Toggle Background Color
Hello everyone and welcome back! Today we start out in Toybox because I'm gonna take a shortcut to fix Lisbeth's feats.
This is a list of all of her feats. But there's a better way to handle this. So let's pop over to the "Search 'n Pick" tab...
There's multiple search boxes. If you're looking for items or feats or whatever to add, you want the one in the middle. Trust me. You also want to make sure you have the right category selected.
If you remember last time, I said I wanted to respec her to get rid of Finesse Training (Kama) and replace it with Finesse Training (Kukri). We can do that quite easily here and I'm sure you can guess how!
We also want to add Martial Weapon Proficiency, because that is what governs Lisbeth being able to use Kukri. But we're not done yet. While I doubt a free Martial proficiency would really be unbalanced, I do want to at least pretend I'm being honest. So, to keep this balanced, we have to remove a feat too. And the best option is the feat we got at level 3...
Combat reflexes. So we'll toggle that off. This whole process took like 2 minutes. It would have taken more than 15 to respec Lizzy and I would have had to spend a lot of that time referencing checks I had made earlier.
You can see kukri finesse up top, and you can see Martial proficiency under feats. And, yes, kukri are Martial. I've had to look this up so many times because I wanted Woljif to use them that I eventually just memorized it from repetition alone.
I shit you not, Lisbeth now has her best in slot weapon. Radiance will periodically upgrade throughout the game and become more impressive each time it does so. We just need to make her worthy of it, which will take some effort on her (and by extension our) part.
This is that crown we found last time. I'm gonna stick it on Liz because outside of Seelah, she has the highest Charisma in the party. Also she's the main character and has persuasion tagged. So she might need the bonus.
This is the magical armor we found in the Shield Maze. It's pretty good for medium armor. This will be pretty handy for Seelah, because there are a nonzero amount of undead in act 1. Also just in general.
Also deep character lore: Lisbeth has pink hair.
Alright, we still have one more brief conversation before we are actually free. But I don't mind chatting with Joran here.
Joran is the resident blacksmith for act 1. So he sells weapons and armor, in case you were wondering how we got access to those.
[Show Radiance to Joran] "Do you recognize this sword?"
Joran Vhane: "Do I recognize it? Of course I do! I made this with my own hands! There's my brand, see?" The dwarf carefully takes the sword in his hands, gazing at it like a doting father. "Oh, Yaniel, things have been tough without you. But at least we've still got your sword. That's something."
Joran Vhane: Joran returns the sword to you. "In battle, ordinary swords get blunted, they break. But sometimes, a weapon can preserve — I don't even know how to explain it, I'm no authority on these things — but something like, an echo of the deeds done with that weapon. Or more like, the reflection of the wielder's soul? I don't know. I will say one thing: take care of that sword. Yaniel may no longer be with us, but the demons will still remember why they need to turn tail and run when they see Radiance!"
Joran Vhane: "Och, the scabbard's all worn... We can't be having a fine sword like this being carried around in this tatty thing. I'll make you a new one, if you like. If the city stands strong and we both survive, come see me again and I'll have it ready. No charge!"
Joran is good people. Also if we don't show him Radiance, it will never upgrade.
"Do you know everyone in Kenabres by sight?"
Joran Vhane: "Well, not everyone, but I make it my business to know the people who might need my services. A blacksmith's work isn't just at the anvil, you know."
"Why do you have your forge here, in the tavern yard?"
Joran Vhane: "Wherever I am, that's where my forge is. A true master of any craft will always find the tools they need. I miss my old forge, of course — it's now just a pile of charred stone and metal. But I've still got my hands, and that means I can work!"
"Are you Staunton Vhane's brother?"
Joran Vhane: "Yep. Where he goes, I go. That's how we've always done it, even before the Worldwound: I forge the armor, he goes into battle and breaks it, he brings it back to me, and I repair it and make it better than before... Everything's changed since then, of course. But that part has stayed the same."
And finally the big one. You can put this together from context clues before this, but Joran gives the full picture.
"How was Staunton to blame for the fall of Drezen?"
Joran Vhane: "I've told this story so many times already... Well, telling it one more time won't kill me." The blacksmith sighs. "Drezen was built after the First Crusade — back when it seemed like victory was ours for the taking, and that the demon invasion would soon be at an end. The population of old Sarkoris was thoroughly diminished, and many of them hoped to see their hard fighting repaid with a small plot of unclaimed land. Drezen was a fortress built on all our hopes — and on Mendev's ambitions, though you're not supposed to say that out loud."
Joran Vhane: "What a city it was, Lisbeth... You can't even imagine. It was built by the finest engineers from the Five Kings Mountains. Queen Galfrey spared no expense — Drezen was meant to be the capital of the crusade movement, a monument to its glory and a beacon of hope for all Golarion. Heroes were drawn there to seek fame and glory, and they came from all over — Taldor, Garund, Tian Xia, I couldn't list them all. A relic known as the Sword of Valor was kept there — the banner that had been carried into battle by Iomedae herself, back when she was still human. That banner protected the city and kept the demons from teleporting inside its walls. As long as the banner was in its place, Drezen was invincible — or so we thought.
Joran Vhane: "But then the Worldwound suddenly expanded. The demons launched a new onslaught and folk started saying it was time to declare the Second Crusade. Drezen was unassailable... until one young officer was tempted by a beautiful woman. She convinced him that the banner shouldn't be hanging in the city, that its rightful place was on the battlefield. She whispered honeyed words about glory and valor, and convinced him that he could be a hero as great as Iomedae herself... And the poor fool believed her. He rounded up some of his hot-headed friends and carried the banner outside the city gates on an unauthorized foray. The demons slaughtered them within seconds — but for some reason the courageous ringleader was spared. A whole army teleported into Drezen, it was a bloodbath..." Joran solemnly shakes his head.
Joran Vhane: "As you can guess, that officer was called Staunton Vhane. And the woman turned out to be a demon. Not just any demon — it was Minagho, that foul wretch. She's given us a lot of grief here in Kenabres too... Just don't ask me what I was doing while my brother was off having trysts with that beast, and why I didn't save him from his own stupidity." The blacksmith gestures as if to ward off the inevitable reprobation. "Who could've guessed it would end like this? I've failed my brother, that's the truth. I blame myself every day, looking at his plight... So that's the story."
That's why Staunton hates Minagho so much. And why he hates himself so much. A single mistake that cost the crusades dearly, and he's been paying for it daily for more than 80 years.
Right. Moving on, Joran has a lot of very nice magical items for sale. They're way too rich for our blood now, of course. But we can afford a few masterwork items.
Wendy gets a masterwork throwing axe, so she can now dual wield them and get twice the attacks. I also grab a masterwork kukri, but that turns out to be a waste of money because Liz doesn't have Two Weapon Fighting yet, and we'll find a magical one shortly.
Kiyomi also gets a masterwork longbow, but she'll find a magical one in seriously this very update the next update. But it's also 400 gold, which is basically chump change in the long term. And the short term.
Let's finally move on.
We are gonna kick so much ass.
This reminds me, I finally have the first version of the Dramatis Personae. I'll post it after I post this update!
So, the city map of Kenabres is not quite like the world map we'll be visiting later. On the world map, you can wander your party around and explore. The city map, however, you can only visit any locations you've found through dialogue options.
To the north is Woljif's quest. We'll visit the hideout (and do his first companion quest) in a couple updates.
You see all those rifts across the city? Until we visit the Market Square, we can't cross them. Until we do, we can't visit the "left" half of the city, where most of the locations are.
We're headed to the Tower of Estrod first, however.
Off we go!
While traveling, you'll occasionally get stopped and hear a little noise. That means your party saw something. In this case, it's a dead horse several streets south of the Defender's Heart tavern.
These locations never offer anything you can't live without. But you can occasionally find some nice-to-have stuff.
Like cheese. And butter.
This, by the way, is why I have the Combat Relief mod installed. And why I'm so sorely going to miss it after the EE launches. Combat Relief lets you escape from random encounters with a 100% success rate.
The only reason I even installed it in the first place was because in one of my replays, I was seriously rolling a random encounter every five steps. And I couldn't escape from them. This was with my old shit toaster PC, so it was 45 seconds of loading, 10 seconds of brain-dead combat, and 45 more seconds of loading to get back to the map screen. Only to happen again basically instantly. You can probably imagine how that got old the third second time.
I'm not gonna show every bit of random loot we find, because they're just random reagents. Though I will show off the descriptions.
We're finally at the Tower of Estrod!
So let's take this time to do some tutorializing. This is the bubble buffs menu. Green is buffs we've already set up. Light goes on Seelah, Bless on the whole party, and Enlarge Person on Seelah. But how did I accomplish this? Easy!
Let's use Reduce Person as an example. This is a spell that Lizzy will want on her almost all the time.
We can see that Kiyomi can cast it once at her current level. If anyone else in the party knew it, their portrait would also appear here. So we click on the level of buff we want to use... I always just pick Normal but you can easily fine tune it if you want.
Then we click on the person we want to buff with the spell. In this case, Lisbeth.
Some spells, like Mage Armor, are self only. Others, like Bless, are party-wide. But using Bubble Buffs, it's effortless to set up buffing for the whole party without having to go into each individual character's spellbooks and target spells.
The options menu lets you set whether the buffs will ignore existing ones, or if you can cast in combat. Trust me, you want to enable combat casting. A lot of boss fights in the game are sprung on you straight out of a conversation and you may not have had your boss fight buffs ready to go beforehand. If you don't allow combat casting, you'd have to spend your first 8 or 9 turns setting up buffs on everyone manually.
Also there's occasionally a bug where conversations and cutscenes don't pause buff/debuff timers. So there's nothing quite like a very short duration buff, like Haste, going away before you even get a chance to use it.
Finally, over on the side, you can even let bubble buffs pull from spells only, or more than that. I don't do it for this update, but we'll want to go and enable abilities as well so we can set up Liz's ki abilities. And consumables for Kiyomi's potions.
Moving on, a cutscene happens as we enter.
Ghostly figures step out of the walls to talk at us.
This is why we haven't been taking any demon prompts. If we had, this would be very accusatory and one of the ghosts would attack us. Instead, we're getting praised.
These ghosts, by the way, are four legendary figures from the early crusades.
This small angel is Targona, the sister of Lariel, then angel from Lisbeth's vision. The large angel is the Herald of Iomedae. The first woman was Eliandra, the High Priestess of Pulura. The second woman was Yaniel, the legendary crusader.
The vision of Targona is casting Angelic Aspect on us. What does that do?
That's a huge buff to give to a bunch of level 3s. If we had become a ragelord, Targona would attack us instead. We're gonna be getting into a pretty hefty brawl with a bunch of evils and demons here in a minute, so this is a massive buff to a group of level 3s.
We'll keep riding the angel buffs for a while, but eventually we will have to part ways with them.
Also here in the entrance hallway are a bunch of pictures.
Some of the pictures are extremely relevant to the game's plot. Anyway, most of the art is gone so we can't appreciate it. So let's move on to the meat of the update.
This is Greybor.
"Keep quiet. We don't want to draw any attention. Watch. This is the best part."
Kilas: "It's the last bastion of the crusader resistance. We'll flatten them and claim our victory!"",
Faxon: "Into the Abyss with all crusaders and the Defender's Heart! Kilas, the city is ours already! Now it's time to enjoy the spoils! Split up into groups, quickly! I'll tell you where to go and what to bring back..."",
Kilas: "Faxon, you idiot, go back to Baphomet, he must be missing his lapdog! Everyone here will be following my orders! I'm in charge!"",
Faxon: We won't submit to you, you dirty Deskarite! Keep out of this, Kilas, or I'll curse all your extremities to wither and drop off! Everyone, listen to me! What we're going to do is..."",
Kilas: "Looking for a fight, Faxon? Well, you've got one!"",
In the eternal war of scythe vs. magic, the person standing in melee range with a wicked bladed weapon tends to win.
"If the demons and their mortal agents were better organized, the crusaders would have been crushed long before now. But they're always trying to spread in every direction. Right now, in every corner of the city, there are demons like Kilas who are trying to consolidate their forces to launch a joint attack on the Defender's Heart."
"Who are you?"
"Greybor. I'm a contract killer who's been hired to kill that demon that just walloped that other one. I've tracked him all the way here and was planning to kill him when that crowd showed up, so I had to pull back."
"So, there are people who only hunt demons?" Wenduag looks at the dwarf with respect. "And demons think they are the superior predators."",
"They think so." Catching Wenduag's eye, Greybor gives her a short nod, like an equal. "Their over-confidence will be their downfall."
"What do you suggest?"
"Don't even think about trying to take them all on single-handed. You'll be mincemeat. Better to warn the crusaders in the Defender's Heart that the demons are planning to attack. And later, once all the attackers have been taken care of, it'll be much easier to sweep through this tower and eliminate the defenders left behind."
"Like when dueling with rapiers. One doesn't lunge, but waits for the opponent to strike and leave themselves open."",
Greybor's eyebrows shoot up, as though he wasn't expecting to hear such words from the delicate young lady. He nods anyway. "Yeah, exactly like that."
"Or like in cards. Wait for your opponent to play his hand... And then dive under the table, grab the pot, and run!"
"Thanks for the advice."
The dwarf bows his head politely.
"Who hired you?"
"I'm afraid that's confidential. As a professional, I'm obliged to keep my client's name a secret."
"Fair enough."
"We could attack them together?"
"I have no desire to die today. If you choose to go in there, I'll take advantage of the opportunity, of course. I'll kill Kilas and get back here as quickly as I can. I'm not going to fight any of the others — I don't work for free."
"The city is burning, people are dying, and you're thinking about how to fill your pockets?"
The dwarf shrugs. "Yes. So what? Listen here, girl: if you're so eager to save someone, go and do it, and don't waste your breath preaching at me."
"Seelah, you're going to have to learn to accept the existence of mercenaries like myself, Greybor here, or those two nice women I hired." You gesture at the half-orc, Zenic, and the kitsune fox woman, Kiyomi.
Seelah grumbles, but does not press the point further.
"I'm going now."
"I hope you act wisely."
"Mistress, are we really going to run away from this fight?"
You laugh. "No, we're going to crush them like bugs and put a stop to the planned assault."
Seelah grins and places her hand on the hilt of her weapon. "Now you're talking."
There's two traps on either sides of the room that we can set off to kill several members of the mob below. The problem is, combat starts as soon as we trigger the first. I'm positive there's a way to trigger both sequentially, but athletics skill checks teleport the whole party across the gaps.
We really don't need both anyway. Rolling the first pillar will squash several demons outright and greatly weaken another.
This is the largest legitimate fight we've ever faced, however. I don't count the cutscene fights from the start of the act, because super NPCs Irabeth and Staunton were hanging around. There's eight enemies to take out.
True to his word, Greybor stealths in and knifes the leader and then fucks off, leaving us to clean up the mess. No biggie.
Within seconds, Kiyomi has lobbed a grenade across the room and the melee pile are busy critting everything. This fight is over basically instantly.
The fight started at 27:51 of my recording. It was over by 28:12.
I forgot to show this last time. Woljif's personal quest.
By doing this extremely easy fight, we've defanged the siege on the tavern.
We seriously completed like four objectives at once by doing it. By doing this, we've actually made the siege, when I show it off eventually, that much easier. Because apparently these eight guys were "the bulk of the demons forces."
All these scrolls in yellow are scrolls our party members could learn. Again, some mod and I don't know which, has broken the toybox ability to "copy all to spellbook." So we have to do these manually.
And whoops! I forgot to have Kiyomi memorize half her slots. Not that it matters.
Thankfully enhanced inventory makes this a breeze. You can filter by character and then filter again for "unlearned scrolls." No I don't know why I'm teaching all of them to Woljif instead of Kiyomi. They're level 1 and 2 spells, though, so it really doesn't matter. We'll have a lifetime supply of those by the time we're done with the market square.
Cutting the update here because this was fuckin' epic length and I much prefer shorter, more frequent updates. When it takes me 9-10 hours to write a single update, I get antsy. So join me next time for the basement!
Encyclopedia Golarionnica
Sarkoris
Sword of Valor