Slaying Dragons... and Wizards

Blades is now well on its way. Compared to the other games in this series, the plot is just railroading from start to finish. In the other games, it was at least possible to pick the order in which to complete the intermediate tasks, and in Curse and Pools there are also side tasks that are not necessary for completing the game. Here, on the other hand, there's a pretty strict sequence of events, and there aren't really any true side quests.

I began by cleaning the Well of Knowledge area (well, actually, I began by traipsing around the ruins to get XP for Ardhiel, but the Well was the first quest item I did). That's a good place to start because the Well is the main railroad track in this game. Also, it gives a safe place to rest: I don't know what's wrong with the game now but I was never able to rest at the mayor's place without at least on Fire Knife attack.

The Well area isn't very hard to clean but it's somewhat interesting. In the Banite-Black Circle fight I fought both groups but separately. The hatchling and adult dragons I did in a single run but one of the adults got a breath attack in so I needed to go recuperate before tackling the ancient one. (Well, I would have done that anyway; fighting an ancient dragon with a combat-weakened party isn't my idea of fun if there's a rest opportunity.) I came in from the north, the dragon was nicely next to a wall so I bounced lightning bolts off the walls, had Gabrielle pull a flame strike and the fighters hack it to pieces. It got in one breath attack but I don't even remember who was hit (they made their saving throw).

After that I've just been following the Well's instructions. So, first I went to kill the other ancient red dragon. (On my first time, I tried the hatchling fight at the Well and got creamed, so then I thought I'd see if the map in the journal was accurate; it was, and I began the game by killing that dragon instead.) Same tactics, except this time Gabrielle didn't make her save against the breath attack. I was very disappointed that the temple in Verdigris doesn't have resurrection, only raise dead, but losing the constitution point isn't a disaster so I let it be. Then I killed the adult dragon up north in the ruins.

The Black Circle headquarters was at least some work to clean. I began with the commander's room so that I got access to the Well teleport, cleaned out the readily-accessible part, and went into the secret area. I didn't really take much care in the secret area and needed to come back once to rest. Otherwise it was just mostly fireballing our way through the fights: with three magic users it's pretty certain that every enemy magic user gets killed on the first round, unless they manage to escape the area of effect before all the fireballs hit. According to my maps, the next step seems to be the mines, but I haven't yet gone to the Well to verify that.

And after the BC headquarters is cleaned, they start sending their groups to attack Verdigris. The fire giant groups I like because each fire giant has 2000 platinum, which translates into A) XP and B) gems traded from the vault. I now have about 400 gems, so I don't think there will be a problem getting the Well to speak anymore.

The game itself is beginning to devolve into pure hack-and-slash. Apart from spreading the party out against the dragons and bouncing the lightning bolts I haven't needed anything that could be called tactics. And as I recall, that's pretty much par for the course throughout the game. I think it's because the party is getting to be high enough level that they can do hack-and-slash and the fight difficulty hasn't been increased accordingly. In previous games, the party was so weak that positioning the members and using spells effectively was much more important, and in Pools the combat difficulty gets turned up into eleven. But this one falls in between and kind of fails to be interesting. Also, the teleports back to the Well area are so frequent and available that there's little need to plan any part beforehand to save up on spells and HP.

One thing I didn't actively realize about Ardhiel dual-classing into a magic user: he's advancing in levels very fast and learning one new spell per level but there aren't that many scrolls around and the ones that are there mostly have high-level spells, so Ardhiel's spell selection is kind of poor. He has the basic combat stuff but when the going gets tougher, it's better to know some protective spells too. I'm also not sure anymore about the idea of having Eugene dual-class; my fighter power isn't that great with Janna's low HP. I'll need to think about it some more.