Toggle Background Color
In the last update, I said that weapons with a stun effect drain endurance. That's not true. They actually reduce TU for the next turn. Thanks to Jade Star for pointing that out.
So this is the plan. First, we'll go up into the city to stock up on items and ammo and buy new equipment patch ourselves up as best we can with our measly 84 gold. Then we'll go further north through what might be another city, though I *think* tiles with buildings on them in wooded areas can also mean lots of huts (and wizards 
smile:. Then we'll fight the first boss and make our way back to yet another city to spend our loot/recruit new party members.
So this is a city. They all contain a bunch of useful shops and random buildings with NPCs that spout bizarre crap. The actually useful buildings are:
The "Grocer", where you can buy various healing items and potions.
A hotel where you get healed by half your health (and can save on lower difficulty levels).
A bar where you can usually recruit party members - for some gold.
A bomb shop, where you can buy all kinds of explosives (not that we'd need any more).
A clothing store. Most of the clothes don't do anything, as far as I can tell. There are only two types of armor that I've come across so far: Chain mail and plate mail. They give additional protection, but reduce your TU per turn.
A gun store where you can buy guns and ammo.
And finally, a weapon store where, you guessed it, you can buy all kinds of melee weapons.
We can't afford most of tha right now. If I heal everyone completely, we won't have enough money to recruit Enoch, so I heal Arthur an Hayato and hire Enoch. Hero and Hayato have about half of their max HP and Arthur is almost fully healed. Biff and Enoch are at max HP.
Let's take a look at Enoch. he's a bomb character and with all the explosives we've been picking up, we migh as well let him join. He has pretty good stats with high bomb and mental skills. He has a total of 11 skill points while the others only have 8 or 9.
And he has a "Telecinetic Pitchfork". Pitchforks are a little weird in this game. They are ranged weapons that throw projectiles in an high arc, similar to grenades. This one does 94 points of damage, which means it is the most powerful weapon we have right now. It also has a high mental cost (35 per attack), but Enoch has high morale, and we can probably one-shoot most enemies with this. Enoch gets all the other explosives and we're pretty much done here. With only 11 gold left, there's nothing useful left to buy (more ammo for Hero costs 12 gold 
, but I thought it more important to heal everyone, at least a bit). Maybe one of the non-shop-owning NPCs has anything useful to say.
Nevermind...
North we go!
And it is indeed another city. We can't buy anything here either.
Morgan, a ranged character, can be recruited at the bar. We can't afford him right now but maybe we can pick him up later. I don't know if your party members skill levels are determined when you first run into them or when you actually recruit them. Maybe we'll find out with Morgan. We'll be heading east for now.
Princess wants to join us. She's another throwing character. Normally, I like to have more ranged characters in my squad and if she joins, ther's only room for one more. She might be pretty helpful on this map though and there's a reasonable chance someone else might die *cough*cough*Hayato*cough* so we'll take her along.
Her stats aren't too bad One more skill point than Biff, but more spread out. As you've probably noticed, we've entered a new type of area: a swamp. I don't like swamps. You move slowly and there's tons of cover for enemies, so you have to be extra careful not to get surprised which slows you down even more.
We can also see two new enemy types. A vampire thrall: slow but with lots of HP and a fucking chainsaw which deals a good amount of damage (49).
The other one's a devil. He has only little health, but a fireball-throwing pitchfork. They tend to not hit you very often, but when they do they deal decent damage and set you (and your surroundings) on fire.
Let's try out Enoch's Telecinetic Pitchfork on the vampire. Chance to hit is bad, but projectiles do some splash damage, so let's see what happens.
Yes! Enoch hits for 76 points of damage. The vampire is almost dead already.
Hero tries to finish him off and misses, but causes enough mental damage to send him into a panic!
Everyone else takes cover. I could try and take out the devil, but I rather play it safe for now. He could theoretically hit Biff, but usibg pitchforks costs 35 TU and he won't be able to go around the bridge and still fire and I doubt he'll hit anything across the bridge.
Haha, the vampire is running around sreaming!
Still running...
Oh shit! he's not panicking, he's going berserk! Shouldn't you be out of time by now?
What the...? he attacks Enoch and knocks him of the bridge!
Hero too!
He's still going and kills Enoch!
And Hero! Biff panics!
Arthur panics!
Hayato panics
Everyone panics! 
He comes back again!?
And chainsaws Arthur.
When your morale goes down to zero you panic. Then you'll either run around in random directions or go berserk - as the vampire did just now. I thought that when you go berserk you get more TU (or need less) but I haven't seen anything this bad before. Losing party members does lots of mental damage and everyone left alive is in panic, so I'll have zero control over them next turn. At least the devil was kind enough to light the bridge on fire so we can see a little better... Princess starts running around...
But she doesn't go berserk, so instead of killing the vampire, she just stops right next to him.
Hayato does the same and stops right next to her, while Biff runs towards the Devil. Maybe he will attack, at least.
Nope. They all just position themselves so they can be easily killed next turn. :uggh:
Arthur just gets the fuck out of there.
Yeah, we're pretty fucked. Enoch and Hero are dead, everyone else is right in front of the enemy with no time left. Only Arthur is "safe". I wonder what will happen next.
The vampire murders Princess and Hayato.
Arthur shits his pants.
An archer wants to get in on the fun and tries to shoot Biff in the back!
But he's to busy getting burned alive...
But barely manages to kill the devil.
Then he hides behind a tree, but he's burning and and has only 2 HP left. He'll be dead next turn.
While all this shit was going down, a ghost has come along (you might have spotted him earlier). Ghosts are a special type of enemy, but more on that later...
Next turn. Arthur takes more mental damage which probably means...
Yep. Biff's dead.
One fucking vampire going berserk was enough to send everyone into a panic spiral and kill almost my entire party. The funny thing is, we were in a pretty good position early in the battle. The vampire was almost dead and no threat anymore, the devil was not in a dangerous spot could have been easily killed. That one unnecessary potshot Hero took at the vampire turned this whole thing from an easy victory into a disaster.
But hey, Arthur's still alive and has recovered some morale, so I can actually control him again. let's chck this chest for healing items... bombs and arrows.
Arthur waits for the vampire. I might not get out of here alive, but I can at least kill this asshole!
Yes! Take that!
Oh wait, only one enemy remaining? Maybe we'll get out of here after all.
When only one enemy remains, you get clues as to where he is, so you don't have to search the entire area. We already know where he is though. It's the archer that tried to shoot Biff. (If you're wondering about the ghost, he doesn't count as an enemy).
If Arthur's gonna do this on his own, he might as well do it in style...
Chainsaw, motherfuckers!
The ghost is still here. Ghosts are invincible, they only vanish once all other enemies are dead. When they get in melee range, they cause massive mental damage. They only move four or five tiles per round though. Still if you want to make sure they don't screw up your plans, ou can lure them away with your weakest character. They always go for the closest target from what I've seen. In this case, we can just outrun him.
Arthur checks another chest for healing i... oh fuck you game!
Arthur reaches the archor who turns out to be a skeleton. He could circle around the house uing the tress as cover, but the skeletons shots would still cause mental damage and... fuck let's cut down this tree and see what happens.
The skeleton moves around it but only gets one shot in.
It's chainsaw time, asshole!
The area is cleared, the ghost is gone. Arthur picks up all the stuff his party members dropped and checks the remaining chests and houses. He doesn't find much. No gold, no useful weapons, but at least there's a medikit that heals Arthur back to 95HP. I think he also needs a different weapon. The chainsaw's fun, but it doesn't do that much damage, plus you need both hands to hold it. The wooden shield isn't that great either and he doesn't have enough endurance to clear out an area by himself (because that's totally what he will do) with a club, so he gets Hayato's swords.
Arthur "Two Swords" Jackson.
With no extra gold, there's no point in visiting a city so we'll go further north and, if we survive that, try to kill the first boss no matter what 