We're very close to the end, and this update will feature both sides of the conflict. The update would simply appear too small otherwise.
We start off with the darksiders. Having done 4 quests for the advisors, there remains just two more tasks. We've already received the first one: go to the Land of Giants and kill the leader of the Devils, the one named Xenofex.
Before doing that I decided to get rid of the last promotion quest, the bounty hunter one.
So, I savescummed outside a town hall until I got a sufficiently juicy bounty that was easy to complete
Targetting an Archmage made sense in that I knew there was an un-cleared dungeon where I could find one. Many of the other monsters I could get a bounty on could be nigh impossible to find anywhere, as not all dungeons would have respawned at this point in the game.
Maybe it's cheap to savescum, but a quest that relies this much on random chance, and which really holds no bearing on the rest of the game, I'm not too troubled cheating a bit.
It means we could finally turn it in and become honorary bouty hunters.
There.
With that minor annoyance out of the way, we make our way to the Land of Giants and make straight for our target, the Colony Zod. Along the way, we take some snapshot of the different tiers of devils.
Due to the Meteor Shower skill, you do not want to be caught on the ground in the vicinity of these fuckers. What makes the Captains even worse is they have a chance on each hit, to drain the targets spellpoint pool. That can be troublesome, and very annoying if your only town-portal capable guy gets zapped. Carry extra manapotions for just that case.
The colony itself is a nasty piece of work. We can see it in the distance here.
Nothing much to look at. But the animated image you see when you enter it is yucky. I've tried to capture it in these three images.
A writhing mass of tubes and tentacles. This could lead you to think it'd be a confusing place with passages that shift and turn, and a wholly organic feel to it.
...
This is how the tunnels look.
Non-descript and brown. The chests you can loot here are slight pod-looking, but nothing scary here either.
This particular chest contained an artifact and another blaster gun.
Blaster guns can be awesome, as I will demonstrate later.
We have two objectives in this dungeon, and we need to complete them both. One objective is to free Roland Ironfist. The guy we read a lot about in MMVI. Apparently the devils brought him here.
Here he is, swinging along merrily in his very own cage:
Looks like he's trying to rattle the bars.
Anyway, he's mightily pleased when we free him, and no, we cannot leave him.
He gives us a key which is needed to enter the chamber where Xenofex is. When freed, our History book is updated.
That's surprisingly mildly worded for the scribe of a Dark side group...
Anyway, with him free, we can confront the Devil leader!
And here's the map of the place.
1. Roland
2. Xenofex
Very simple and straightforward dungeon. Just take care to rush the captains, to prevent them from draining spellpoints, and this dungeon shouldn't be too hard.
Once Xenofex is slain, and we teleport back to report our success, we're interrupted with a video sequence. It's the exact same for both Dark and Light groups.
Why, Artie seems so honest and believable, so of course we'll just trust his word, shan't we?
It would have been refreshing if Catherine had just killed him, but as remarked, this plays out in the exact same way, no matter if you chose light or dark.
With one dungeon down, we shift our focus to the lightsiders.
Their history update seems identical to the darksiders, when releasing Roland.
Hmm.... What is more, after watching the exile video, we get another update in the history book. Again, it seems there are no differences between the light and dark sides here.
I'm disappointed in this. I had hoped for some differences here, but none. Tsk.
Well, disappointed or not, it's time we received our final task, and just as we ask about it, we get treated to the how and why of these advisors!
Ooo, shiny! They make pretty sparkly lights!
Here's our mission put more wordy:
We need to don wetsuits and go swimming for their hidden spaceship, so we can fetch the gizmo they need to power the portal to the system of portals that connect the different worlds. Only, the security systems have been activated, and our group has been chosen as
cannon fodder the only ones tough enough to brave the dangers.
The tricks to the wetsuits is that you need to remove all equipment to don them, including rings and amulets. The only weapons you can use while wearing the suits is the blasters.
Here are some pics of the suits, and Mrowak striking a pose, wearing one of them.
Note, there are only 4 wetsuits available, seeing as there are only 4 advisors for each side. Handy, isn't it? This also means that our hired NPCs will not be joining us for this last dungeon. The wetsuits give innate water walking, elsewise they'd be deathtraps.
After all this exposition, we can check our history book again.
I really don't have anything witty or interesting to add at this point, but I'm pleased the light side update differs from the dark as you will see later.
With the wetsuits equipped, it's just a matter of making our way to Avlee and start swimming. Once you hit the west side of the map, you get this popup.
The Shoals is a unique map. It's an underwater map where you cannot remove the wetsuits, and you cannot cast spells or use other weapons than the blasters. This means no healing, at all. So you need to take care with the sharks in the area, all of which have ranged attacks..
In the northeastern part of the map, we finally find the Lincoln:
Immediately upon entry, the group is set upon by a number of security droids. They come in three flavours.
Needless to say, the assassin droids are the most dangerous of the bunch. Contrary to the droids from MMVI, these ones do not have an instant eradication ability though, so it's just their sheer damage output you need to be mindful of.
Once inside the ship, it's a very,
very good idea to immediately go into turnbased mode, and equip all items again, save for normal weapons. Here, the blasters come into their own. You see, there's a trick to making them über. The trick is simple. Cast haste, keep the game in real time, and let rip!
The rate of fire is so ridiculous, even assassin droids will only get to attack maybe three times before they're dead.
Inside the Lincoln our objective is to find the Oscillation Overthruster. Most doors inside the Lincoln are inoperable however, as most of the power has been turned off. So the first objective (which isn't listed in the quest book) is to turn the power back on. To do that, you need to find the generator, which also isn't listed, and manipulate an unlisted panel. Having grandmaster wizards eye is helpful, as it marks areas of interest.
This column is what we're looking for, and the minimap is a bit unclear to read, but blue parts are area of interest, and the panel directly in front of us is marked with blue. Pressing space tells the party to flip an unseen switch, and power is restored, making the rest of the ship available for exploration.
There is a sort of pod-launching room, which we sadly cannot interact with.
Could be fun to zip around in our own little pod-ship, pretending to play Archimedan Dynasty.
In some chests we also find upgrades to our blaster guns.
Here's a peek at our lightsiders on the quick ref sheet, with the rifles equipped.
Base damage unimpressive, but it's nigh impossible to miss, and you saw the attack speed. They mow down everything very quickly, and with regeneration up, clearing the Lincoln becomes almost trivial.
Finally, we come upon what must be the bridge.
The black well like structure is the only part of the bridge we can interact with, and once we do, traps start going off, though their damage is insignificant, and we find the Overthruster!
Here's a map of the Lincoln:
1. Generator
2. Overthruster
The Lincoln is an average sized map. It has some simple puzzles, such as pressing switches to make walls go up and reveal a chest, turning on the power and stuff like that. Plus, the bridge area looks slightly like the Enterprise bridge.
The monsters are dangerous, but once the initial scare wears off and everyone is in their normal equipment and regeneration is cast, the place becomes simple enough. Not too impressive for the last area in the game, but still challenging, even for a level 60+ party.
Quest complete. We can now teleport back to Resurectra and watch the ending movie!
I'll delay showing the movie for now though, as I want to show both endings close to eachother.
With that in mind, we change groups to our darksiders.
Kastore is mightily pleased with us killing Xenofex, and we get the dark version of the plot expo:
Cheesy, but I like the part where he just shoots the irate necromancer.
These guys are ruthless and want to rule no matter what. That much should be apparent now.
The wetsuits have an interesting quirk when it comes to liches. Or maybe it's the liches that are weird.. It seems Bee suddenly has some meat on her bones again.
Before.
After.
She even has nipples, impressive for a dessicated corpse, don't you think?
And a final look at our history book.
From here on out, it's exactly the same for the darksiders as it was for the lightsiders, so all there is left to do is post the victory vids.
Finally, just as in MMVI, we get a victory screen for beating the game, giving us a score and the final levels of all characters. I find them a fitting way to end this LP.
[edit] Apparently, there's a limit to how many videos I can link to in a single post, so look below for the victory videos for both sides.
Dark win pic
Light win pic
