Hey all! Long time no see! You may remember that I had this little LB going on on the old forums.
Well, I haven’t forgotten about it! Cataclysm is no longer taking up as much of my time now, so I’ll have some more free time to do this! I’ll try updating 2-3 times a week.
Now where did we leave off…ah yes! We had just got a fetch quest in order to get one of the 7 stones of Teana. Well, nothing to be done about that for now, so lets continue exploring the island for now.
We hang a left and go down to the beach. There’s a few Devilfish armies, but they all run from us, so who cares? There’s nothing much down on the beach but a case with some scrolls of slow. Heading back up, we hit up a nearby temple looking ruins
◊, and talk to a priest(or a monk, or something) there. He offers to give us a couple of runes of our choice; I pick the Mind runes, and get 2 of them.
Well, going left of the Temple of hope was boring, so lets try heading right, shall we? There’s another dwelling where we can recruit dudes, so I go and check that out. They have Fauns, gremlin looking ranged units with an affinity for plant units, some Thorn Warroirs and ROYAL THORNS FUCK YES!
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Royal Thorns are my favorite units in the game. They’re level 4 ranged units, and with 360hp, they’re going to be the beefiest units in my army for quite a while. However, what really makes them amazing is their ability to spawn other Thorn units. Every three turns, they can spawn a stack of either Thorn Warriors or Thorn Hunters. They only down side is that they’re slow as all hell. They pretty much always go last in a turn, and they have only 1 action point. I only have enough leadership for one of them right now, but I’m pretty close to getting two. The Royal Thorns replace the stack of Thorn Hunters in my army.
Anyway, moving on. Going past the house, we hit a fork in the road.
◊ Left or right? Lets head right! We’re now on a winding trial going to the top of a hill. On the way there, we find another Navigational Chart that unlocks Bolo Island! Bolo Island is the land of barbarians; we won’t be seeing it for a while.
At the top of the hill, we find a cave. Might as well see what’s inside! Why, it seems to be some sort of hideout for ne’er-do-wells!
◊ Weren’t we supposed to be finding a Bandit leader? This seems like a likely place! The hut directly ahead of us has Bandits, Wolves, and Marauders for hire. Lame. At the other hut, we meet ol’ Curvy Eyes himself!
◊ Those trinkets sound interesting, so I see what he has. …There’s no trinkets at all! He only has Bandits and Witch Hunters for hire! That lying scum, have at thee!
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Curvy Eyes is vanquished!
◊ I took not a single casualty. Both me and Enlong level up!
◊ Your dragon buddy gets XP based on how much rage you used on his abilities during the fight. The more you use him, the more XP he gets! I get him the stone wall ability. Using my own level up, I get Scouting Rank 3(+3 int and lets me see exact numbers of units in enemy armies) and Distortion Magic rank 1(lets me learn distortion magic).
I decide to make a change to my army. I ditch the priests and go with Fauns. I mentioned them briefly earlier, but joining my armor nets them a more detailed explanation. Each range hit from these guys reduces the targets attack and defense by one. Their abilities include Fatigue, which puts an enemy stack to sleep, Nightmare, which hurts and wakes up a sleeping stack, and Faun’s Magic, which heals/resurrects nearby plant units. Also, after a Curb-Stomp Battle on the way back, I got the Grand Strategy medal Rank 1 for winning 10 fights with zero casualties. There’s 10 different types of medals you can get, 2 of which are different depending on your class. They all give some kinda bonus. The Grand Strategy one I just got gives me +200 leadership. I’ll mention the other when I get them.
Lets try out the new army setup, shall we? A ways back, there was a snake charmer having some snake issues.
◊ I think it’s about time we did something about that! Those are some big snakes!
◊ But they’re not big enough! We can now hire snakes!
◊ He has Snakes, Swamp Snakes, and Royal Snakes for hire. They’re all melee units with a special Strike attack that lets them hit a unit two spaces away from them and has some secondary effect.
While topping off my army, something terrible happens! There’s no more Swordsmen to hire; I’ve gotten them all! And I don’t have the max number of swordsmen I could have! I’ll need to find some other unit to put in that spot… Well, it’s a good thing we just unlocked those snakes! I grab some Royal Snakes to replace the Swordsmen. Royal Snake have a chance to poison on attack, cannot be retaliated against, and their special Strike attack also poisons the enemy and is quite powerful. They’re very good all around units.
Now we can finally take the left road at the fork! We eventually come across an old, abandoned looking castle.
◊ But it turns out it’s not quite abandoned; the undead have occupied it!
◊ Since I’m a paladin, it’s clear that there’s only one course of action. Lets wipe ‘em out!
Oh my. He’s got ghosts, ghost pirates, Necromancers, and both regular and Ancient Vampires! And he summoned that phoenix right off the bat using a spell. Both Necromancers and Ancient Vampires are worth a mention. A Necromancers basic ranged attack is AoE and also lowers the moral of any stack it hits, which would be annoying enough by itself. In addition, they also have Magic Lock, which basically silences a unit for 3 turns, they have Raise dead(no points for guessing what that does) and they have Plague. Plague plagues all units on the field, lowering their attack, defense, and HP. It has no effect on the undead. Ancient Vampires deserve a mention for only one reason. Any attack that would crit them automatically misses. These guys where the bane of my existence when I played through with the warrior, as my entire army had e+ chance of criting.
Anyway, on with the fight!
◊ This battle is actually gonna be somewhat difficult. Time to show off Enlongs new ability!
◊ I use it to construct a wall to block the enemy. The phoenix will fly right over it, but there’s not much I can do about that. The Necromancers and the phoenix are the top priority targets right now, the Necros because they can raise dead, and the phoenix because they do fire damage, and my Royal Thorns are weak to fire damage, and I really can’t afford to loose any Royal Thorns. Between Enlong slamming them, some use of the heal spell, and some ranged support, the Necros go down. Likewise, the use of my Royal Snakes Strike ability and Enlong again take out the phoenixes. From there on, it’s a pretty normal fight, until the phoenixes pick themselves back up, at which point another slam from Enlong and another strike from the snakes take them down again. The fight was tough, but in the end, victory is mine!
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I am now able to hire troops form the castle? Ok then…I can hire Skeleton Archers, Decaying Zombies, and Ghosts. I’m a Paladin, why would I ever use undead troops? I also leveled up, and got Glory Rank 3(+350 leadership). After topping off my army, I am now broke…
Well, that’s all for this update! Join us next time when we take to the seas!
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