advice feedback, a question, and a comment

From: Bryan Thexton <bethexton_at_...>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 11:35:15 -0800 (PST)


Also spoiler galore, so don�t read further if you prefer to find everything else out by yourself.

There is that old saying: �Free advice is worth what you pay for it.� I set out to verify this hypothesis with KoDP�.

My enthusiasm for this game waxes and wanes periodically (no doubt showing the malign influence of the red moon!). All the traffic on this list has helped spark it again. (that and the realization that although it is awkward I can manage to use the laptop well enough on the bus to play while commuting to and from work�.).

I wanted to try out some of the alternative choices and styles that different people have advocated. This was somewhat frustrated because it seemed every game I started I was facing a bad harvest in the first year, which is quite a challenge when playing on hard. So finally I chose a clan to be my test subjects, and gave myself permission to save and reload as many times as it took to check certain things out.

First up, once I manage to survive the first couple of years, was to go visit the Marsh Ducks, then instead of telling people to stop raiding them, as I usually do, to instead volunteer to help them. I sent off most of my weaponthanes along with our war leader (a vingan with renowned combat and very good magic amongst other skills). I sent them off for three seasons, then they came back. As undead.

Restore! Same result. Ditto for the next half a dozen attempts. Obviously the outcome was not random once they were sent, either it was determined by the game when I sent them, or else it was determined by the details of my decision. So I went back farther, and again sent the same aid, but only for two season. They came back happy, having helped to drive back the swamp and won the Ducks admiration.

So, first experiment, results are mixed. It can be good to go help the ducks, but you can also just end up with a dozen walking corpses to dispose of.

Next up, having befriended the ducks, go explore Beast Valley, since I was told it would be easier. Naturally, I got my worst ever first trip to the valley response. Usually we get warned away, this time we got trapped and attacked and only the leader got out alive. Restore! Tried again, and hit another new result, where the explorers felt someone was watching them and were happy to leave, but at least weren�t attacked.

Second experiment: inconclusive. It is probably always risky to explore there, certainly helping the ducks didn�t make this a cakewalk.

Next up, the goldeneye horse. Normally I have a lot of trouble getting this, but the war leader who helped the ducks also has excellent animals, and she had no difficulty controlling it. After that, we started choosing �manoeuvre� all the time, and we did very well. However, not long before that we�d completed the Elmal quest to get Elmal�s help when we are attacked. After that faded we began to have more trouble, and then once the dwarves took the horse we started getting whipped by numerically inferior forces when we chose that option, even though by then we�d obtained the bag of winds from the O&A quest. We had a reasonable number of combat blessings up (truesword and lightning and steadfast), but certainly by this point in the game (around ten to twelve years in) that would be a little low as the arms race goes�I thought we could get away with it with heroic war leader and the treasure, but apparently not. We reverted to Thunderstone and True shot, and preliminary results look good.

Third experiment: The power of these constant combat treasures doesn�t seem to compare to the benefits of heroquests or blessings. The Goldeneye horse certainly gives new strategic options, however. The bag of winds doesn�t have as clear an impact. However, given that you can only do so many quests, and that blessings do have a cost to maintain, it is clearly worthwhile to get treasures as well.

Overall, these different ways seem to work OK, but not distinctly better than my more usual choices. However, they do give me more options, and some of them will no doubt be appropriate for certain clans.

After all that, I have a question. We formed the tribe about three years ago, and we haven�t seen the prophet show back up again to tell us that we need to become kings, perform quests, yadda-yadda-yadda. Has anyone ever had that happen before? (I�ll double check the history log, in case I somehow had a double entry just as that event came up that caused it to resolve before I noticed it on screen, but that doesn�t seem likely.) I honestly forget if this is a long or short game (as I mentioned, I�d started a number of games before deciding to focus my experimentation on this one).

Finally, one last comment�I�m still finding new stuff in this game! For the first time ever we got a treasure out of Prax, when our explorers roughed up some nomads and looted Eritha�s Switch from them. I also have this glory-mad Issarian on my ring who has been coming up with some comments that I don�t think I�ve seen before. It is slowly dawning on me what an incredible amount of work went into scripting this thing�.it seems you never quite hit the edges of what can happen, due to the incredible breadth. Well, except in the end-game, but that would be because things are narrowing to a pre-determined fate.

--Bryan



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