Star Trail: Arena

 

Art imitates art.

         

As I began this session in the Blood Peaks, I reflected on our reasons for even being here:

    

• In Lowangen, an NPC said he thought Ingramosch, the dwarf to whom we were supposed to deliver the Salamander Stone, had gone to the Blood Peaks to "take care of the orcs."

• The party of mages who stole the Salamander Stone from us were last seen traveling through or near the region.

• At least two fixed encounters lead to the party being hogtied, stripped of equipment, and carried to a cell in the Blood Peaks.

• I explored the entire map during the last session, and it is literally the only available map that I haven't already explored.

         

A typical chest during this game session.

        

We had also received some history on the region from a smith in Lowangen: An ancient dwarven prince named Tordol conquered the area from the orcs. They had been called the Great Peaks, but the conquest was so violent that they were renamed the Blood Peaks. I guess the orcs must have moved back in after he left.

     

Despite promises from commenters that the party could recover its gear this time if I just rolled with the capture-and-imprisonment, I looked for another option and managed to find an alternate entrance to the dungeon. This is where we pick up.

      

Thirty seconds later. This is a bad start.

         

Many times in the past, we've seen odd parallels, always coincidental, between the two games that I'm playing at any one time. This pairing is no exception. Just like the recently-finished Halls of Colossus in Arena, the Blood Peaks offered numerous "arena" themes, including holding cells and a bloody battle floor. It's interesting to see how the two games take the same basic assignment ("make this arena feel like a real place") and approach it very differently. Arena focused on graphics—though this being 1994, not terribly good ones—while Star Trail adopted the slightly more timeless approach of relaying most of the environmental context in text. (The environment isn't completely devoid of furnishings and such, but it's more suggestive, like the occasional barrels and bookshelves in Gloomhaven, than truly evocative.) Star Trail's approach is better in that they were able to weave some encounters and role-playing options into that text.

     

Okay, those holes are in the walls, not the floors. And they're enormous! Who uses this latrine?!

         

The dungeons in the two games are similar in that they're both three levels and have a number of doors that require about half a dozen keys to open. They both thus require quite a bit of backtracking. At about five hours, the Blood Peaks took me a bit longer than the Halls of Colossus, but that's entirely because of Star Trail's slower (but more tactical) combat system.

       

One final weird coincidence: Both games make it hard to see secret doors, but both of them annotate them on the automap. 

    

Given what I just said, you'd think this would be a screenshot of the automap. But I forgot to take one. So it's just a battle with some ogres.

                

The game sets up the Blood Peaks as a living dungeon. The orcs actually reside here; they're not just marauding through. There are kitchens, sleeping areas, latrines, forges, meeting halls, trash heaps, and storage rooms. Lots of storage rooms. A party that was stripped of its equipment could mostly re-equip itself here. I have numerous screenshots showing chests, shelves, and tables with dozens of pints of beer, wine bottles, hundreds of rations, scores of arrows and crossbow bolts, other weapons, armor, writing utensils, throwing knives, ropes, torches, lanterns, flasks of oil, snowshoes, hatchets, crowbars, mattocks, hammers, shovels, pitons, rope ladders, grappling hooks, blankets, winter coats, glass flasks, and many vials of poison called "golden glue" that I never found a use for. I found an alchemy set to replace the one I lost ages ago, and Toliman replaced his flute with a lute. Because of all the liquid and rations, I felt free to rest often and restore health and magic.

      

We had to answer about two dozen questions like this.

      

There was also a lot of jewelry: gold, silver, and orc. I started by taking all of it, but when I ran out of inventory space, I had to prioritize the gold and silver. It later turned out that gold jewelry sells for about 10 gold pieces each, while silver jewelry only sells for a couple of silver pieces. I wonder if I would have done better with the orc jewelry. 

           

Jewelry items do not stack. This was painful.

       

The hallways were crawling with orcs and ogres, plus a few adjacent caverns that had spiders. At first, the game noted that I saw the orcs and hid, and they passed by. Eventually, I failed one of those checks, and from then on, any time I ran into orcs, there was a battle. A lot of them were with only two or three orcs, and my habit in such circumstances was to put the combat in auto-mode, no magic, and let the computer duke it out. Korima, my NPC fighter, was a big help in these fights. I did have to take control of two or three battles, one of them notably longer than the others, which I'll talk about below. In contrast to the many chests and shelves and such, most of the battles offered no material rewards, and during the entire six hours I spent in this session, only one of my characters (Gnomon) leveled up. 

       

This happened a few times. Then we lost it.

   

Without going in chronological order, here were the major features and mysteries of the Blood Peaks:

   

• Numerous hallways with traps, most of which my characters were able to avoid with Gnomon's high "Perception" and "Danger Sense" skills. The spider caves had some exceptions, where we repeatedly ran into "an avalanche of stones" from the ceiling, causing us to stop and rest several times.

      

Why couldn't I get this to stop!?

     

• Several doors and chests I was never able to open. One of the problems is that I forgot to buy more lockpicks last time I was in town, so I was relying exclusively on force and "Foramen." Perhaps there are some locks that you have to pick to open? 

• A wall that looked like it had a secret door, but every time I ran into it, the game just said, "Wow!" 

• A box contained a mummified hand and a copper disk. I took the disk, although I don't know what it does. When I tried to take the hand, it started glowing green and did damage to Gnomon, who dropped it. 

• A lever. The game asked if I wanted to flip it. I did. It said: "En voila! A perfect triple somersault . . . No, wait a minute, that's no good. Let me rephrase that. Do you want to move the lever to a different position?" Ha ha. Anyway, when I said yes again, nothing happened.

• A huge barrel of beer. Toliman became obsessed with something at the bottom of the barrel that he could only barely make out. He ended up spilling it all over the place and reducing his charisma for a while. It was a dead rat. I assume he failed a "Curiosity" check?

• There were a few wells where we could fill up our waterskins. For some reason, we got +1 "Courage" doing so. 

     

I supposed it takes a certain amount of bravery to drink out of a cistern in a dungeon.

     

• A couple of cages with war dogs (again, going with the arena theme). We had an awful role-playing choice to stab them to death through the bars (which we did not take). Later, other dogs attacked us when we opened a couple of rooms. 

       

It occurs to me that I might have done this in Skyrim. Why does choosing it as an option feel so much worse than doing it in an action interface?

      

• We took several opportunities to hinder the orcs. We destroyed a statue to the orc war god, Brazoragh. We destroyed a couple of catapults. ("The gods only know how the blackpelts ever got hold of these war machines.") We smashed up a cache of weapons. We sliced open sacks of grain meant to feed an army. We burned an orc war flag.

      

I hope this doesn't come back to haunt us.

     

• In the main arena hall, we found a statute to Brazoragh. It had gold plating, and Korima became fixated on scraping the gold off. Failed an "Avarice" check, maybe? 

• In a pile of dog feces, we found a Ring of Magic Resistance. 

• Under some straw in a jail cell, we found an Amulet of Mirroring. On the way back from this dungeon, I returned to the basilisk to see if it would do anything, but we just died again. 

• There was a large, cavernous area full of spider webs. We had to hack through them. We had multiple easy battles with cave spiders in the region.

      

For once, my characters give voice to my own thoughts.

         

• The spider area culminated at a nest where we had the option to destroy baby spiders and eggs. When we did, a Queen Spider arrived and (in a scripted event) killed us all with her poisoned stinger. We had no option or ability to fight or avoid it. I had to reload. The best I could do was only get one party member killed if I split the party before destroying the eggs, but I didn't even want that.

     

The way The Return of the King should have ended.

       

• A skeleton wrapped up in webs had a magic sword on him. I was unable to identify it. Casting "Analyze" just tells me that it has "evil influences," but I'm reluctant to get rid of it, as it's not like the game is over-stuffed with magic weapons. 

         

That might be for reasons having nothing to do with the sword.

       

The largest battle occurred early in the session when I ran into about a dozen orcs and three orc veterans in a large courtyard. I hate large battles in this game because everyone forms a tight cluster and it makes it impossible to see what's happening. If any of my characters gets caught in the middle of the cluster, I can't even see the selector when his or her turn comes up, let alone which enemies are within his or her range. I just have to guess. It also encourages me to eschew regular tactics in favor of clearing as many enemies as possible from the southeast side of the cluster. Paradoxically, these large battles are the ones that most require the player's attention.

    

Go ahead, make anything out of that mess.

      

I like tactical combat, but I haven't really enjoyed Arkania's approach to it. In my final entry on Blade of Destiny, I outlined what I thought were its biggest weaknesses of the Arkania. I'll repeat them here because they're all still relevant here:

   

• "The axonometric perspective doesn't work well for combat. It's hard to separate the characters and enemies from each other and particularly hard to move to a specific tile." I think I already covered that adequately.

• "Everyone misses too often." Aaargh, is this infuriating. With my characters at Level 7, having pumped their primary weapons skills to 10 or 11 (which involves sacrificing a lot of points to failures), the default response to any of my attacks is still to do no damage. Even my best fighters hit and wound the enemy maybe 40% of the time. Where with most RPGs, you only have to pass one accuracy check to hit and then roll for damage if you do, Arkania makes it possible to fumble the attack at the outset, for the enemy to parry the attack, and for the attacker to hit but do no damage. I think there might even be a fourth one, where the attack simply "fails." Not to mention that "fumbling" carries a chance that the attacker will wound himself. Now, all these things are true of enemies, too, so they don't necessarily make combat harder than the typical RPG; they just prolong it. 

           

The most infuriating message ever.

       

• "Attacks don't cause enough damage." This one has either changed or I just got better at combat. When my attacks actually do any damage, they usually seem to me to do sufficient damage. Orcs die in about three hits, sometimes two. And the animation where they stand rigid, turn to the left, and then dissolve into bones never stops being fun.

• "Spells, which would make the whole thing go faster, eat up so many magic points that you can rarely cast more than three or four before needing multiple nights' rest to recharge." Still very true. Later in the entry, I made the point that even though the game offers a few dozen spells, you're not really encouraged to experiment with them because of the comparatively low number of mana points. At the same time, I'll allow that I probably could have exploited the economy and potion system better, bought or made more mana potions, and maybe gotten more use out of spells. My defense is that potions don't stack and inventory space is extremely limited.

 

Because of the spell issue, I think that players are highly incentivized to find one or two strategies that work and just stick with them. I spent most of my spell points on "Bambladam" (a kind-of charm spell makes the enemy stop attacking), "Balm of Roond" (healing), "Lightning" (blinding), and "Ignifaxus" (direct damage). During this particular battle, I had some success with "Horriphobus" (makes enemies flee). I wish I'd been able to experiment more with summoning spells, but none of my characters started near 0 with them, and I didn't want to waste a dozen spell increases getting them competent.

     

An old reliable.

        

I have a few other complaints that I didn't think to levy in my Blade entry:

    

• You have no control over your character distribution (vis-à-vis the enemy) when combat begins. 

• If you've nailed an enemy with a status spell, there's no way to see that condition, so you have to keep careful track of who you previously targeted.

• Unless I missed something there are no spells at all that target multiple enemies.

• Using items during battle sucks. Instead of just opening up the regular inventory interface, you have to switch items into your off-hand (putting down a shield, if you have one) via a menu.

      

But having said all of that, I will allow that the game basically scratches the tactical itch and gives the player those moments of agony and ecstasy that a good tactical combat system evokes. I just wish it were a little less annoying.

      

I should also mention that encumbrance has been an issue for most of the game, so much so that even with the Girdles of Might I found earlier, I've been having every character take strength with every level-up, so as to offset some of the limitations caused by their heavy armor and shields. Given how often those armor and shields block enemy attacks, I still think they're better than having extra movement in battle, but I haven't experimented enough to be sure.   

     

I think we're going to make it!

      

I won the orc battle after three tries, mostly by ganging up on individual enemies (as well as I could, given their sheer number), casting the spells listed above and restoring my mana with the few potions I had, and healing with herbs and potions in the middle of battle. Lyra and Lilii, not great fighters, ended up surrounded by enemies, and after I exhausted their spell points, I basically just had them use healing potions or herbs every round. They each kept four orcs occupied while the fighters cleaned up the rest. It was a bit thrilling to slowly winnow them down and realize that I was going to win.

     

We eventually found the cells where we would have started if we had sucked up the orc ambushes. There was an orc named Thurazz in one of them and a human named Praiodan vom Tann in another. They both offered to join, but we would have been forced to get rid of Korima.

       

He didn't care for our rejection.

      

A couple of the cells had graffiti scratched into the walls. I looked dozens of times and rarely got a duplication. Some of it is clearly procedurally generated.

     

• "Up the III. Regiment."
• "Shite!"
• "B. J. Blaskowicz was here."
• "Up the 11th Banner."
• "Help Rondra!" (or any of the other gods)

Get her out of your heart?

• "The Polar Diamant is in the temple of aaaarrrghhhh . . . "
• "Sadrak Whassoi is a XXXXX."
• "KiL aLL OrG SkuM!!!"
• "Long live Emperor Hal!" 
• "Beware of Belgor!"
• "No one gets out of here alive!" 

     

Finally, the game noted that we found a mage on the floor of another cell. He appeared to have died of dehydration. Gnomon recognized him as one of the mages who stole the Salamander Stone from us. We searched the body, and sure enough, the stone was in the pocket of one of his robes. Unbelievable. 

      

I suppose we were due.

      

When we exited the caverns and headed back to the north, we kept getting "the pursuers are getting closer" messages, just like we had near Lowangen the first time we had the Salamander Stone. Commenters suggested that casting "Without a Trace" was the way to avoid getting attacked by these pursuers, but I could never find the right moment to cast it. If I tried to interrupt travel, I just got attacked by the pursuers anyway. If I cast it at night, the message suggested that only the caster's presence had been masked, and anyway it didn't seem to have any effect on the pursuing party. I thus had to fight long, difficult battles with druids, mages, and rogues twice on the way back.

      

These guys are harder than the orcs in the Blood Peaks.

      

We stopped at a couple of inns and briefly at Tiefhusen, but our ultimate goal was Tjolmar. Once there, we healed up and then went to Ingramosch's house. As I suspected, the Salamander Stone dissipated the magical aura on the door.

      

I wonder if we could handle "the truth."

        

Some random dwarf answered the door and refused to tell us anything about Ingramosch. We were forced to barge inside and fight a battle with dwarves and spellcasters. Unfortunately, Korima refused to go with us and took off.

      

You're much too young to die for one silver piece per day, I'll grant you that.

       

When we were done, we found ourselves in a "Vault beneath Tjolmar." At this point, I exited the building and ended the session. Next time, I want to sell excess items and load up on potions and herbs before going back. I trust this dungeon will be the last.

   

Time so far: 54 hours