Ishar 2: New Zach's City

We finally get some backstory.

        

I wanted to start this entry with a recap, and I realized that to write it, I needed to basically go back to the manual and act like I was starting over. Ishar 2 has one of the most obtuse stories of its year. If I were just a player, I'm sure I would end the game utterly confused and reticent about picking up Ishar 3. But my job as a blogger requires me to explain the game to you, which requires me to review notes and materials multiple times, trying to work out the confusion.

   

So far, the specific threat to the islands that make up Arborea is not explained. The titular Ishar is a fortress that the player conquered in the first game, now ruled centuries later by Zubaran, and in the opening cinematic, Zubaran was encouraged to flee his home by "Jon, Alchemist of Arborea," to deal with some unspecified threat.

     

I didn't have any images to go with this recap, so here are some barbarians I fought later on a mountain path.

       

• Question: Who the hell is Jon? Is he ever going to show up again?

• Question: Why do none of the islands in this archipelago seem to hold the castle of Ishar? Or, where is Ishar's island in relation to where the game has been taking place?

• Question: Why is the party called "Messengers of Doom"? We don't seem to be bringing messages to anybody. 

     

Maybe Zubaran knows more about what he's doing than I do. It feels to me like he's just been wandering around. There are, granted, plenty of RPGs in which the player goes a-wandering despite some ostensibly pressing threat, but usually those games give the player some kind of direction that the player is deliberately ignoring. Not here. As far as I can tell, Jon tricked Zubaran out of his castle.

   

The best I can figure, the "big bad" of the game is someone named Shandar. He's mentioned obliquely in the manual. An early tavern rumor talked about "Shandar's mob sneaking about the town." On the first quest, a dying woman talked about "myrmidons of Shandar," perhaps trying to sacrifice her. On Zach's Island, we found some monks sacrificing a young girl to Shandar, "High Priest of Chaos."

     

A giant puts the Theiss Titillation Theory to the test.

      

We also heard on Zach's Island that Zeldy, the mayor's daughter, had gone missing. The commander-in-chief of the city (higher or lower rank than a mayor?) charged us with finding her, but there are rumors that he's behind the disappearance. 

   

A big part of gameplay has just been finding new areas to explore. It looks like there are six islands to explore, but the game requires us to find a map of each island before it will let us explore it. We found the map to Akeer's Island in the library on Zach's Island. We explored it for a while but got stuck when we couldn't pass some kind of invincible undead spirit. Fortunately, at the end of the last session, we found a map to Jon's Island. This happened when we gave 10,000 gold to a mage and he told us to release an eagle we had purchased. I don't know why we had to pay him so much for that.

       

Jon's Island had three landing points. We chose one at random, stepped off the boat, and immediately started taking damage from the cold. It turned out that each of the three landing points went to a different small map on the frozen, mountainous terrain, and in all of them, we needed special gear to survive. So we immediately took the boat back to Zach's Island and went shopping. I remember seeing a fur coat sale at one of the stores. I had to spend 25,000 gold to buy one for every party member.  

      

But not a real fur coat; that's cruel.

           

For some reason, the southwest dock on the world map led us to the northeast part of the island. We arrived in the dark, so you'll understand how I immediately took a step forward, fell off the mountain path, and died. On a reload, I was more careful. Almost all of the paths on the island are on the edge of mountains.

      

I don't know what kind of special power Khalin has.

        

From the arrival point, we could go east or west. I went east, and it wound its way around the mountain before dead-ending at a square with a cauldron on the ground. I was a little excited at this development, as a cauldron is necessary to make potions, and I was carrying a bunch of reagents for that purpose. If I'm not mistaken, the cauldron in Ishar was in a fixed location, and you had to make your potions there. I assumed that's what the sequel's manual meant when it said there is only one cauldron in the game. But I could pick this one up and take it with us, which was handier. More about potions in a bit.

   

The western path dead-ended at some kind of "snow-triceratops." He lasted a long time, but he didn't hit hard enough to be a serious threat. When he died, he left a horn.

        

Sorry, buddy, but those side horns were going to get you soon anyway.

       

We then tried the northwest dock, which deposited us on the southern part of the island. There were a number of battles with barbarians here, who dropped no money. I'll save myself from repeating this by just saying that no enemies anywhere on Jon's Island dropped any money, joining their counterparts on Akeer's Island. If you need to grind for gold in this game, your only real option is those bandits back on Zach's Island. This was particularly annoying because thanks to the fur purchases, I was down to only a few hundred gold pieces.

      

Anyway, the end of a path that barbarians were guarding was occupied by five pillars, and I intuited immediately that I would be putting those glass-cased skeleton parts on these pillars. I only had two of them at this point, though.

         

There are only 2 pedestals for, like, 149 more bones. 

         

In the other direction, we reached a dead end with an old, white-bearded man sitting cross-legged in the air. He wouldn't talk to us and didn't seem to want anything we had.

       

Levitating is 90% mental. The other half is physical.

       

A couple of large giants blocked the way to a sword floating in the air. It turned out to be a "Living Sword +20," or 5 points better than the magic sword I had most of the characters using.

         

Is it "living" because there are vines wrapped around it? That's weird.

       

The northeast dock brought us to the northwest part of the island. It was the most combat-heavy of the three areas, with multiple parties of frost dwarves (I'm making up these names, of course; the game doesn't tell you your foe's names) and giant vultures. We hit a "cursed" area, which like "Inversion," causes the party members to attack each other. The solution was to cast "Exorcism" in the area—thanks to commenters who helped with that and who figured out the "Inversion" issue last time.

          

You're people! How do you have no money?

        

While we're on the subject of spells, I tried "Change of Timescale" again when the characters got tired. I guess when I tried it in the past, I had become impatient and clicked us out of the spell before it was over. If you're willing to sit and wait a couple of minutes, it legitimately restores all of your hit points (better than a night's rest at the inn) and most of your spell points, including the points necessary to cast the spell in the first place, while no time passes in the real world. You can cast it in the middle of combat, even. It seems way too powerful, at once obviating inns, food, healing spells, and combat difficulty. In fact, if I had been willing to cast it more often, it would have obviated the fur coats, as I could have just restored our hit points whenever I wanted. Knowing that I had this spell in my pocket was responsible for some of my later choices.

    

One path kept going upward, and we eventually reached a point at which the party refused to go any farther. "We're all giddy!" the message said. I correctly guessed that the solution to the problem was a potion, but I didn't know which one. The manual gives you the recipes for potions but gives them all nonsense names (e.g. "Rhumxy," "Arbool," "Flukjl"). While some of the reagents are sold in stores, about half are rare or unique, so you don't want to do a lot of open experimentation.

         

"Mummy"?

      

We had found a bunch of sprigs of Edelweiss in the area—five exactly, in fact—so I figured the answer would have something to do with them. The manual lists only three recipes that use Edelweiss: "Arbool," "Mildong," and "Oklum." "Arbool" requires dandelion, and I had only found one sprig of that, so I ruled it out. I moved on to "Mildong," which requires Edelweiss and gargoyle's claws, the latter of which can be bought in several stores. The game requires you to drink the potion directly from the cauldron, so I had to mix five of them and feed them to my party members before I could see whether it worked. Fortunately, it did. (I had taken a save, of course.) On the other side of this area, we found our third bone-in-a-jar. 

         

Feeding a potion to a character.

      

Now stuck as to what to do next, I did a circuit of the places I hadn't fully explored. Nothing was new on Akeer's Island, but the exercise bore fruit on Zach's Island. On my return visit to the library, I found a book that I don't remember seeing before. It translates the names of the potions to their effects. Some quick notes:

    

• Schlounz (Physical Regeneration): I don't know whether this means health or the "Physical" attribute (which is like a fatigue meter). Either way, the potion is obviated by a party with a scholar capable of casting "Change of Timescale." Even without that spell, mixing all the reagents required seems a lot more effort and expense than just relying on healing spells and/or bread.

• Ghoslam (Psychic Regeneration): This would be more useful without "Change of Timescale." I tend to run out of magic faster than I run out of health.

• Clopatos (Invulnerability): I'll keep it in mind if I encounter a really tough combat. It uses all-purchasable ingredients. If you changed the party formation so that only one characters was in front and fed him this potion, it could be the secret to victory. I just wonder how long it lasts.

• Bulkal (Anti-Paralysis): I'll keep it in mind if I ever get paralyzed.

• Mildong (Anti-Vertigo): If I hadn't figured it out, this was the obvious clue.

• Jablou (Ent Alarm): That's a bit of a mystery.. I haven't met any ents. This one requires dandelion, so it's a one-time thing unless I find more.

• Humbolg ("Turbulent Priest"): That's a pretty oblique description.

       

Some of the potion translations.

      

The book had nothing to say about "Dzarna," "Kloug," "Gato," "Arbool," "Potaic," "Rhumxy," "Oklum," or "Flukjl," which are all given recipes in the book. I later experimented with them. I couldn't make "Arbool" or "Oklum," as they required ingredients I had already used. The others did nothing but poison the character I gave the potion to. I assume they're just red herrings.

       

When you play Ishar, you start to watch out for weird translations. Our discussion about "Change of Timescale" last entry is a good example. The translation doesn't always get things exactly right. "Turbulent priest" got me thinking. You could imagine a process by which "floating" in French might get translated to "turbulent" in English. (I'm very curious what the French version of the book has for "turbulent priest.") So I mixed up a batch of Humbolg, took it back to the floating monk, and found to my delight that I had been right.

      

Yub nub, m@#*(%@s.

              

He didn't do much—just waved his hand—but the game had already taught me what to check when something mysterious happens: the map. Sure enough, Thorm's Island was now open to me.

    

Thorm's Island was a large, maze-like map set in platforms and wooden walkways high up in the island's forest. As in many places, the graphics really took front stage here. Enemies included homicidal Ewoks, griffons, some kind of one-horned monstrosity, and a few armored men. Again, none of them dropped any gold.

        

You could have the courtesy of looking at us while you're fighting us.

          

Special encounters here really propelled the game forward:

       

We found the fourth skeleton part—a hand in a glass case. 

We found the body of Zeldy. Yes, the mayor's daughter was dead. That was a reversal of expectations. She wore a key around her neck. A tavern tale that we heard ages ago indicated that Zeldy had taken the "pig of a commander's" key with her. 

      

And here's yet another variation on the game's obsession with "Dw" words.

     

We ran into a bearded tree. At first I thought it was a statue. Then I realized: "Ent." I fed him the "Jablou" potion, and he woke up long enough to give me a pendant.

      

I'm curious how he's giving us the pendant, and where it was in the first place.

       

A hut was occupied by some elders sitting around a fire. They told us a tale of twin brother druids, Grimz and Griml, who opposed Shandar. "They succeeded in penetrating his castle, but were conquered by Shandar's power." Griml was turned to stone; Grimz was cut into pieces and his bones scattered over the islands of Arborea. Clearly, it's his bones that we have been finding. "They say an ancestral breeze could re-awaken Griml, and that Grimz could come back to life through his daughter, whom Shandar blinded and imprisoned in his fortress."

         

We found the statue of Griml standing on a walkway, although when I first encountered him, I just assumed he was a mute NPC. As for the "ancestral breeze," we figured it out by blowing the horn we had received from the ice triceratops. When he came to life, he thanked us and said, "Give me a shield . . . It will protect you against the dragon's fire." I tried, but he didn't seem to want any of our shields, maybe because they're already enchanted. I'm planning to come back with a plain shield.

          

What dragon?

      

Most important, in another hut, another group of elders finally gave us some backstory on Shandar, and it's just delightful:

    

After the death of Krogh [ed. the villain in the first game], Arborea became a forbidden place for all the agents of chaos. Shandar took advantage of the arrival of great numbers of people from the Northlands and emigrated to Zach's Island. He started an illicit trade in hallucinogenic potions and soon became a rich and important person. Today, he owns the whole town and many worshippers make him the object of a demonic cult. His dream is to overthrow the throne of Ishar and take possession of the fortress.

    

The nebulous threat to Arborea is thus explained: a drug kingpin! 

    

So I have to find Grimz's daughter, then the last piece of Grimz, and then put him together back on top of the mountain. I'm not sure how that will play out, but I at least know where to go next: To the commander-in-chief's office, with the key I looted from Zeldy.

       

It's amazing how much better you feel about a game when the story starts falling into place. But it's still pretty weak on RPG mechanics. Combats have become trivially easy, so much so that I'm not sure it's worth taking the time to grind for the magical equipment (predominantly armor) that I don't already own. My characters are Level 19, but I stopped noticing the effects of leveling ages ago. I wonder if I can wrap it up in one more entry.

        

Time so far: 15 hours