It seems I have no shortage of willing recruits! Very well. Consider yourselves enrolled.
As I left the game last, I was about to go search for this Zbigniev fellow, whereever he may be.
Might as well do some sidequests while we're out there, roaming.
If you have the right skills, some behind-the-scenes rolls occur, and you can get different options for solving adventures. Here, having a hunter lets us tackle this one a bit differently.
I decide to kill them all off though, in hopes of better loot.
And I tempt fate by asking for an auto-resolve. Well, not as much tempt fate, as being lazy, seeing as you can always decide to resolve the battle manually after the results of the auto-resolve is teased to you.
No reason to do that if you get a "Perfect Victory" though.
OK loot. This stuff can all be used in crafting. Either in food, equipment or buildings. You can construct buildings out of bone, yes. Grisly, right? Gotta love it.
And suddenly, as I enter a random hex, there he is! Dialogue initiated.
I decided to play it nice and goody-two shoes. This is my first playthrough, remember. And I'm a big softie at heart, so there's that.
After doing that, we get a popup explaining how to start a settlement.
Okay, so the shard is a one-off, got it. Probably should look for an ideal place to settle then. But first, more levelups!
I have no idea what the luck stat does, but I'm counting on it being important.
And for
baud that boost to Gathering just looked so useful. You want clever gatherers in your expedition.
We're now good buddies with one of the neutral factions, allowing us to go into their village and gamble. I think tagging the luck skill twice pays off here.
Emboldened, I do the exact same in the other village.
Silver and gold are nice. Can be used in crafting, but apparently also in some random events. I did not know that then though.
Instead, I decide to start a settlement smack dab right next to the quest village.
Let's construct an Idol of Stone.
And voilá! Thus the foundation for Sokovice is laid.
Building a settlement attracts a pet demon...
The demon can perform the same tasks as you regular villagers, only it's bound to the settlement.
That's a nice demon. It stays near my settlement, does his chores and defends the children. Good.
Other demons are less nice. Some merely annoying.
Feeling benevolent, I let the creature live, and resolve to going for the peaceful solution.
All of the time spent fighting creatures and staving off demons lead to more level increases.
hello friend and
Grimwulf both tag the Tough feat, increasing their survivability.
We drop by one of the villages again, looking for more stuff to kill.
Before finding the vermin, we're ambushed. It's an easy ambush, simple to repel.
Now, with a village settled, we can get random events happening there too. This is one of the good ones:
We'll see more of this stork later..
Still, this wouldn't be a proper RPG without killing rats, would it?
We happily ask for more tasks, this time it's not rats they want removed, but actual fellow humans. Not a task below us, even if we are goody-two shoes.
Before finding them,
Andnjord ups his survivability too, in an even better fashion! He improves his armor stat. If you can manage to only receive armor damage in a battle, without losing health, you're much better off. Tough is a good perk, but I like Parry better. Our pet demon also learns how to conjure ghostly axes and fling them...
Well, we manage to progress in the food-stealing demon quest before finding the scoundrels. There's a lot of text-quests in this game, just as in the prequel. I like that.
Well, what do you know? Another demon that wasn't an SOB? Verdict is still out on whether each and every last of them ought be exterminated though.
Remember I mentioned we'd see more to the stork?
Well, it seems that
Grimwulf and
Crooked Bee has taken a liking to eachother. Who knew?
Children in the prequel were useless and a liability. They may be a liability in Thea 2 too, I don't know yet.
Before we proceed, randomly we get a new adventure based on the food-stealing demon.
I probably just should've killed the creepy critter..
Welp, about children in Thea 2, it seems you can put them to work! Good, I leave the child in the village, where she can pick fruits and cut wood and whatever task I deem necessary.
About wood, I placed the village within gathering distance of Elven Wood. To gather that though, I need to unlock it in the Advancement tab.
And then the icon for it is no longer greyed out.
Time to outfit the expedition again. I leave the child with the demon (known for their perfect child-rearing skills I'm sure) and bring plenty of food and firewood. I remember to mark the Elven Wood as non-usable for fuel purposes.
Then we go to beat up human opponents. This time I decide to do a manual battle. For more loot, I want to kill them. It's a bit at odds with my goody-two shoes thing, but hey. I'm complicated.
The manual combat is simple. First is the setup phase. Look at the icons in the middle between the two board halves. There are some red, and some green icons, followed by two crossed sword icons at the end.
The red icons is the enemy setup, green is mine. The number of "gearcogs" denotes how many/costly actions you can fire off. Placing a character the first time costs 1 cog, the second time it costs 2 cogs.
So I can place two characters on my fist go, which I do.
The most armored character to the front, and our best archer directly behind. Some skills can be used to buff already played cards. I don't do that here. I just place everyone.
And note that the enemy has a character with purple markings over it. That one is placed twice.
Some skills you can designate a target for.
The combat is quick and one-sided.
Seems I upset the scavenger faction. Didn't know they had a faction. And the research material I can research, for better results on auto-resolve against just that type of enemy.
I got more research points, so I can unlock more stuff. For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to unlock a playground...
Don't have the resources for it yet. Silly decision.
Then I get a random adventure.
It cost a lot of gold, and the child got a permanent bonus to a stat. Not sure if worth it..
We do get more levelups. Again, I go for the biggest boost.
Then I spot a terrain feature I haven't seen before. This is new in Thea 2. Don't know what it does, but it's sparkly, so it's probably important. It's right next to a boar lair though, gotta clear that first.
Manual battle punished me there. Took damage. Noone is below the 30% threshold though, so should be safe.
Close by is also a serpents nest. Clearing that manually as well.
My armor proves adequate, and I take no lasting damage.
Safe from the lairs, I setup camp to extract the artifact. There's fuel and food nearby to, which is ideal.
We get another levelup, then I decide to shuffle around the characters a bit, as gathering the artefact was going a bit too slow for my tastes.
Turns pass...
Our Bee levels up and improves her perception, and finally we've dug out the artefact.
So we clear the next boar lair in sight. This time I opt for auto-resolve, and we pull it off without a hitch.
Then we're ambushed by a single snake. Results were easy to predict.
We don't get to celebrate our victories, as that food-stealing demon isn't done yet.
Back in the village, the child levels up, without attaining adulthood. I have no idea whether growing to adulthood is dependent on a hidden clock or if its random. Anyhow, I also decide to unlock a Lumber Mill. Another building I lack the resources to erect.
Our expedition comes across another random Adventure, this one seems to be tied to the free DLC.
Just one against my entire flock. It didn't stand a chance.
In the prequel, I really liked casters, and I was a bit disappointed I wasn't joined by one here. Maybe he would join if I had the right god. Well. The ordeal does provide experience, and we get some improvements.
Random adventures are Fun.
Our pet demon also improves.
I still haven't found that food-stealing demon quest thing, so I keep exploring and come across another faction.
Just as I spot that village though, I finally get to progress (and end) the food-thief quest.
I probably shouldn't have taken that option, but it seemed tempting...
Right, so everyone is cursed. Go me. No helping it, I gotta progress.
Welp, I win, get a friendly pet demon and a spellscroll.
Before making contact to the new faction, the Lightbringers (remember what the Vohl said. They're evil), I check up on the Theopedia. Here you can see that once you complete your creature research, subsequent encounters with said creatures will become easier.
OK. Let's step foot into the lightbringer settlement and see what's to learn.
Eh. Doesn't seem like it'll conclude peacefully. I try to auto-resolve and get incredibly lucky with scraping by on a win.
Everyone is losing their minds after that mental battle, but I got a pet wraith. Looks useful.
Now though, I am at risk of losing one or more characters at the end of each turn, until their sanity recharges...
By freak luck, that doesn't happen on the first turn, and
Citizen improves her gathering skills.
See here, everyone's yellow bar has taken a serious hit.
Several turns tick over, with noone losing their will to be adventurers, so I decide to push on. In the distance I spot some rare bone resource that can be mined later, and a boars lair. Maybe netting a victory will lift the spirits?
You want different foods for the party, to increase the morale regain. That morale is what helps you regain sanity. Which also translates into our entire expeditionary force being completely drained for morale...
The meat we got from the boars will help a bit though. We push on, headed back to the village, but find a "Stinger" faction outpost. They aren't friendly.
I decide to battle them. Don't want to be bullied by bees. We get a win with minor injuries, which I readily accept, and the loot! Those gathering tools are really useful!
The relation loss could hurt us later though. Bummed about that. The lair was situated directly above this grove of Dryad Wood though. Gotta unlock that and start harvesting later.
On our way back to the village, we get treated to another adventure. See if you can spot a trend with the behaviour of demons in this game..
Fortunately, the illness is temporary. So
Citizen should be fine. Should be.
We're almost back at the village when we spot this scene. This game has Spider Diplomacy!
And this random encounter fixes some of the relation loss I took with Stingers. I'll take it. And no, I'm not sorry about clearing that lair, as the gathering tools made up for it.
We are still cursed from the demon game though, and curses last until lifted. So I unlock the curse removal ritual.
It'll cost us a fair amount of resources though. I think we got enough herbs to pull it off. We don't get to actually do that though, because now the game decides to throw Plot Exposition at us.
The text is voiced, which I think is a nice touch. Seems like actual voice actors too. I felt a bit like a paladin here, taking all the "yes god, I shall do as you please, god" choices. Don't know if the game will actually let you deviate and choose your own path. I would think so. I'm just counting on the rewards from the gods being good. We'll see if I'm disappointed.
Back at the village, we complete the curse-lifting ritual, and round everything off with some more levelups.
I'm just in the middle of uni crunch till 28 dec (and spending the little of free time I have on heroine quest)
?
