

This room had a similar theme. Standing in front of the button and pressing it caused the character to teleport to each of the pads on the other side of the "gap" and then back to the original pad. I needed the character to stay over on the other side of the gap. The only way to do that was to have a second character rush in and stand in front of the button just after the first character teleported away, but there wasn't time to select the second character and move him before the first ended up back where she started. Instead, I had to start the second character moving towards the location from several squares away and time it perfectly so she arrived just as the first character left. Then I had to cast "Damage" on those floor runes, but I mistook them for "Dispel" runes and wasted a lot of time hitting them with the wrong spells.

         

Carefully lining up my characters on teleport pads.

      

I couldn't solve the final room--the one with the amulet shard--and I had to get an online hint. (I tried for about 20 minutes.) This room has four pillars that constantly shoot area "Damage" spells. If you stand in them, you die quickly. Pressing the button on the pillar causes a "Teleport" spell to launch from the western pillar, perpendicular to the "Damage" spells. The "Teleport" spell hits any character in its path (along the "R" runes), teleporting him to the next "pier" to the west. You have to do this four times before the character can get to the chest. The problem is that standing in the right location means standing in the middle of a "Damage" inferno. I tried casting "Anti-Magic," but that kept getting stripped away. I eventually sent my Runemaster across, as she could heal herself, and it took about eight multi-"Healing" spells.

       

Try to notice a single spell shooting west-to-east in all of that.

     

The reason I couldn't figure it out on my own is that with the constant bounding of "Damage" from the northern pillars, I couldn't even see the "Teleport" spell firing from the western pillar. I thought the "R" runes were telling me to cast "Teleport" on them, not to wait on them to be teleported. 

    

Anyway, I got the shard and left the dungeon. I don't want to suggest it was quick--it took me about 5 hours--but there just isn't much new to say about the experience. There were a couple of odd encounters, though:

    

• One room had a sign that read: "The grave contains the charred remains of a Mantric. How could one so powerful meet with such a gruesome fate?" I don't know what a "Mantric" is, but I was sure these were going to be the "bones of an ancient mage" that the artificer wanted. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything in the room no matter what I searched.

• A second room had a glowing stone on a pedestal. "The power of the stone should not be played with, foolish mortals!," a sign read. I couldn't figure out any way to interact with it.

       

Good thing I never found a way to "play" with it.

       

Once I was out, I made the usual rounds, selling my excess stuff, replenishing my luck, and replenishing my reagents. I had enough money to get almost 999 (the maximum) of each reagent.

    

But when I then visited the Mad Monks to level up, I was short of the amount I needed to train all of my characters. I tried attacking them again and swiftly died at their hands. Determined to beat them, I tried a third time, parking my Runemaster in a corner square where she could only be approached by one enemy at a time, and blasting them with "Forward-Disrupt-Disrupt-Disrupt" the moment they did. I healed myself with the 16x "Healing" spell when necessary. By the time the battle was over, the Runemaster was the only one alive, and she'd mixed and cast so many spells that some of my reagents had gone from 999 to the low 200s--but I had won.

     

My Runemaster stands alone, shredding enemy after enemy with "Disrupt."

     

In previous attempts to beat the monks, I thought the battle was like a banner encounter, but it turns out that it's the opening room of a small dungeon. More monks attacked as I explored, but thankfully not as many as the initial room.

        

The dubious reward of a difficult dungeon.

      

I found my way to a door that was unlocked with one of the "lost keys" that I've been collecting. It led to a room with a treasure chest, which had a sword called "Occam's Razor" in it. It's a decent sword, but I don't think it's as good as what my characters were already carrying (two Ethereal Blades and a Wraith Blade). I didn't find any other doors for the other two keys.

        

I killed hundreds of monks to get their respect.

       

The one good outcome from the experience is that the monks will train us for free--which is good because I needed every penny to replenish my reagents from that one battle. I headed to the next dungeon city, Guidato, dead broke. There's all kinds of good-looking stuff in the blacksmiths' shops and artificers' shops that I haven't been able to afford, too. You know I like a tight economy.

Time so far: 26 hours