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 Tiefhusen 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 Tiefhusen.

    

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