Balrum - Entering the mage guild

My quest in Balrum continues in this great game. After much searching I finally found the troll that guarded the final rune. What I like about this game is that you most of the time don´t have to kill your foes in order to proceed in the main quest. And you don´t have to kill monsters in order to gain experience points either since you get very little. Grinding in this game is not an option. Now, I don´t remember if I actually killed the troll or managed to sneak past it using my favourite speed potion tactic: Run past the troll to the chest, open the chest take the rune and then get the hell out of there. But on the other hand there are some bosses that could give you valuable magical items or even a level point. You won´t know if you don´t kill them right ? That makes for a good compromise in my opinion.

Before I left for the portal to the undercity with my three runes I maked sure I had visited all places and dungeons. Most of those I could manage to clear out or at least explore. There is no need to spend a lot of mana, health and potions just to kill off a few beasts which don´t give you anything in return. Potions requires plants and even though plants grow everywhere it gets tiresome to always pick up plants for new potions. You could also buy potions and I frequently do that in exchange for selling off stuff I have gathered.

There are a lot of different places in the game not related to the mainquest. Some of them contains puzzles. They are for the most part quite easily overcome and adds to your feeling of accomplishment. I had to leave a few places where I could not understand how to progress though but nothing that relates to my mainquest as far as I know.

I have still been very conservative of spending my level points and have constantly 10-13 points unspent. I need to increase my strength in order to wield better melee weapons but at the same time I also need to increase my intelligence to wear better magical items and get more mana and increase my wisdom to boost my mana generation. Many of these attribute increases could be gained from magical items but it is your core attribute that decides if you could use a certain item. I still want to play as a pure mage but it is not practical to do that without investing into strength. When your mana is emptied you need to rely on melee and wield enough armour to take on the tougher beasts. I love these kind of decisions for your character build and see much value in replayability of building different character classes.

Ok, I went down into the undercity and explored everything. I tried to avoid every fight I could so as to preserve my stock of potions until I really needed them. The undercity is really an abandoned city in itself. In the church I found the necromancers I have heard so much about. They told me I needed to get three items to restore their strength which are spread across the world by former people. If I don´t help out they will destroy as much as possible of all I love and care about. I also discovered I am an heir to the king and as such is the only one that can actually use these items. 

After finally having received what I believe to be the real mainquest I return to the lands above and when I revealed what I have learned I was told that the only one who might know about the items I was looking for was the mage guild. But to reach the guild I have to leavy the forest and travel to the other sida.

I entered a trapdoor and travelled through and underground tunnel. Here I was challenged by tougher creatures already but I choosed to use my speed potion to get past them and got out on the other side and entered a glade. It was full of new beasts and tough monsters that randomly moved around. I had no interest to fight them so I sneaked past them and managed to reach the other side which loaded up a full new huge map area divided into four sections just as the starting place. No I had finally reached my goal and begun to explore it.

After a few minutes I found a new settlement. It was a huge one. Once it belonged to farmers and townspeople but now the rebels had taken over. I searched every house and talked to every person. Not all were happy about the rebels. I replenished my inventory and kept track of new skill trainers. Some of the sidequests were interesting such as the highpriest worrying about his employees nightly endavours to a nearby brothel. In the end it turned out that not only was there an underground tunnel connecting the two buildings but the highpriest himself was the most frequent visitor. By using blackmail I could get some benefits.

I found a skill trainer for level 3 hunting and was excited. At last I could improve my pet by taming a mantis or spider. I saved before spending my level points and tamed both a mantis and a spider. But I was dissappointed. First, the indicated strength, health and level they have before you tame them has nothing to do with their actual strength when you get them as pets. They had even lesser amount of healt than my bear. Just a different setup of attributes and other pet abilities. Nothing that would make me want to expend 3 level points on that skill right now. I reloaded. Now I would like to know if level 4 hunting will be worth it.

My quest was to get to the mage guild so after a few hours in the village I decided to move on. The mage guild lies in the southwest corner of the 2*2 map and I eventually got to the mage guild by avoiding all threats. There are a lot of new, powerful creatures here and I see no reason to fight them for the meagre amount of XP they give and have to deplete my stocks.

Invisible walls. Parts of the puzzles to reach the mage guild

To actually reach the guild I had to complete some puzzles and then I first got a mission from them to assure them I would be qualified to enter. I would have to get a certain object from the undead lands in the southwest. I immediately set out for that part and this turned into a positive experience. I got to a huge landare covered with dead trees and full of mythological beasts and undead creatures. I run past all of them - often with my speed potion active so I could run from them when they discovered me. I searched everything I could and this place was filled with interesting places that yielded a lot of magical items. I eventually found what I was looking for (without a fight) and also met a mage there who I helped to get his lost zombified servant back home again.

The mage guild. Back Death is my pet, a black bear

When I returned to the mages guild I was accepted but in order to actually help me out with my quest I had to get recommendations from all the mages so I had to do errands for a few of them. I used this time to increase my arcane level to 3 and bought all new spells I could get. Here I also increased my level to 6 and put that into strength to be able to use better armour and melee weapon. I still have over 10 level points unspent and I am thinking into investing them into intelligence and wisdom because I need to increase my magical abilities.

Now it is time for me again to return back to my main quest....

Balrum - Making progress

I admit. I am hooked by this game. I have put at least 30 hours into the game by now and have just reached level 4. I have slowly progressed the mainquest. I am still in search of the missing Packs family and during my investigation I have found out about the dark history of Darkwood. Massmurders have been comitted here and there are necromancers working their foul arts in these woods. I have found a stone tablet with inscriptions which I eventually got translated. The information pointed me to explore a necromancers tower in the south of the starting map. That was my first real challenge in the mainquest but a very rewarding one.

For the first time in the game I had to progress and not just avoid tougher obstacles as is common in this open world RPG. The tower was filled with ghosts. Fortunately I had found a necklace which deflects some of their chilling effects and I got my hunter skill level raised to two which meant I could get rid of my wolf pet. I trapped a bear instead and he is tougher but slower. Together we slowly explored the tower.

After the first level there was no turning back. It wasn´t possible to use the trapdoor to get out. I had to move forward. I was a little nervous about that but hoped everything would go well. Level two was a huge labyrinth which led me to many dead ends but with the help of the automap, patience and lots of food (remember you consume food, drinks and stamina (rest) allt the time). In the end I met my first "boss", a skeleton king. 

What followed was the most interesting battle in this game so far. He was much stronger than me but by hurling fireballs at him whicle my bear clawed at him and tried to slow him down and by always retreating out of melee combat, I was able to slowly drain his energies. Pretty fast my mana dropped to zero and I had to run away to keep my distance and get myself time to drink mana potions. My pet bear also died pretty early. I then used my stun/freeze spell on him everytime I needed to drink more health and mana potions and run away to keep my distance. Sometimes the Skeleton king hurled fireballs at me or tried to stun me instead of moving forward. Those moments where critical but I always managed to get out even though my pool of potions was about to be depleted. At one time I had trapped my self into a dead end and saw the face of death emerging at me. The skeleton king was now weak but so was I. I finally mustered my last mana strength and used a teleportation potion on myself and by that I got on the other side of the king and could keep running away. Finally he died. It had cost me dozens of expensive potions but it was all worth it. Not regarding XP but by a few good items and by progressing.

After that I continued to level 3 and now I seriously thought it was all over for me because - as I said - I could not go back. This time the level was filled with ghosts and skeletons. These are tough fights for me and I don´t have any stock left of mana and health potions. But then I found out about the solution to all of my problems. There where an electrical bolt shooting out from one of the walls. By luring out my opponents one at a time right into the shooting range of the bolt I could get them killed in no time and by no efforts by myself. When I got rid of all the ghosts and skeletons I could examine the rooms on this level and found a few interesting items.

The last room had I explored summoned Lord Benedict, some sort of Lich. This time the combat wasn´t as easy as before since he was immune to the electrical bolt. Instead I used one of my speed potions to always keep my distance from him and hurling my fireballs at him while also freezing him from time to time for my pet to inflict some melee damage. By the way, the pet could always be resurrected by a phoenix egg or better yet if you find the phoenix ring you have unlimited uses of resurrections you can do. Be aware that this is not possible during combat though.

With my last potions I killed him and looted the whole place. I found some interesting gear and documents which I brought back to my village to be translated. I had found documents that the village leader Arlo have had dealings with the necromancers but when I confrtonted him he didn´t want to say anything about it. Instead I got the lead to go to another village in the far east to ask the elder there, Kyler,  about this.

Now was the first time when I actually begun to explore the other three parts of the Darkwood forest. There is a teleporter in each of the maps which you could use to fast travel between them. You could also walk if you wish to but that takes considerable time and amounts of supplies. Not to mention all the hazards you have to avoid on the road because the forest is filled with spiders, mantis, larves, wolves, bears and other creatures. All of them strong enough to kill you unless you have a full amount of mana, health and your pet ready.

On the other hand, the minimap only shows a few of all the interesting places there are so if you want to find the most interesting items and loot you must explore the wilderness. There are a lot of interesting places such as caves, ruins, graveyards, monster nests, strange portals or just pure puzzles. In the beginning I just run around and made a note of where they where since I was too weak to tackle the monsters. Now I could explore perhaps half of them or use some sinister tactics like using a speed potion to run through all my enemies, loot the place and try to escape.

My intention from the beginning was to play a pure mage. After having read the forums at Steam it seemed that might have been the hardest class to play but only a few days after launch the developers increased mana regeneration outside of combat with 50% which does make it somewhat easier since you will recover faster after every fight. I have still saved at least 10 LP (Learning Points) because I have not been convinced a mage is a good choice. Almost always you run out of mana long before any enemy is taken down which forces you to go into melee. That requires me to get he best melee weapon I can and also the best armour. The problem is that better items require a certain level of base attribute which means I can not only invest in Intelligence and Wisdom but Strength as well.

I have decided to wait of the ultimate weapon or armour which requires a certain amount of attribute points to use and then I will invest my hardearned LP to enable using it.

Some other reflections of the game:

• Food, thirst and rest consumption has not been as bad as I believed when I first started the game. There are huge amounts of food spread everywhere and you can buy what you don´t want to steal, farm, combine, cook or whatever.

• You could steal anything. Just be aware of not having any NPC in vicinity or he will get hostile. There are forget crime scrolls that could help you out on this though. 

• In order to open locked chests you need lockpick skill which is a must have in my opinion. You will then need to try to open lock combinations before your picks break but that is not too common.

• There are literally dozens of different plants and consumables. I have invested alchemy level 1 and use it to make mana- and healthpotions.

• In my safe heaven - accessible from anywhere - I store surplus items which I think I might have a need for in the future but don´t have space for in my inventory.

• A fun detail is that you cant get a bug in your inventory which starts eating up your food if you don´t smash it.

• This game gives almost no XP for killing creatures. It is better to avoid them if you can unless you have to kill them in order to gain a certain item, like the spider quees to get the ring for kyler village guard. I got one of the three runes I need by running through all crystal golems with speed potions.

When I finally discovered the other village in the east I was hindered to meet the leader Kyler by his guard unless I proved trustworthy. I could do that by recovering a lost family heirloom ring which was lost in some ruins far in the southwest Darkwood. The ruins was full of spiders and I searched it carefully for the ring but it turned out it was taken by a spider queen. After a tough fight with mainly my speed potion tactic, I could kill the spider and retrieve the ring. Back at the village I had the opportunity to keep the ring or give it to the guard. Whatever your moral take on this the recieved XP didn´t matter.

After I had found Kyler I was filled in with more information about the Darkwood history. He said that Arlo have had dealings with the necromancers and met them in the undercity. The entrance is only accessible by three runes and Kyler suggested I would talk to another person about their whereabouts. I found this person and was give three leads to each and every rune. One was to find in a graveyard in the northeast, one guarded by a troll and the third in the crystal golems cave.

I have found two of these runes. The first one I took by force in the graveyard but the second one by using my speed potions to pass all crystal golems, loot the place and then return back without being killed by the golems. After my third attempt I succeded. Now I am looking for the troll.

I really like the game. It is a mix of Eschalon and Avadon but still unique. It gives you the right feeling when exploring and looting and have many interesting weapons, armours and sets as well as magical items. It is tough, hard and challenging but not too hard.