Star Trail: Not Starting Over, Just Going On

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised.

        

I ended my last entry frustrated with Star Trail, primarily because (although I didn't emphasize this well enough), I felt like I was having to repeat too many things. Because I somehow broke the intended quest sequence, I had to repeat Lowangen twice, and for various reasons I documented earlier, I had to repeat the Netherswamp three times. I have quit entire games rather than spending an hour re-doing something that I've already done, let alone the multiple hours involved here.

        

At the end of the last session, what was blocking me from progress had to do with the game's two options for movement. I had been using the one that moves the party in discrete squares, like most "blobber" games before Ultima Underworld upended that entire convention. The other option is continuous movement, which I do not like here because it causes the screen to bank as you turn right and left, as if the entire party is riding a motorcycle. Nonetheless, there are some encounters that only trigger when you're in this latter mode, including one that was vital to rescuing the lost soldier Agdan, reuniting with the rest of my party, and getting the hell out of Lowangen.

     

There we go.

         

A vital chest, half-buried in the swamp, only activates if the party is in continuous mode. Even then, it's a struggle; I had to approach it from multiple directions before it finally triggered. 

 

Defenders of the game will find a way to justify this, but I don't think it's generally good game design to offer two movement modes and then penalize the player for choosing one of them. This chest wasn't the only thing affected by the mode. Other small treasures—ones that I didn't find while stepping on every square—now activated. Railings between walkways and water squares were now suddenly passable. The door to a nearby building that had not previously responded now gave me an infinitely-repeatable (I assume) battle with zombies.

     

The chest had a document that talked about the ecology of the swamp rantzy and the fact that "potent transformation magic is possible" when binding the beast to a heather bush. 

     

Good thing killing the bush was never an option.

              

My next task was to find heather, which involved revisiting pretty much every part of the map until I got a message that there was some growing along the shoreline. One more complaint I have about this game is that some special encounters are visible in the game window and others just require you to stumble upon them. That's not so bad by itself; it was true of Wizardry and The Bard's Tale and every Gold Box game. But Star Trail makes it a bit harder by filling in automap squares that you've only looked at, regardless of whether you've stepped in them. This makes it difficult to keep track of places that you haven't yet explored. I could overcome this problem by making my own maps, but that seems silly with what is otherwise such a solid automapping mechanic.

     

Now, I don't know what the hell was happening with this heather encounter. The game told me there were 20 heather plants, and it gave me options to take a closer look at them or to pull them out of the ground. Either way, I had to specify a number between 1 and 20. Every single one that I tried to look at said, "It is a particularly strong plant." Every single one that I pulled out of the ground said: "You discover nothing special besides the fact that the bushes are extraordinarily strong." However, when I pulled #18, the game told me that: "The rantzy you are carrying gives a single loud howl and then goes all slack." The best I can figure is that the game was running an "Herb Lore" check in the background, and I was supposed to notice something special about #18 when I looked at it. Still, making me go through all 20 of the damned things seems silly; was there a clue I missed somewhere that #18 was the answer?

       

If they're all "particularly strong" then none of them are particularly strong.

       

Curing Agdan was then a process of double-clicking on the right heather, which was difficult because I had 18 of the damned things and they all looked the same. I reloaded and went right for #18, then used it. I got a fun cinematic of Agdan throwing off the net we had trapped him in, then turning back into a human, albeit a naked, wounded, and diseased one. We dealt with the latter two conditions the next time we camped.

      

I like how he collapses after the transformation and thus ends up the way he started.

            

We exited the swamp to the northwest, which required us to take a long loop to the north, then east, then south, passing through Gashok (which seems like a lifetime ago) on the way back down to Lowangen. It took about two weeks. Agdan kept getting diseased from walking barefoot, so we stopped in Gashok to buy him some boots and pants before continuing on.

         

And some rations.

      

Some notes on the road:

   

• I've leveled Gnomon high enough in "Survival," "Track," and "Bind" that he almost always finds water and food when we camp. I believe finding water keeps us from drinking out of our water skins and finding game keeps us from eating rations. I suspect only "Survival" is really necessary, but I found the manual's description of the other two ambiguous enough that I've been putting points into it. While we're on the subject of skills, what does "Orientation" actually do?

     

A typical night on the road.

      

• We had to reload one night after being attacked in our sleep by a pack of eight tigers. That's a lot for five characters, one of them unarmed. 

• A man asked to join us one night to share our fire and a bit of food. We agreed. He told us about the surrounding area, which filled in the travel routes on our map. But he also stole 20 gold pieces when he left.

     

"Could you stake a fellow American to a meal?"

      

• On the way back to Lowangen, we came to a river crossing with a ferry, but no ferryman in sight. We had options to wait for him or just operate the ferry ourselves. I chose the latter, and there was a fun narration as we misread the currents, couldn't control the ferry, overturned in the river, and Toliman drowned. I promise that after we get out of Lowangen again, I'll try to roll with character deaths and get them resurrected, but in this case, I just reloaded and waited for the ferryman, who charged 3 silver pieces per person and got us all to the other side safely.

     

Option #3: Not a good idea for airports, not a good idea for ferries.

     

• A forest gnome continues to appear every once in a while when we camp, strike one blow (usually against Gnomon), and then flee. 

       

I feel like we're becoming friends.

     

Once we got back to Lowangen, I kept running into the orcs and had to turn around. I couldn't remember the exact route we had used to escape the city in the first place. Fortunately, I had a saved game from just before we left, but it took me a while to remember that. Once I figured out the correct route, I was able to re-enter the city using the tunnels.

     

Master Eolan was delighted that Agdan was rescued. I'm curious what happens if you return to Lowangen with Agdan still in rantzy form. In any event, Lyra and Lilii Borea rejoined the party, and we got the hell out of there at last. I felt a little bad about leaving them to the mercies of the orcs, but I don't think we were meant to solve that quest.

      

Get me the galloping @#&% out of here.

          

We were on our first segment out of the city when we were interrupted by a cut scene. An evil wizard appeared in front of us: "Halt! Stay where you are!" He went on to demand the Salamander Stone, and we had options to give it over or refuse. The former response ("That stupid old rock! There, take  it!") was honestly tempting, but I did what I thought I was supposed to do and refused. This brought us to a battle with six "combat magicians" and four or five rogues. I tried my own tactics; I tried the computer's tactics; I tried auto-combat. Nothing I did would let me even come close to winning this battle. Most of the time, I couldn't even act. The mages generally petrified and blinded most of my characters in the first round.

        

The impossible (for me) battle.

      

I'm sure it's possible to win this fight for some players, perhaps if they spent some time building the party to higher levels, but my impression is that it's not meant to be won. Thus, I grudgingly reloaded and handed over the Salamander Stone, easily the most troublesome MacGuffin in RPG history. They also took my fake one, I later discovered.

        

"The mages disappear to the west," the game said. I didn't know if we were supposed to follow them or what. West at the time was back to Lowangen, so I reluctantly went there and back through the tunnel. No one had any new dialogue options about MAGICIANS or anything. I asked Dragan about the Salamander Stone. He made me run an annoying errand only to just give me the same hint about the Orc Death that he would have given before we recovered the stone weeks ago. (Just to be sure, I went to the Orc Death and found nothing.) I reloaded from outside Lowangen and took paths to the northwest and southwest. I even ran around the Netherswamp again. None of it was to any avail. I guess if I'm meant to find the stone again, it will be part of a longer journey to the west. 

       

Dragan's "errand" had us jumped by thugs—who then released us without doing anything to us. I don't really know what this was about.

      

Whatever the solution, I hope it will keep. I had already decided that after I got out of Lowangen, I was going to go after Star Trail, the throwing axe, for which my next move was to ask around Tiefhusen. I had also decided I wasn't going to be in a hurry to get there. There are supposedly valuable side-paths in this game, and I thought I'd try to find some of them.

    

I began by taking us back to Gashok, where it was fortunately market day when we arrived. We spent some of our money on magic potions (I'm sick of running out), extra boots (they keep wearing out), a fishing hook, sleeping bags, and a few other sundries. I ran into encumbrance problems here despite the Girdles of Might (the metal armor I got from Ailian Silversprings' allies weighs a lot), and I spent a lot of time shuffling items.

      

Reaching Gashok again.

      

Tiefhusen is west-northwest of Gashok. The world map shows a road leading from Gashok north to where the game began. Tiefhusen is on a parallel northern road. On the world map, no road connects them without going south all the way to Lowangen and the Netherswamp. I decided to see if there was anything west of the road north of Gashok, if that makes sense. I figured that the worst that would happen is I'd end up in Kvirasim again, in which case I'd reload (if literally nothing had happened on the way) or make my way back. 

   

I continued on for a while, getting whacked by forest gnomes, fighting nighttime enemies (I used computer combat for a lot of them), dealing with occasional diseases, building my herb stock. I needn't have worried: there were plenty of western routes. I took the northernmost route possible, exploring every spur that I found along the way. 

   

We crossed a muddy area in which Gnomon sank in the mud, but we rescued him with a rope. It was a waste of time. The road ended in the "Brinask Marshes," and we had to turn back. I later discovered Gnomon had lost his shield and axe in the mud. Fortunately, I had spares.

      

We did get a warning.

      

After about three weeks on the road, following a northern loop that took us past a lake, we landed in the city of Tjolmar. It was a modest-sized burg, not a menu-town, with the typical services. It had a lot of temples—Ifirn, Firun, Rahja, Ingerimm, others—an herbalist, a couple of inns, a couple of taverns, and a couple of smiths. There was no weapon/armor shop, but there was one business type that I don't think I've encountered before: a bank called At the Dreaming Mummy. Here, we could deposit and retrieve items. That could be useful, but it raises a lot of questions. Is the vault linked with other banks in the game? Are there other banks in the game? How often do I expect to be back in Tjolmar? It's not exactly in a central location. This sort of service in Gashok would make more sense.

         

I would pay real money to see Bangor Savings Bank rename itself "At the Dreaming Mummy."

           

Talking with NPCs, I receive no news about STAR TRAIL or SALAMANDER STONE. I also asked about TJOLMAR itself, and the best I can say is something seems to be going on. "There used to be almost fifty dwarves living in Tjolmar up until a short time ago," NPCs told me more than once. "Nowadays, there are only about ten left." Others said: "Things went too far when the orcs appeared. Apparently, it was something to do with an ancient artifact of Umrazim." Yet another: "People used to be a bit nervous here, since that thing with the orcs happened." These comments resulted in no new dialogue options, and I wasn't able to find any encounters related to them. People kept telling me to see the "pileworks," but I don't even know what that was.

      

That's ominous.

      

We visited a tavern where one dialogue option (RAHJA, a god) seemed out of place, and before we knew it, we had spent the night in a brothel.  

       

To be fair, this kind of thing has happened to me in New Orleans.

         

There was one house with a magically-locked door. None of our resources or spells would allow us to penetrate it. In fact, even attempting to cast "Foramen" drained our health. 

      

The result of casting "Analyze" on the door.

       

We reluctantly moved on, unable to figure out anything else to do. We were at the far western side of the map at this point, not too far from Tiefhausen to the southeast. I decided to head there but explore any side roads or spurs on the way. The road paralleled a river. A day into the trip, we reached Norhus, a travel stop where we could stay at an inn, switch to a ferry, or continue on foot. While talking to the owner, Endor Jorndal, he had a response to INGRAMOSCH: "That's more or less the chieftain of those Tjolmar traitors. He just went back to Tjolmar a short while ago after hiding out in Lowangen for quite some time."

   

What?! My random exploration pattern somehow landed me in the town where Ingramosch had gone, and I missed him? And what's this about "traitors"? I realized I hadn't asked everyone in Tjolmar about INGRAMOSCH, so I turned around and headed back to the town and started feeding the word to everyone.

      

One wonders how most dwarves smell.

      

I didn't learn much. The owner of one inn said that Ingramosch used to hang out at the temple of Rahja and that his house was "right by the old bridge," which would have been more helpful if there were any bridge in the city. (The house with the magically-locked door is at least near a river.) The priestess of Rahja said that he hasn't been by in a couple of weeks. "I think he tried to recruit compatriots here," she added. Is that why there are no more dwarves in town? Another NPC told me that he had a quarrel with other dwarves recently, though, and that he "used to be with that female smith a lot." But the only female smith, Halrima, had nothing to say in response to his name. In response to DWARVES, she said: "All that talk about the traitors of Tjolmar is poppycock." I couldn't get out of anyone what the so-called treason was actually about.

       

Could you elaborate on the whole "traitors" thing?

         

This may be one of those situations where you have to ask multiple times, but remember, NPCs end conversation after a few keywords they don't like, and you can't try again until the next day. Saving and reloading gets old in these situations. Anyway, I hadn't intended to pursue this part of the quest yet, so after running out of ideas a second time, I hit the road again for Tiefhausen.

    

I guess I've gotten to the point that I don't mind travel as much as before. There's always a sense of possibility, and the little things that happen on the road can be fun. But commenters have talked about side-dungeons and stuff, and if these exist, I've been spectacularly unlucky in finding them.  

   

Time so far: 37 hours 

Arena: Urban Sprawl

 

The character arrives in Shornhelm, my first Elder Scrolls city.

       

We've had several comments to the effect that the opening Arena dungeon is very hard. I unwittingly contributed to that sentiment with my first entry, in which I reported fairly rapid death after only a couple of goblin battles and one attempt to sleep. What I should have made clear is that by that point in the entry, I had already accomplished my primary goal of describing the backstory and the basic mechanics. By the time I died, I wasn't really trying. I hadn't even saved.

   

In this session, I finished the dungeon. It was only one level, and it took me about an hour to explore the entire thing. I'm not saying it was easy; character Levels 1 and 2 were particularly hard. Every enemy seemed capable of halving my hit points with a single hit, and I was still getting used to some of the mechanics. For instance, I didn't yet realize that when an enemy is around a corner and you can only see part of him, you don't need to charge past him until he's fully in view and then turn around (the game doesn't offer a "strafe" option) [Ed. Yes it does; I just didn't try enough keyboard combos]. As long as you can see any part of him, you can attack him perfectly fine through what looks like a solid wall.

   

I also didn't realize there were perfectly safe places to rest, but the game eventually clued me in.

        

Kind of makes sense, I guess.

      

Ultimately, the dungeon isn't big enough to be truly difficult. With the ability to save anywhere and reload in a few seconds, the level could have been full of liches, and I think I still would have made it. I would have just run past them.

        

My final map of the dungeon.

     

In fact, I got to Ria's teleporter in only about 10 minutes by (this time) following the left wall. I decided to turn around and clear out the dungeon first, but here's the thing (and please tell me if I'm wrong): I don't think this is the kind of game where you have to clear out the dungeon. The extra experience and treasure are nice, but there are endlessly-generated experience and treasure everywhere. Thus, there's no reason to explore any one particular place past its objective. It's a little like Telengard or Dungeon Hack in that regard.

          

Ria's portal.

       

Enemies were limited to goblins and giant rats except a couple of times when I tried to sleep, and some spellcasting humanoid blasted me out of existence before I could blink (or take a screenshot). I never encountered any of them during regular exploration. At first, I thought the dungeon must respawn, as enemies kept re-appearing in areas I'd already explored. But by the end of the level, I was convinced that they just roam quite a bit. 

  

Some miscellaneous notes about the dungeon:

      

• I like the sound: echoing footsteps, creaking doors, grunts and squeaks of enemies getting closer.

• There are lion's head decorations all over the walls. I don't remember lions being mentioned in the Elder Scrolls universe before.

     

Two piles of treasure and yet another lion's head emblem.

        

• I didn't find an elven sword this time. I did find a longsword, a short bow, and a belt. All of the armor pieces I found were metal and thus forbidden to my battlemage.

• "Fire Dart" worked really nicely, but I could only cast one or two between rests.

• If multiple enemies are near each other, you can damage them with one swing (and, presumably, one spell). 

• Secret doors seem to open when you walk into them. I mostly bumped into them by accident. I'm not sure that any part of this dungeon was accessible only by secret door; I think they just offered shortcuts to areas I could access the long way.

• Other than the first cell door, there were no locked doors, locked treasure chests, traps, or anything that theoretically would require a thief.

• There were a lot of places where I had to swim, and many of those had enemies waiting on the nearest platforms. 

        

A rat waits to attack as soon as I crawl out of here.

       

• I found several crystals, and the manual is silent on what they do.

• I kept all the equipment I found, including what I couldn't use. I never developed any encumbrance problems.

• Getting in and out of inventory is a tad annoying.  

• Enemies have a way of sneaking up behind you and hitting you before you're even aware. One second, I was walking along; the next, Ria Silmane was telling me that all hope was lost. 

       

I got to Level 3. Each time I leveled up, I could put 6 points into my attributes. I decided to always put 3 into my primary attributes (for the battlemage, strength and intelligence) and the other 3 in my lowest attributes. 

       

After killing two goblins.

       

The first time I rested after I leveled up, Ria appeared and elaborated on the main quest. She said that the artifact that Jagar Tharn used to banish the emperor to Oblivion was the Staff of Chaos. It is now the only thing that can bring him back. Knowing this, Tharn has disassembled it and scattered its pieces across the continent. She divined that the first piece was in a place called Fang Lair, originally inhabited by the "Dwarves of Kragen," but abandoned after a Great Wyrm took up residence there. She knew it was in the Dragon's Teeth but nothing about its specific location. "Perhaps there are sages or scholars who would know of this place." Obviously, there's a Tolkien homage here. I don't remember the term "Kragen" before, but I think the Dragon's Teeth are the range west of Skyrim. Markarth in Skyrim is at their base.

           

There are even markings on the staff where it was segmented.

      

When I took the portal, I found myself in a snow-blanketed city called Shornhelm, NPCs roaming back and forth everywhere I looked. If the dungeon felt a bit like Ultima Underworld, this part of the game felt more like Legends of Valour. The automap of the city, pre-filled with building footprints but not the names of businesses, showed the same sorts of connected buildings, walled buildings, courtyards, and other interesting shapes as the Valour map.

   

As I explored the city, there were some interesting visuals—trees, stone statues, canals, fountains, gas lamps, clothes lines strung across the street from second-story windows. But there was also a certain uniform blandness to everything, and if commenters hadn't already mentioned this, I think I would have figured out fairly quickly that the cities in this game are procedurally generated. The types of locations must be fixed, but they're distributed randomly across the city for each new game.

       

Walking past two very different types of statues outside a temple. I swear I've seen that second one somewhere before.

       

I soon found out something vital: If the building has a shingle hung by its main entrance, it's open for business, and double-clicking on the door lets you in. If it doesn't have a shingle, it's a private business or residence, and double-clicking on the door attempts a burglary. I hadn't been in the city for more than five minutes before I tried to enter a random building, heard "stop thief!" somewhere behind me, and was dead before I saw the guard attacking me. I guess capital punishment is the default for everything in Jagar Tharn's Tamriel.

             

The NPCs are generated as well: Barbara Wicking, "the city-state thief"; Mordard Wicksley, "a typical mercenary"; Belladonna Hawkton, a fieldhand; Alabyrick Hawkwing, a squire; Victoria Yeomhouse, a guildmaster. (Even in that small sample, you can see how the prefixes and suffixes come together; I'm sure I'll meet a Wickhouse and a Hawksley at some point.) They each have a little elevator speech ("I got into Shornhelm a little while ago, looking for some excitement"; "I work my heart out during the harvest and starve in the winter") in response to "Who are you?" You can also ask where things are, which gives a defined list of topics. It is pre-populated with lists of inns, temples, and stores, or you can just ask for the "nearest" of anything. Sometimes, the NPCs give you a generic direction ("try to the east"), and sometimes they mark it on your map for you. I wonder if personality plays a role in this. "Fang Lair" is also on the list; more on that in a bit.

       

I wouldn't be so quick to admit that in this town.

        

The final bit of NPC dialogue is for rumors; you can ask for generic rumors or rumors about work. NPCs kept telling me that a mysterious woman named Rogue Gondywyr at the King's Dragon had a delivery job.

        

About one-quarter of the city.

       

The main benefit of procedural generation is that the cities feel realistically large (if artificially square). It takes about 40 minutes game time (and about 2 minutes real time, with no obstacles) to get from one corner to the other, which seems reasonable for a medieval village. There are probably around 100 buildings in it. It also removes a certain pressure from the player to see and do everything, explore every corner, talk to every NPC just in case he has a quest. The player ends up treating the city like he would a real city: asking for directions and homing in on the places that have the services he needs. At the same time, there's no real fun in exploration, and I'm betting that the game is too early to do fun things like vary the architecture when I get to Elsweyr or Black Marsh. Still, I could envision a good game that balances hand-crafted and procedurally generated content. I think it's possible that Starfield did that quite well, and the only reason I don't think so is that I disliked so many other aspects of the game.  

         

Even the tavern names are procedurally generated.

       

My first priority was to sell my excess equipment and buy the armor that I didn't find in the first dungeon. NPCs directed me to the Basic Weaponry Store, which despite its name had leather boots, greaves, cuirasses, pauldrons, and gauntlets as well. Even after those purchases, I had 1,790 gold. I began to wonder if Arena set the Elder Scrolls trend of giving the player enough money to last the rest of the game in the first dungeon.

      

Being a battlemage is cheaper on the wallet than some other classes.

          

I next followed directions to the mage's guild, apparently the only guild in Arena (no faction quests here). There, I realized my 1,790 gold wouldn't go that far. It also wouldn't identify (at 200-270 gold pieces each) the crystals that I found in the dungeon. I did determine that my longsword was a Longsword of Lightning and that two bracelets were a mithril bracelet and an elven bracelet. I should mention that there were "steal" options in both the mage's guild and the weapon shop, but crime is something I'm going to have to investigate later. So is spell-making. Be patient.

        

I'm going to have to come back.

           

The King's Dragon, in one of those oddities you get with procedural generation, shared its building with another inn called the King's Bird. You'd think that would cause some confusion. I started clicking on NPCs to find Rogue Gondywyr, but instead, she "approached" me (a message came up with no visible NPC) when I clicked on the bartender. She offered me 57 gold pieces to take a dagger to the Restless Ogre. "If it isn't [there] by Sundas, 6th of Hearthfire, my life ain't going to be worth a copper," she said. That's tomorrow.

   

I did the quest, and besides the 57 gold pieces, it gave me enough experience for Level 4. It's hard to imagine that it's going to be worth it to do too many of these, though. 

       

Yeah, walking from one building to another really took a lot out of me.

      

I got some interesting responses to asking about Fang Lair:

   

• Chrystyna Ashham, the interpreter: "There ain't no such thing!"

• Agrane Yeomford, the historian: "Isn't that just a legend?" 

• Ysyn Hearthston, the cook: "No one's heard of that in the past 500 years." That seems like a paradox.

• Mordyval Gaersley, one of the personal priests of King Rodore: "I honestly have no idea. Try someone else. Maybe they can help." I wonder what King Rodore is the king of. 

• Morgorya Hearthwing, the thief: "You wouldn't be the first searching for that. Why don't you try somewhere in the cities of Hammerfell. I heard something happened there."

• Uthane Buckingcroft, the city-state historian: "Have you tried asking at a temple? They seem to know everything." I did, in fact, try asking at a temple, but I couldn't find any NPCs in the temples. Indoor NPCs don't really have dialogue options anyway; they just give you one line. 

• "Try the local inn. Tales are flying back and forth about something unearthed in the province of Hammerfell. Maybe you should check there." 

            

Rochester looking dapper in his full suit of leather.

       

After typing all of that, I realized that the same NPC will give you all potential responses to a location if you just keep re-selecting the same dialogue option. They never seem to kick you out of the conversation, unlike NPCs in some other games we could mention. 

   

I got my answer about the king when I double-clicked on a gate (thinking it was the gate out of town) and found myself in the king's audience chamber and saw King Rodore before me. "It is well known that Shornhelm is currently at peace with its neighbor, North Point." Part of me wonders if even that is procedurally generated. The king had nothing to say to me except to suggest I explore the surrounding wilderness. "You may come back with something useful." 

        

Approaching the king.

       

We'll have more about the calendar and time system later, but for now, suffice to say that time doesn't pass too quickly in the game—about 12 minutes of game time for each minute of real time. I did all of this in one day and had time to spare. If I hadn't been leaving the game window to type this entry, I might never have experienced nighttime.

     

The world started to get darker starting at 17:00. By 19:00, there was no light except in an immediate radius around me. At 20:00, hostile enemies start appearing on the streets. At first, I thought, cha-ching!, but it turns out they're a bit tough for a Level 4 character. 

      

What's even the point of having a walled city?

       

Miscellaneous notes on the town:

      

• NPCs stop and face you when you get close. They stay stationary until you walk away from them. That's a refreshing contrast to a lot of games, where you have to chase them down. 

• NPCs indoors don't have the full set of dialogue options. They just shout one line at you. Most of them are rude.

    

Personality is my worst attribute.

      

• If you find a location on your own, the automap does not record it. You have to type it in. [Ed. Or right-click on the shop door. Thanks, Karth.]

• There's a haggling mechanic in shops, but as with many games, I'm not sure it's worth the time. One side effect is that even if you don't haggle, you have to accept the sale price of items twice, which is a little annoying.

• There's also a damage/repair system, but the armorers want multiple days to fix even slight amounts of damage. I have to spend the week in an inn just to get my longsword sharpened? 

           

Good thing time passes slowly in the emperor's prison.

      

I spent the night at an inn; no rumors about Hammerfell, no matter what the NPCs said. You can book rooms in quality from a "single" (10 gold, at least in this case) and an "emperor's suite" (75 gold). You hit the "camp" button and appear in the room automatically. All the rooms look alike, but I guess the amount you pay affects the quality of rest and the number of hit points you restore.

        

This "emperor's suite" needs some work.

        

In the morning, I headed for the exit. I hoped once I got outside, the automap would tell me where I was in the world, but it didn't—until I checked the manual and realized that you have to right-click on it to get the world map. I could have done that from within the town. It turns out that Shornhelm is in the middle of High Rock, home of the Bretons, one of the smaller provinces, which itself has 31 cities. Just for fun, I clicked on Skyrim, and damned if Whiterun, Riverwood, Riften, Windhelm, Winterhold, Dawnstar, Solitude, Markarth, and Dragon Bridge aren't all there, in roughly the locations you'd expect, in 1994. There are, I should add, lots of smaller towns that aren't in The Elder Scrolls V (e.g., Black Moor, Graniteshaft, Dunstad Grove, Laintar Dale), but you could chalk that up to 200 years having passed and smaller cities being abandoned or renamed.

       

My current location.

        

Commenters have told me—and I have no reason not to believe them—that you cannot walk from one city to another in Arena no matter how long you're willing to spend. Each city in this game is apparently like a planet in Starfield, with an infinite amount of procedurally generated landscape around it. On the province map, there's a road heading southeast from Shornhelm that goes to a village called Markwasten Moor. In the real world, there's no road. I walked southeast from the city for about 10 minutes and passed plenty of trees, buildings, NPCs, inns, fenced-in fields, walled compounds, and ponds. I even got onto something that looked like a road at some point. But the automap continued to place me solidly in Shornhelm.

      

Wandering outside of the city.

         

There were oddly no monsters in the wilderness. Maybe they only come out at night, like in the towns? I know there are random dungeons, but I (without trying very hard) didn't find any. I'll explore at least one or two random dungeons at some point, but for now I clicked on Hammerfell and deliberately chose one of the smaller towns (Riverpoint) rather than a large city. The game said it would take 13 days to travel there, but there's no cost to travel in Arena, no food to worry about, and no chance of disease, drowning, or other calamities on the road. Saying all that makes it sound like I'm taking a dig at Star Trail, but I'm honestly not. Those survival elements can be fun, too. It's amazing how much variety we get under the large umbrella of "CRPGs."

        

Most people online seem to think The Elder Scrolls VI will be set in Hammerfell. I'm still hoping for (but not expecting) Akavir.

        

Before I wrap up: a commenter sent me a link to a translation of the French version of the Arena manual. It has a lot more detail on the backstory, to wit:

     

• Talin's last name is Warhaft. 

• Jagar Tharn used to be head of the Elder Council.

• He couldn't just kill Emperor Uriel because Uriel had used the Amulet of Kings to cast a spell that would alert all of his imperial guards if he died.

• The heir at this time is Uriel's daughter, Princess Ariella Septim. One wonders what happened to her between this backstory and the beginning of Oblivion. During that game's prologue, Uriel mentions that his sons are dead, but he doesn't say anything about a daughter. 

• It was Talin Warhaft who accidentally gave Tharn the idea to replace the emperor. During a banquet, Talin recounted a story in which he and his friend, Marten the Blade, were threatened by bandits. Marten cast an illusion spell to make himself look like the bandits' leader.  

       

I was about to post a fan theory that the "Marten" of this story later entered a holy order and became the "Brother Martin" of Oblivion, but the story makes it clear that Marten was older than Martin, and that he had a son and retired. Still, one wonders why all this good material was cut from the English versions of the manual. 

       

Time so far: 3 hours 

 

Star Trail: Sweet Is the Swamp with Its Secrets

They're kind of cute.

          

I started this session by replaying a lot of Lowangen. As commenters figured out after my last narration, I had obtained a fake Salamander Stone when I attacked and pillaged Vindaria Leechbroon's house. When I followed and accosted Gavron, who had stolen the stone from me in the first place, he misdirected me to Leechbroon's house. It was really in the house of his friend, Ailian Sevensprings. Unlike Vindaria's house, the player cannot force his way into Ailian's house prematurely. But once the player has confronted Gavron, even if Gavron lies, new options become available at Ailian's house.

   

All the options seem to end in a battle of roughly the same composition as Vindaria's house: about eight warriors and elves. When it was over, we had a second, identical, Salamander Stone. We also got some nice armor.

      

A lucrative battle. The "plate armors" and "chainmail armor" were actually plate and chainmail greaves. Toadskins are a light armor, and "orc hooks" are axes.

     

Also, Mahasim was sick with battlefield fever, so I took him to a healer. I paid the healer three times, but she couldn't cure it. I had to consult the manual to see that the treatment is a combination of joruga root and gulmond leaves. I don't know if I had both of those items before I was stripped of all my equipment when entering the city, but I sure didn't have it now. Moreover, I couldn't find any herbalist in town who had both. Finally, I took him to a different healer, and finally it worked. I owe you a rundown of the herb, potion, and healing system in general, but this is the wrong entry in which to do it, as herbs in Lowangen (like everything else) cost a fortune.

       

That doesn't seem fair.

        

While I was exploring some other things in Lowangen, I decided to take a tour of the temples, donate a substantial amount of money, ask for a miracle, and see what happened. I reloaded after each one because I couldn't afford the totality of the financial drain. This is what I got:

  

• Tsa: Healed one character for 7 hit points.

• Rahja: Made us all "enchanting dancers." This took me almost 100 gold pieces. Presumably, we could have made some of it back by dancing in taverns. 

     

I'd pay for this in real life. I'd even settle for "competent."

       

• Peraine: Healed one character for 5 hit points. 

• Ingerimm: Donated everything I had and got nothing. He's clearly still sore. 

• Phex: "Elates all thieving hearts." I guess maybe this would have been a good stop before burgling the Exhibition Hall.

• Hesinde: Could not get anything out of her, no matter what I donated.

• Travia: Filled our stomachs. I wish we could tell the populace about this trick. That's one way to outlast a siege. 

• Boron: Granted protection from undead.  

      

All I can say is, this world has an interesting definition of the word "miracle." (Granted, my party didn't need much. I assume if one of my characters had been dead, one of these gods would have resurrected him.) Also, the same woman's face appeared when granting us the miracle in each temple. Maybe the gods use a common messenger.

            

Surely, that was the work of a god.

      

Some other bits about Lowangen, mostly clued by commenters:

   

• There's a smith named Roglima the Great who, if you pester her a few times about STAR TRAIL, tells a long and (probably because of translation issue) somewhat confusing story. It concerns an ancient dwarven prince named Tordol who set out to find the perfect alloy. In his quest, he conquered the Great Peaks from the orcs in a massacre so violent they were renamed the Blood Peaks. Eventually, he found the ore he sought (called "Dark Soil"; we'll let that go) on the highest mountain in the Finsterkamm range, and he built the forge we've already visited in Finterkoppen Pit. His son, Thiondasch, in an effort to surpass him, stole ore from the elves, for which the god Ingerimm punished him by imprisoning his soul in the golem that we fought there.

• Meanwhile, the god of trickery, Phex, made some kind of a deal with Ingerimm that he could keep the first thing that Thiondasch forged with the stolen ore. Ingerimm agreed, not knowing that there was only enough ore to forge one item. So he told Thiondasch to make Star Trail, a throwing axe, knowing that (for reasons I don't understand) it would be useless to Phex.

• This story prompted me to ask about Star Trail at the Temple of Phex. "You should ask again in Tiefhusen," the priestess said. "Everybody does if they are looking for Star Trail." I see it on the map pretty far to the northwest. 

      

How many people are we talking about?

      

• I got options to buy magic amulets two more times from strangers. I said yes to both of them, and both turned out to be authentic. 

• If you haven't found the Salamander Stone after seven days, a party member speaks up—which would have been my clue that Vindaria's stone wasn't the "real" one (if I didn't just assume the game was bugged). If another four days pass without the party recovering the stone, a scripted death screen appears.

     

If it depended on a stone, it was never there to begin with.

       

• The spell "Respondami" prompts NPC companions to tell the truth about their intentions.

      

In fairness, that's what we planned to do to him.

       

• I got lucky when I broke into the Exhibition Hall the first time. The game rolls skill checks for various stealth and thieving skills behind the scenes, and there are several places where bad rolls can summon the guards and see the party tossed in prison, with a corresponding loss of health and items. 

• In addition to helping with Gavron and getting out of town, Dragan Escht will offer what he knows about the Salamander Stone, where to find food, and where to find lodging. He has a different mini-quest for each favor that the party asks. 

• I mentioned last time that one of the buildings has a note that says, "Eat more cheese toast." Reader M. N. sent me an email alerting me to a podcast in which developer Guido Henkel explained that while the game was in production, the developers were so poor that they subsisted mostly on cheese toast. One of them bucked this trend and brought mostly salads for lunch, but his salads started to disappear. He angrily admonished the others to "eat more cheese toast and leave my salad alone!" 

       

Having finished the city for the second time, I again approached the Order of the Grey Wands, reshuffled some inventory, left Toliman and Lyra behind with both Salamander Stones (I don't even know which is which), and headed into the Netherswamps. As we did, the game asked if we wanted to sacrifice anything to our patrons. I had Mahasim sacrifice 5 gold. I'm curious how we did that. Toss it into the river?

          

I'm getting very familiar with this tunnel.

         

We weren't in the swamps for more than a few steps before we were attacked by half a dozen apelike creatures called "swamp rantzies." The battle left the party rather battered. 

    

I began circling the rather large map, which featured a lot of boardwalks through squares of mire that the party is otherwise unable to step on. The map also has a lot of water squares, requiring swimming to get to various areas, and here Lilii Borea was a constant liability. Her "Swim" skill of 3, compared to 4-6 for the rest of the party, was just low enough that she occasionally took damage and drowned, forcing me to save and reload frequently.

    

This kept happening. I guess I could have split her off from the party, but I needed every person I had in combat.

      

There was sort of a field in the middle of the swamp and an area of weird walls to the southwest. My exploration pattern (following the rightmost "wall") led me to explore the outer edges before the middle. I ran into multiple battles with orcs and goblins, so many that I just started letting the computer fight. Gnomon leveled up.

        

This battle wasn't as hard as it looks.

       

Various encounters:

      

• A building where no one answers the door. 

• A chest buried in the mire that the game wouldn't acknowledge.

      

I'd like to know what this is all about.

       

• At least one exit on each "wall" of the swamp. 

• A single swamp rantzy sitting in a corner, holding something in its paw that glittered. He didn't act in combat, so I just had everyone retreat.

• A tower in the middle of a lake in the northwest corner. It was magically locked.

      

No, Star Trail is the name of the game.

       

• A gulmond bush that the game said we pulled out of the ground.

     

But why?

     

• Some salamander creatures living in some earthen mounds in the middle of the swamps. They said we were unwelcome, but they didn't attack. They told us to go to the "ruins" to the west if we wanted to rest.

    

The accumulation of combats got to be a problem, and we used up all of our healing potions. I made the amateur mistake of using only one saved game while in the swamps, and I made the further mistake of saving after Gnomon got bitten by a snake. His face didn't register poison until about a dozen moves after the event, so I didn't notice that he was, in fact, poisoned. I was unable to cure it through any means, and he inevitably died within a few more moves. 

      

Summer's treason.

         

I thus had to reload from back in Lowangen, where I resolved to take a character with better "Swim" ability, check into buying some more potions, and perhaps spend as much time at the inn in New Lowangen as necessary to fully heal the party before entering the swamps again. 

        

The reload was beneficial in at least one way: While re-exploring some parts of Lowangen, I realized I'd missed an armorer. This is the one place in town where you can buy and sell weapons and armor. I didn't really need to buy any armaments, but thanks to the battle at Ailian's, boy did I have a lot to sell. And with the inflated prices caused by the siege, I made a killing. I soon had more than 600 gold pieces, about 10 times what I had when I started. Even with all this money, however, I couldn't bring myself to pay the inflated prices for more than a few healing potions.

     

I did stop in New Lowangen on the way out and tried to generate a couple of new characters named "Pack" and "Mule" to join the party, but the game pulled the rug out from under me and said that I would have to go all the way back to Kvirasim to add them to my party. I assume this is true of all temples. So this was never really an option.

            

Why not just say "all characters"?

       

A few minutes later, I was back in the Netherswamp again. This time, I sacrificed even more money to my gods on the way in, and I think it may have made a difference. Gnomon identified and killed a couple of snakes before they bit him, and some of the battles seemed to have fewer monsters. 

           

Ha! Take that, you little bastard. (And yes, I realize that comment clashes with something I say later.)

        

I adopted a different exploration pattern on my second visit, following the left path instead of the right. This time I brought Toliman, whose "Swim" skill of 6 didn't cause as many problems in the water, so I was able to go to places that I ignored when I had Lilii. Some findings:

   

• An overturned cart with 10 ration packets, 3 water skins, 20 arrows, a short bow, a long bow, and 15 gold pieces. Because of the armor I'd found at Ailian's, my characters were near their weight limits, and I had to do quite a bit of shuffling around to grab everything.

• An herb garden with one of every herb in the game. See the second sentence in the previous bullet point.

      

I guess I could do that herb/potion analysis now, but I think I'll wait until I have more than one of each.

        

• An old witch living in a house. We told her we were looking for a missing soldier. She said she'd help me if I would retrieve a crystal ball from a sorcerer living on the island in the northwest lake.

     

It has to be #1. #2 is a lie (we've never heard of her), and #3 is just rude.

        

• We spoke to the salamander men again but chose different dialogue options, and this time they asked us to kill a "big monsssster" living in the swamp to the east. 

          

Okay, are they lizard men or salamanders? There's a fairly significant difference.

      

When we got back to the tower in the lake, the door let us in. The subsequent encounter was weird from an interface perspective. The game switched to a combat perspective, but no battle followed. Instead, there was a scripted encounter in which the old wizard, sitting on a throne, figured out who had sent us (he called the witch "Sabrina," which—my apologies, Irene—I have always felt is the most enticing female name), and summoned some kind of fire-shrouded demon to deal with us.

        

Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks, sleeking her soft alluring locks.

      

The demon was unhappy. "Who dares to pull me from my dimension and disrupt my services to Hesinde?" Maybe he wasn't a demon. The wizard shouted that he was losing control. "Proclaim  your supplication with appropriate humility then," the demon said, "for someone here shall become the target of my divine wrath."

      

While the wizard kept shouting at the demon to destroy us, we had the opportunity to type three words into three successive dialogue boxes. If the demon liked what we said, he said something positive about it, and if he didn't, he said something negative. If we didn't get at least two positive reactions, he destroyed us. If we got at least two out of three, he destroyed the wizard.

   

I have no idea how we were supposed to know what to say to him. At first, I tried looking up Hesinde's portfolio, and I saw that she's the god of wisdom, knowledge, magic, and art. I tried each of those words, but I got nowhere. (There was a lot of reloading during this phase.) I went back and looked at his dialogue and saw that he asked for "supplication with appropriate humility," and I think I got my first positive reaction with PLEASE HELP. For a while, I couldn't get a second positive reaction until for some reason I started trying the virtues of the Avatar. Surprisingly, he responded positively to COMPASSION, VALOR, and I think JUSTICE. That was enough to win the encounter and take the crystal ball off the wizard's corpse. The wizard also had some kind of magic transformation spell that requires heather.

          

Sure, that's what I'm doing.

         

I had expected the tower to be more of a dungeon, so I was surprised by the brevity of the encounter and the odd interface that it used. I wonder if I wasn't supposed to find the demon's preferred keywords somewhere else.

        

All my characters leveled when we left the tower. Mahasim failed so many of my attempts to increase his skills that I ended up reloading. I wouldn't normally save scum this way, but five fails in a row on a single skill seems excessive.

     

Strangely, not the most infuriating part of this session.

      

You can't fast-travel in the swamp—the game thinks of it as a dungeon. As I slow-traveled, I noticed a weird thing: my party members stopped gaining hit points and spell points from rest. I'm not sure why. They had blankets, food, and water.

  

While exploring the rest of the map, we found a dinosaur-looking creature called an "engulfer." I didn't know it at the time, but I guess this was the salamanders' "big monster." Their reward, when I returned, was just to tell me about Sabrina. I went through some other keywords with the leader. On TRAVEL, he told me that a human male who recently came to the area is "still alive, though he doesn't exist anymore" (I'm leaving out the extra s's). Something clicked at this point, and I realized that the "swamp rantzy" who hadn't fought back earlier was probably the missing solider, transmogrified, and the wizard's spell was a way to reverse the effect. I'm glad I reloaded after killing him.

      

It's like a t-rex if a t-rex were human-sized.

   

I returned to Sabrina's house, where she took the crystal ball, but then decided that I was also an enemy for killing her animals. I don't know whether she was referring to the snakes, the swamp rantzies, or the engulfer. Either way, she attacked with a dire wolf companion. I had to reload a few times, mostly because the lack of restoration during sleeping meant that I was fighting the pair with no magic points. Also, she always went first and managed to take someone out of the equation with a fear or petrification spell. Finally, I think she could only be damaged by a magic weapon, and only Mahasim had one. We got absolutely nothing from the encounter when we finally killed her.

     

I went back to where I had found the swamp rantzy and tried using my net in combat. It worked and—after one of the most horrible role-playing choices in history—we got the swamp rantzy into our inventory. I still didn't know how to turn him back into a man. The document I'd found with the wizard suggested that I needed heather, but that was one plant that I hadn't found in the earlier cache.

        

What the hell, Star Trail?

          

I decided to bring the rantzy back to Lowangen to see if Master Eolan would accept him as-is or if I could find some heather at one of the shops in town. I exited the way I came in, and naturally found  myself far to the west of the swamp instead of the original entry point. When I finally made my way back to Lowangen, I had no option to re-enter the city through the secret passage and instead had to enter through the orc camp again, losing all of our stuff, including the captured rantzy.

     

I think I'm about done with this game.

   

Time so far: 33 hours