Off the Beaten Star Trail

Star Trail provokes an existential crisis.

     

It would be worth recapping at this point the long road that led us here:

    

• At the beginning of the game, after character creation, we received a quest to recover the Salamander Stone from the Dwarven Pit and bring it to Lowangen. This took place in the city of Kvirasim at the northern edge of the map. We were told only that the Dwarven Pit was to the south.

• We moved south, following clues, stopping to solve a side quest in the city of Gashok. Eventually we reached the mountains in the southeast part of the world map, found the Dwarven Pit, and got the Salamander Stone.

• We moved west to Lowangen in the south-central part of the map, lost the stone, recovered it, and lost it again. The best clues as to where it had gone were to the Blood Peaks on the west side of the map.

• Eager to explore a little, we went far to the north, then west, the south to the Blood Peaks instead of just going west. Along the way, we did a side-quest for the subtitular Star Trail in Tiefhusen (northwest quadrant) that resulted in us not obtaining the weapon.

• It turned out that the entrance—or at least an entrance—to the Blood Peaks was not too far to the west from Tiefhusen. However, in taking this entrance, we ran into a party of orcs who stripped us of all of our items and threw us in a cell.

     

My travels prior to this session.

       

This entry started with a certain amount of eagerness to avoid that fate. I thought I'd avoid the orc encounter and probe at the Blood Peaks to the south and west. I did this before my last entry on Star Trail was published, so I didn't yet have commenter VK's assurances that such an entrance exists. When I didn't find anything, I just kept pushing south.

    

If I was after anything, I guess it was side quests. I had somehow gotten the impression, probably based on my experiences with the first game, that there were a lot more towns and dungeons like Gashok and Tiefhusen, with quests waiting to be completed and corridors waiting to be explored. Accordingly, I moved south, east, and north, trying all of the trails that I hadn't explored on my first pass. I didn't find a single (non-menu) town or a single dungeon, but I did hit a lot of other small miscellaneous encounters, including:

     

• Numerous battles with harpies, orcs, ogres, and wild animals. 

• Somewhere in the southern Blood Peaks, a huntress threatened to shoot us. We got her to talk to us, but she didn't give us any information. However, I did notice that DARK MAGES (presumably, the ones that stole the Salamander Stone from us) was a dialogue option that hadn't existed elsewhere before. 

      

That's a better threat in a world without magical healing.

      

• My explorations to the southwest were stymied by the need for snowshoes, which I'm not even sure exist.

      

I tried snowshoes once. I don't think they made walking in the snow any easier.

      

• An abandoned camp with various sundries.

• A very large party of orcs walking down the road. We refused to hide, got into an impossible battle, and had to reload.

     

We did not win this one.

       

• We spent a long time around Finsterkoppen, mapping all of the routes we hadn't taken, under the theory that if side-dungeons existed, they'd probably be in the mountains. We didn't find any, but we did find the alternate entrance to the Dwarven Pit. It's on the other side of the mountains from the main entrance in Finsterkopp, quite a distance by road.

      

My claustrophobia acted up just reading this description.

      

• I've noticed that Gnomon, my best trapper, has a lot more trouble finding food and water in the mountains than on flat land. I guess that makes a certain amount of sense.

• A mountain road ended with a landslide, which nearly killed us.

• We stopped to help a man whose cart had broken down. It turned out to be a ruse by bandits, and we started the subsequent combat unarmed. 

       

This same thing happens in Red Dead Redemption.

        

• At one point, the game asked: "Say, aren't you the least bit concerned that nothing's happened for so long?" I guess that was a subtle hint to get back on track. 

• We approached a pond and heard a bunch of buzzing. Investigating, we found ourselves attacked by "horseflies of enormous size, and obviously starving." We had an option to act. I'm sure some spells may have helped, but I just tried lighting a torch, which drove some of them off but left us damaged from their stings. 

    

There's no upside to investigating, but we had to know.

     

• On the far eastern side of the map, on a road that looked like it led off the map, we were stopped and threatened by archers. We had an option to attack them, but it ended in our massacre. I think this encounter exists simply to stop the player from trying to leave the map. 

• We encountered a huge brown bear. We decided to run rather than fight. It turned out that the bear was just protecting her cub.

      

I don't like when RPGs (cf. Baldur's Gate, Skyrim, Avowed) make me kill bears. I like bears.

         

• A tinker carrying a heavy load stopped to chat with us, then offered to sell us a copper pot. 

• We followed a blood trail into the woods, found a dead man next to a large, broken hammer, and buried "the poor sod."

     

What was this all about?

     

• A woman rode by on a moose. Later, she rode past us again and said, "You can really ride these beasts, even though I don't think anyone beside me actually does." I wish I knew how. We've been occasionally putting points into the "Ride" skill for nothing. 

           

She's riding side-saddle without a saddle. That's impressive.

       

At this point, we were all the way back at Kvirasim, the first town since Tiefhusen. We took the time to check the stores for show shoes (nada), buy some spare boots, and restock herbs. Unfortunately, Kvirasim doesn't have what we really needed: a smith to repair our broken weapons. Thus, we went down to Gashok and spent a week in town, getting our weapons repaired at a rate of one per day. We were broke at the end of the week, but fortunately the market came to town on the last day, and we were able to sell some excess weapons to get another 20 gold pieces in our pockets. Just as we were getting ready to leave, we saw that the armorer sold—you guessed it—snowshoes.

   

Having bought them, we commenced a long journey back to the southwest. Taking the route that required snowshoes simply brought us to a dead-end, where we were once again mobbed by orcs, forced to surrender, and thrown into a cell in the Blood Peaks. I should have included this episode with the last entry.

      

Shame on me, I guess.

          

Still, the incident gave me hope. The two encounters that got us automatically tossed into an orc prison are relatively far apart from each other. That meant that there could be an alternate entrance anywhere between the two. I started exploring the network of trails here, taking every side path I hadn't already explored, stopping at every inn. I fought a lot of battles with wild cats, harpies, orcs, and ogres during this period, usually relying on computer combat, the accumulation of which finally got my two weakest characters (the ones who had been left behind in Lowangen) to Level 6. I would just point out that if I had kept my imported party, they would have all started at Level 7 and probably would have been Level 9 or 10 by now.

     

At some of the inns, I got hints as to the dark mages who had stolen the Salamander Stone from me—though  not much more than they came from the southwest where the orcs live. 

       

I assume he means that they were planning to return after their mission.

        

Along one side-trail, we came across an armored warrior limping down the road, her face crisscrossed with scars and bandages. The battered woman introduced herself as Korima of Attica. After we exhausted a few keywords with her, getting nowhere, she offered two things: first, to sell us a spare two-handed sword; second, to adventure with us for a daily rate. We enthusiastically chose the latter. 

      

Seeing actual Baid-Aids® on her face spoils the immersion a bit. 

            

Korima is a Level 7 fighter who comes with her own equipment, though we had to give her a spare sleeping bag. She was a great addition to the party, making combat a lot easier. The first night, we cast "Respondami" to get a sense of her true intentions, but it turned out that she was what she seemed to be: "As long as you pay me a piece of silver daily, I'll fight at your side."

       

I'm not always good at this, but Korima's origin was obvious to me immediately (Sorsha, as portrayed by Joanne Whalley in 1988's Willow). .

        

In fact, I soon prized her presence so much that I began to worry about running out of money and losing her. I was down to about 18 gold pieces at this point, which should have kept her in the party for another 180 days, but time can pass quickly in this game. Hence, we made our way back to Tiefhusen and sold a bunch of excess stuff (the snowshoes, weapons we'd looted from the orcs, hand mirrors, etc.) and earned back another couple hundred gold pieces.

      

I feel like we're taking advantage of her.

       

It's worth pausing here to talk a bit about the game's approach to the economy. It models real life in the sense that money is a tool, and you can make about as much of it as you want to spend the time and effort to make. Having a lot of money in the game is useful but not game-breaking. It allows you to rest in suites, dine out, buy extra herbs and potions, obtain premium healthcare, and buy new weapons instead of taking time to repair the worn-out ones—but there are low-cost or free alternatives to all of these things. I like the idea of an RPG in which most of your expenses are for services rather than goods, and I wish the game had continued on this line by offering coach rides between cities (there are some ferry boats) or allowed you to bribe NPCs to narrow down useful keywords.

    

There are a few major money-related plot points in the game, requiring the party to hand over large amounts of cash, but the game gives you the ability to go out and make that money through battle and trade. Since there are no high-value magic items for sale in any of the shops, you're incentivized not to overdo this, but it's nice to have the option when the occasion arises. 

    

The only real "money sink" in the game is in the form of herbs and potions, and even here, it's really about herbs. Since potions don't stack, there's a limited number that you can carry at any one time, especially with all the other survival gear you have to pack. Herbs stack and weigh next to nothing and can be consumed independently of potions, so they're a better use of both money and inventory space.

      

Lyra's current herb inventory. This doesn't count what the other characters have.

     

The other thing that disincentivizes the use of potions is that you need a recipe to make them. In the entire game, I only found one recipe, during the latest session, for a magic potion. It admittedly would be very useful, but it requires brandy, which I was never able to find after getting the recipe. It also doesn't stack, so you wouldn't carry it around just to make potions. You'd make the potion right there, after buying the brandy, in which case you frankly might as well just find an herbalist and buy the potion itself. In general, I don't think that the game gives you a lot of incentive to make potions, which is why I never bothered to replace my alchemy set after the orcs confiscated it in Lowangen.

   

Herbs on their own, however, are still extraordinarily useful, and I have Lyra spend an hour searching for them every time we camp. As you might imagine, I really bulked up my inventory during this session. Whirlweed, dried whirlweed, and four-leaf loneberry can all be chewed for health points, even in the middle of combat. Tarnele can be eaten just before bed to increase the restorative effects of sleeping. Many of the rest are used in various combinations when a healer uses "Treat Illness." I'm probably carrying a few that have no use unless I get that alchemy set back, but it feels like I'm close to the end of the game. If I didn't fully explore that mechanic, I'm at least glad it was there. I just wish I knew where to find more recipes. You'd think the herbalists would sell them.

       

Lyra on her nightly foraging.

      

With enough money to pay Korima for several years, we went back on the road, wandering the mountain trails, looking for an alternate entrance to the Blood Peaks. We might have found it sooner, but a priestess of Tsa threw us off the track by telling us there was a "path going straight into the mountains to the east." She had her "east" and "west" mixed up, we later figured. 

   

But eventually we found it: cave into a sheer rock face. We had to fight some orcs nearby, but I don't know whether that was a random encounter or a fixed one. I think this was meant to be our exit from the dungeon, as the game congratulates us if we turn around and leave.

      

At last!

         

Before I wrap up, I'll recount what happens to a party that does not reload but simply allows itself to be captured by the orcs. Each bullet point here is a different screen or message window:

   

• The party is completely surrounded by orcs.

• An orc captain tells us that we're prisoners of Ugorzzih.

      

Is that pronounced the French way?

       

• We have the option to fight or surrender. Either way, we wake up in a prison cell, but the surrendering way offers more messages in between.

• The orcs march the party across several mountains.

     

Like hiking with Irene.

       

• It's such a long journey that we stop for the night.

• We reach a cave. The orcs blindfold us and lock us in a cell.

• We are in the cell. Orcs bring us meals in the evening. 

     

Also invites an Irene comparison, but one that would end up with my body in a shallow grave.

      

• We are still in the cell. Orcs continue to bring us dinner. We find an obsidian knife behind a loose brick, left by some previous prisoner. 

• We are still in the cell. It has been two days. We've become aware of a knocking in the distance. Someone is repeating the same pattern: 2 long, 2 short, 3 short, 2 long.

     

Part of me is slightly disappointed that I won't get to find out what this is about.

      

• The same message repeated for another day.

• We've noticed prisoners in other cells. On this day, two guards return again to feed us, one standing guard while the other brings in the food.

• Finally, we can't take it anymore. On this day, we overpower the orcs with our hands and strike out, naked and afraid. 

      

What is an "arbach"?

         

This would be a great beginning to a game, but I've had enough of dancing to this game's tune. So when we pick up, remember that I took the alternate entrance that avoided all of this drama.

     

Time so far: 47 hours