Victory lap

So, last time I said I was done with newbie content. Not quite. There's one more quest in this vein that I have to accomplish, and that's the Sanamar merchant quest. This one is basically designed to introduce newbies who start in Sanamar to the wider world of Dereth. You're asked to help a merchant expand his trading empire, and to do this you go around to the other three newbie towns, run a quest for a businessman in each of them, and then get their yea or nay response. Since I've finished most of the other newb content, this seems a very appropriate finale for this phase of my AC life.

First on the itinerary is Renald the Eldest, of Holtburg. The name's kind of a joke. Since release Holtburg has been home to two shopkeepers, Renald the Younger and Renald the Elder. Guess this is the head honcho. He's a cantakerous old coot, and wants me to fetch a mug that some drudges stole before he'll consider my reply. He gives me coordinates, which makes finding the place easy, but finding my way to it is a little trickier. Overland travel tends to annoy me. There always seems to be a cluster of enemies too powerful for me between here and there. This forces me to take long detours, get lost, and occasionally run for my life.

Fortunately, I don't meet anything too tough on my way to retrieve the mug. It's in a bunker, not a dungeon, but I do have to rough up a bunch of brown drudges outside before getting in.

I return the mug to Renald, who says, essentially, "Thanks for the offer, but I'm actually a racist and there's no way I'll do business with that effing smurf." Well thanks, asshole. At least he has the decency to give me a 15K trade note for my trouble.

Hoping for more luck in Shoushi, I hop a portal there and talk to the herbalist Gonjoku Dan. He wants me to find him a certain rare herb.

The cave is not really worth mentioning: generic twisty tunnels populated by Mosswarts. The herb is on a big spike of rock in the final room, and annoyingly blends into the scenery. If I hadn't been cycling the targets with [ and ] out of habit, I would have never even noticed it. The fighting is good, though. I find a Swamp Stone among the corpses, which would have been foreshadowing for my next post, but isn't.

In exchange for my help, Dan gives me his agreement and a unique potion. This would be good, if it wasn't a one-use potion with a crappy effect. So, I move on to Yaraq and my old friend, Lubziklan al-Luq.

Lubby still doesn't see the wisdom in security, and thus I'm off to another dungeon to bash drudges and retrieve stolen goods. This dungeon, however, turns out to be exceptionally well-designed. It's drudges all the way, but every room is interesting. One especially impressive one has a mesh floor, through which you can see the room below.

Later, down a spiral staircase, I find a series of corridors where I fight a lot of drudges.

Navigating the corridors, I eventually reach a multi-level room with drudges perched on the upper level. They actually do a decent job tactically. One jumps down to fight me, while the other snipes me with throwing daggers. Further in, taking shortcuts via lockpicking, I run into a room with an obvious secret door:

Somewhat obnoxiously, the secret passage is simply a longer route to the final room, although I do get to beat up some Red Rats for their tails.

The final room is a suitably epic finale to AC newbiedom: A battle royale in a room with at least a dozen drudges of all colors, some of which snipe me with throwing daggers et al while their companions engage in melee. Despite challenging odds and needing to use a few potions, I prevail and return to the al-Luq estate with not only the needed wine, but a Glorious Apple as well.

His reaction to the apple is a bit troubling. I mean, given that his business is apples, you'd think he'd know that apple trees are grown from clippings, not seeds. Between him and his party-girl, aduterating daughter, I worry about the economic future of Yaraq. The al-Luqs are set up to run the whole town into the ground. Occupy Yaraq, anyone? Before that can happen, I get my Slaving-for-the-Man ass out of town and back to Sanamar, where I turn in the agreements, and Renald's insult, for some exp, some money, and a pack that I already have.

And that wraps up newbiedom. Now it's on to... LOWBIEDOM!

Green town in the desert

I had another quest to do from Sanamar, but since I skipped Al-Arqas initially, I figured that now is a good time to make up for it.

Al-Arqas is often confused with Samsur, and for good reason: it's the same damn idea. Oasis valley surrounded by mountains and deserts. I only get this one screenshot, because there's not much of anything worth seeing here. Turbine must have known this, since they placed the outposts such that you don't have to go more than two buildings into town at any point in the starter quests. The outposts are north and west, and the roads intersect at the north end of the town, right about where you can find the explorer society rep. I try  north first, following a trail marked out by rods in the sand. The Gharun'dum lands use these when the sands make actual roads impractical.

General chat is rather active tonight, and between people throwing crass insults at each other, I get the skinny from the questgiver:

I happen to remember that this quest doesn't involve a dungeon. Instead, you just head to a nearby bunker. So my initial reaction is "Man, how lazy is this woman?" I mean, level eleven mage and she can't take some newbie drudges? What is she, a burden mule? As it turns out, however, she has good reason to leave this to the professionals. Just like in Nanto, the spawn maps have been updated around the quest, so that I wind up facing level 20 skeletons and armoredillos on the way to this drudge hideout. Having walked through Sanamar with few problems, I'm overconfident and try to get some quick action. That was stupid on my part. Soon I'm chugging potions like a maniac to stay alive. It doesn't work, and I get an express trip back to the lifestone.

I don't know who to be angry at: Turbine for screwing up the spawn maps, or myself for charging in like Leeroy Jenkins and getting clobberized. (I had Lugain gems and forgot to use them, so the scale tips toward it being my fault.) On the return trip, I play a bit more reasonably. After carefully retrieving my corpse, I take the long way around to find the drudge camp. I avoid most of the high-level spawns, but unfortunately I can't avoid this one:

Way out of my league, and he's camped out right by the bunker I need to get to. While I'm trying to figure a way to sneak past him, he aggros on me. I duke it out with him a bit before confirming I'm hopelessly outclassed and switching tactics to running the eff away. I duck in the bunker hoping that he'll get stuck on the walls, but no dice. So now my gear knight is getting chased around an tiny underground room by a shadow while drudges take cheap shots at me like some kind of Derethian Tom & Jerry short. Finally, I manage to snatch the quest item from the ground and escape back upstairs and out of the bunker. This time, the Shadow does get hung up on the walls, and I /lifestone before anything else goes wrong.

The kicker? The quest item is an ordinary Drudge Charm, no different from the dozens or so I've turned in to collectors thus far in the game. Eff this quest.

Outpost number two is home to a questgiver in an improbably huge house, who has a more mundane, if overdone, task for me: retrieve an item of sentimental value from a nearby dungeon. As before, it's the overland journey which is the real problem. If you go straight to the dungeon, you encounter only drudges, but veer too far off the path and you have 20ish Armoredillos and Rifts. Fortunately, I manage to avoid drawing aggro from anything too much for me.

The Unfinished Temple dungeon is fairly straightforward. Drudges and weak Shreths, but good use of multiple levels. The action is below average, however, and a nostalgia trip in the form of a 10-year old meme invading the chat channel is more entertaining.

I find the knife she wants and return it, only to find she's pulling the same crap Ercel did back in Lytelthorpe:

So now not only am I getting sent to retrieve pointless crap, I'm being the butt of stupid pranks from the questgivers.

Anyway, in addition to the usual rewards, both of the outpost questgivers give me a recommendation letter to the explorer society rep in town. He's been looking for someone to fetch a very rare and obscure liquor from a nearby dungeon and gives me a key to... gosh, this sounds familiar. It sounds even more familiar when I get up on the cliffs around town and see the path to the dungeon:

Despite the desert setting, Al-Arqas is one of the big "Green Towns" of Dereth. Everything's made of recycled material.

Anyway, the Abandoned Shops are a highlight. Drudges everywhere, but the architecture is fairly good, and more importantly it looks like it was once a marketplace: all stalls and shops stocked with their goods. If anything it looks a little too impressive. The drudge occupants have uncharacteristically left everything in it's place, including the foodstuffs which should, by all rights, be rotten by now.

The Distillery Ambrosia is close to the entrance, but with lockpicks, you can go further down into the depths in search of more treasure. In addition to the chests, I find an especially interesting room which seems like a chapel of sorts:

But while the dungeon is nice, I have very little of interest to say about the quest. Bash drudges, grab item, receive reward. Same as always. So I head back, tag the questgiver, and move on.

If I seem to be particularly ornery with Al-Arqas, and with Sanamar for that matter, it's not entirely the game's fault. I've been doing newbie quests like this for weeks, and while it's provided some great moments, it's getting old. This is the last newb town I have to deal with, and thank god for that. I'm ready for something with a little more substance.

There's a Thrungus among us

Having completed my test-drive of the Finesse template, I move on to my last potential main, Ferrion the Two-Hander Gear Knight. He portals in to Sanamar, the capital city of the Viamont-ruled Halaetan Islands. This area was added for the Throne of Destiny expansion, some five years after AC opened. So of course, Turbine puts their best face forward with Sanamar, showing off what they can do with the superior graphics technology of 2005.

The results are impressive, if a bit ostentatious. Above you see the high-res tavern. Below, the mage's guild:

I take back what I said two posts ago: Lytelthorpe is not the home to Dereth's upperclass twits. Sanamar is. They've got these big, impressive buildings, a statue in the center of town, and this holier-than-thou attitude to non-Viamontians. The shopkeepers throw slurs at me even while cheerfully selling me goods. Nevertheless, I collect my supplies from around town. No Lugian merchant means no Lugian gems right now. The tradeoff is that the healer's potions are more potent than usual. (The healer is also an obvious homage to the White Mage from the first Final Fantasy.)

My first quest is from the guard at the gate, and it's the usual "collect eight items of sentimental value" deal. Rather than just one dungeon, however, Sanamar spreads these items out around four dungeons in the woods outside town. So there's a lot of running around involved, but at least the scenery is nice. Are those redwoods?

In the dungeons I get my first taste of Two-Handed Combat. Two-Handed plays a lot like Dual Heavy, doing comparable damage, but with two important advantages: the first is that you only need a single weapon, which simplifies logistics a lot. The second is Cleaving, which allows you to hit two enemies at once. It's very powerful, and helps me plow through these mutant mushrooms very quickly. The tradeoff is that you're hitting less often, which means fewer sneaks/dirties. Long-term, this template may be better taking recklessness and going for pure damage, but for right now it holds up just fine.

Being a Gear Knight gives me the advantage of a slight boost to damage resistance, as well. I'm not sure if it's because of this or not, but the Thrungi were quite easy. Despite low-level creature debuffs and life drains,  I never once needed a potion.

With that said, the quest is disappointing. An annoyingly large part of it is running around to get to the dungeons. The dungeons themselves are poorly designed: each is a series of twisty tunnels, with little visual appeal and no attempt to make it look like someplace something would live. There are books with thrungus-related lore in them, but they're boring. The items you're seeking are random junk: a frying pan, a bracelet, a brew kettle, etc., significant only from being stolen from one of Sanamar's ruling class. And this here is some of the laziest design I've seen in awhile:

Every quest item is found this way: in a chest full of identical items in the middle of the floor right by the exit portal. Could Turbine possibly give less of a crap?

Also, the loot profile for the Thrungi is weird. It is almost universally high-value, low-burden loot: gems, jewelry, crowns, etc. I understand why this was done: Anything that's not outclassed by Pathwarden gear at this level has an Arcane Lore requirement a raw newbie certainly can't meet, so give them money. But it's dull, and makes the quest feel mechanical. Also, I have no chance of finding a better weapon, something which I could use. In an interesting twist, one that I'd forgotten, completing the quest nets you a magic bracelet in addition to other rewards. But even that is disappointing. It has three enchantments, but they're all level one. I keep it anyway, since I don't have anything better to put in that slot.

Anyway, the second quest is from a historian hanging out around the statue just inside the gate. He claims to have been attacked by vicious wild beasts who stole his prized necklace. Sounds like a challenge, so I head over to the coordinates he gave me...

Umm... really?

Yes, really.

I wish I had more to say, but this quest is even more dull than the last. Same bland dungeon design, even less imposing enemies. Quest item at the end, then back to the quest giver. The reward is some gloves which are not even close to matching my Pathwarden Gauntlets.

The third quest is a bit of an improvement. I'm sent to fix a beacon in a "dungeon" full of Blue Pynthos Wasps. I put dungeon in quotes because... well, the portal drops me off here:

Yes, the beacon is in the sky. That's reasonably awesome. I take a few screens, unfortunately I hit here at night, so none of them come out good. It's mainly wasps up here, which gives me slightly more challenge than the wimps thus far, plus I find a new weapon:

Not bad! Near the end, I face some of these guys:

I hope for some Pyreal Motes to drop. No dice, but it's at least a decent fight. By the time I've killed them and repaired the beacon, morning has come and I'm able to get a slightly better screenshot:

So, Sanamar at least ends on a high note.

That note, however, does nothing to alleviate the sense of disappointment. Sky dungeon aside, newbie Sanamar is dull, with zero-challenge enemies and bland dungeons. Sure, the town looks nice and has good shops, but it's all about the gameplay, and in that respect Sanamar is the weakest of the four starter towns. Apparently, a lot of people disagree: I saw a significant number of level seven and eight characters running around, and during the beacon quest I was competing with one for kills. They're welcome to enjoy it, but I find the experience less than stellar.

Cupid's bow has lousy modifiers

I recall the town of Rithwic being fairly popular in the old days. I don't quite remember why, but I think it had to do with its location. Back then, we didn't have portal gems or the town network. We had the subway at Arwic, but it was hard to get to. The starter towns were connected by a circuit of portals, as were the capitals, but that was a pain to navigate. So a lot of travel was by foot, and Rithwic was in a prime location: a quick jog from Eastham, a fairly quick jog from Cragstone, and the closest town to the eternally-besieged Dryreach. It's also pretty well laid out. A bridge across the river connects the east and west sides of the town. West has a single circular road with shops around the outside. On the inside, a town square which has become somewhat cluttered over the years. It's currently home to a portal to Martine's Retreat, one of those big green statues, and some other things.

The east side has a few additional shops, plus a lifestone that may be another reason for the town's popularity. Back in the day, lifestones were at outposts and random spots in the wilderness. Lifestones in town weren't added until later. I believe, however, that this lifestone has always been here, within sight of the town proper, which is very convenient.

The exploration society rep here is a depressed mage named Celcynd the Dour, found drowning his sorrows in the local bar. The name may sound familiar. If you go back to my first Holtburg entry, you'll see that he was the mage who rescued the children when the Holtburg Redoubt was destroyed. There's actually a lot of lore centered around the guy. He was also the first Isparian to master portal magic, and is involved in a quest that gains you a recall spell to the Direlands. (See above on getting around for why this was kind of a big deal in the old days. Although not so much, since most players would rather spam "PORTAL 2 TETH PLZ")

Well, I'm about to get into a little of that lore. The outposts for Rithwic are east and south. The questgiver to the east is a woman named Mindorla, who wants me to deliver a letter to Celcynd.

I do so, and Celcynd reacts with an exclamation of "Oh, Mindorla!" Which is... I dunno, actually. Regretful? Nostalgic? Aggravated? Determining tone from so little text is hard...

Well, anyway, message delivered, and on to the South Outpost. Here, I meet another woman, Brentsella. Instead of an outright request, she rather passive-aggressively tells me that I might find some loot in a dungeon nearby. I head there, and the ensuing dungeon is somewhat unremarkable. Some cluttered warehouse sections with drudges, and then some caves down below. In the caves I find a key which opens a locked chest back in the first room. Inside lies another letter:

The plot thickens. I turn this one in to Celcynd, who is heartbroken. He gives me the ring mentioned in the letter. The proper thing to do seems to be to return it to Brentsella, since it was a gift from her to start with. But then I get to thinking. Brentsella wrote Celcynd this Dear John letter. She and he are through. Mindorla, on the other hand, seems to be wanting to make a love connection of her own. So, I decide to do as Brentsella's letter suggested: take the ring to Mindorla, tell her it's from Celcynd, and hopefully give Celcynd a happy ending for once.

PROTIP: If you're going to give a potential girlfriend a small trinket of sentimental value, first make sure that said trinket is not inscribed with a message from your ex.

Naturally, Mindorla is pissed, and after awkwardly shoving the quest reward into my hands she shoos me out. So, thanks to my bumbling attempts at matchmaking, Celcynd has just been dumped twice in less than an hour. Uhh... sorry, dude.

Anyway! I'm done with the outpost quests, so now it's on to something a little more challenging. The sixth Lost Light Key is in a dungeon nearby, the Rithwic Crypt. Directions purchased from the bartender lead me to a standing stone in the middle of the river, from which I follow a subtler-than-Lytelthorpe trail of stones to the north. The dungeon entrance is in a rather impressive circle of stones:

I expect the usual brown drudges inside, and I'm surprised and a bit startled when I'm almost immediately assailed by a Mire Pynthos Wasp instead.

Reminded that these dungeons are harder than newbie land, I crack my Lugian gems and go to work. The dungeon is tougher than most thus far. The Mire Wasps have War Magic, which makes for some tense fights. There are also Hunter Shreth, which, it being April, are accompanied by shrethlets. Most of them are behind closed doors, fortunately, but a few large packs are not, requiring I sneak past without drawing aggro. I wind up bypassing a few sarcophagi because of this, but you gotta pick your battles.

I make through the first level without dying. Down on the second is a closed door, which from past experience I know is opened by a lever. Unfortunately, I have no idea where the lever is. In the end it turns out not to matter, since I find the key on a Desert Rat in one of the rooms on the lower level. I contemplate looking around for the lever anyway, but thanks to the wasps and shreth my potion stock is running low. So I cut my losses and head back to the surface instead.

I'll have to say that Rithwic was disappointing. The outpost quests are something different in that they're trying to tell a story. I respect that in principle, but in the end the questline boils down to one small dungeon and a lot of courier duty, ending with no resolution to the plot. (There is another ending, gained by giving the ring to Brentsella instead of Mindorla, but it doesn't resolve anything either.) The crypts at least didn't throw more drudges at me, but the shrethlets put me off, and the layout was pretty bland too.

However, I can safely say that I've gotten the hang of Kalixia. By chance, I found the above weapon in the  Old Warehouse, and it immediately replaced my old off-hand academy dagger. I'm also beginning to see the advantages of the template. Dagger Mastery combined with Multi-strike and Dirty Fighting yields an impressively large damage potential, plus daggers are light and effective weapons. So, I'm thinking the benefits of this character might ultimately be worth the extra challenge of playing her.

Rolling hills and upper-class twits

I feel like I should apologize for the last two posts. It's only now that I realize how utterly boring Holtburg was. Maybe it's the repetition. During both of my previous ventures to Dereth, I started characters in Holtburg, so maybe I'm tired of the content there. Or maybe it's the fact that the dungeon design, while competent, was so bland and unremarkable. I didn't realize this until I was able to contrast the experience with Lytelthorpe which, though less developed and less challenging, was quite a bit more inspired.

The definitive feature of Lytelthorpe is a castle. I forget the lore, but I believe this is an actual lord's castle, rather than a fortress. The lord himself, Aleval by name, seems to have fallen on hard times. He's working for the Explorer's Society to make ends meet, and I find him in the keep, decked out in that ridiculous green outfit of theirs. I must say, the view from his room is quite impressive:

In fact Lytelthorpe is, in general, very scenic. The rolling hills outside town have enough trees to look alive, but not enough to get in the way of good screenshots. (Note the tiny bunker in the background of this shot. Foreshadowing!)

The outposts are east and west. I go east first, and meet up with a guy named Ercel, an amatuer entomologist who wants me to do the same thing I did for that guy back in Nanto: fetch his lost book.

You know, I'm aware that inspiration strikes in odd places, but I think it would be a lot easier for the writers of Dereth if they would learn to use desks. Like the one over there by Ercel's bed, maybe?

Following his directions, I find the dungeon, which is apparently some abandoned Empyrean temple complex. It's also very, very green, a nice contrast to the brownish dungeons around Holtburg.

In terms of action, it's pretty much drudge city, with the occasional shreth or wasp thrown in. Nothing serious. With that in mind, I say phooey to Ercel's breadcrumb trail and explore the place myself. This turns out to be a good move, as I find several worthwhile chests off the beaten path. Unfortunately, I also find something I'd rather not see:

Yes, that is an altar with human remains on it, and yes that drudge was standing behind it when I walked in, facing some other drudges on the opposite side. I think I just bashed my way through an evil drudge cult.

In any case, I find Ercel's book in a storage area deep in the dungeon. The place isn't too confusing; Even ignoring the path entirely, I'm still able to keep properly oriented. The book babbles some inane nonsense about Pynthos Wasp wings and seems like generally dull reading. So, I bring it back to Ercel and... hey, wait a minute...

That is not the same guy that gave me the quest. WTF? Did he, like, put on a wig and fake beard after I left to screw with me? Step out for a smoke and leave Biff the Understudy in his place? Get abducted by Virindi and replaced by a robotic duplicate with bad hair?

Well, whatever it is, I'm done here and have no patience for this X-Files nonsense, so it's off to the west outpost. The quest here is to retrieve a shirt with sentimental value from a monster-infested ruin. I follow a line of apple trees to get there, then a line of candles through the ruin itself. Despite the fact that it's currently nighttime, the apple trees are not hard to spot:

Y'know, this is vaguely insulting. Okay, yes, I get pissed when an NPC gives me directions and they don't get me to the destination. But still, first quest: line of statues, then line of stones. Second quest: bleedingly-obvious line of apple trees, then line of candles. I don't need to be led by the hand, people.

As soon as I walk into the dungeon, I hear a huge clump of monster-spawning sounds, which worries me. My suspicion is soon confirmed: shreth dungeon in breeding season.

Fortunately these are just Gnawer Shreth, the grown versions of which have been newbie food since release. No big deal. I try to go off the beaten path, like before, but this dungeon is a lot more twisty, so I eventually find my way back to the candle trail and stick to it.

This quest, when you think about it, is a retread of the Holtburg Redoubt: abandoned underground settlement overrun by monsters, adventurers sent inside to recover left-behind objects. The difference is, while the redoubt looks like a place that was lived in, this dungeon looks like a generic cave. Or at least it does until I get down to the lower level. Then it proves to be a much bigger and fancier version of the redoubt, apparently built to hold many more people. Highlights include the spacious dormatories with working fireplaces:

Fully-stocked kitchen:

And private bedrooms, presumably for important officials:

Honestly, I like the redoubt better. That dungeon gives you an impression of people doing their best to get by in dangerous times. By contrast, this is rather cozy, which clashes with the "fight for survival" theme running through the backstory. And by the way, about the shirt which I'm here to find:

LIES AND SLANDER! That shirt is very clearly blue!

In addition to the experience reward, both Beltslora and Ercel gave me recommendation letters to take to Lord Aleval. From him I get the third quest: fetch him a drink. Not just any drink, mind you. He wants a rare spirit found only in a nearby Empyrean distillery. At this point I finally put it all together: Luxurious disaster shelter + Beautiful scenic surroundings + Big castle ruled by lord who pays adventurers to  fetch him obscure alcohols = Lytelthorpe is the gated community of Dereth. I've been running errands for a bunch of upper class twits.

But hey, exp is exp. Aleval doesn't have the directions (although now that I think of it, I could probably have picked it up at the local tavern), but fortunately I spotted the place earlier when looking for scenery shots. (Foreshadowing payoff!) I step inside and find one of the best representations of a natural cavern I've seen yet in Dereth.

Not too far inside the scenery changes to something that really does resemble a brewery, complete with industrial sounds from the big vats.

The quest itself is unremarkable. Stroll through the scenery along a mostly-linear path, beating up low-level drudges and shreths, negligible threats at this level. In an interesting twist, it tries to fake you out. You find the Distillery Nectar about halfway through, but that's not the end: you also need to find the Distillery Ambrosia, deeper inside. Most players won't be fooled, since you haven't yet used the key Aleval gave you by the time you find the nectar. Finding both with little trouble, I head back to Aleval for my reward:

What a cheapskate. I thought you were supposed to be rich, dude? But, on the other hand, the loot I've picked up in this town, added to the rest of my stash, is enough to get me an MMD.

Lytelthorpe was a pretty interesting town. The hand-holding on the outpost quests is annoying, but someone clearly put effort into the aesthetic design, and it pays off. Next up: Rithwic!