The continent of Maj’Eyal lives in a relative peace. After millennia of war the orcs are extinct, the advanced races have allied together, and the evils of magic have been repressed. But there are still untamed forests, cursed lands, marauding bandits, sealed dungeons of undead, and whispers spread of hidden cults of mages. Some even say the orcs are not all dead, and muster their strength in dark places.
You are an adventurer, seeking your fortune in the open world, investigating ruins and mysteries in search of riches and powers. Explore a continent still scarred by the terrible Spellblaze from ages past, teeming with wild beasts, monsters, trolls and giants. Delve through dark dungeons infested by armies of undead, demonic monstrosities and hideous horrors. Uncover world changing secrets, from relics of the ancient and all-powerful Sher’Tul race to veiled cities of magic and concealed psionic beings. Fight with skill and care against undying necromancers, towering dragons, primeval forces, arcane demons and world-threatening powers.
Here's the level-up menu. You start off by spending points on stats and talents. Time to explain the game mechanics.
Stats (from top to bottom):
Strength - Hit harder, carry more stuff, and increases your physical saves.
Dexterity - Increases your accuracy with melee and ranged weapons, and damage with daggers and ranged weapons.
Constitution - Increases your HP and physical saves.
Magic - It increases your spell power and spell saves.
Willpower - It increases your Mana, Stamina and Psi resources, mindpower, and spell and mental saves.
Cunning - Increases your critical hit rate, mindpower, and mental saves.
Luck (hidden) - Gives a bunch of minor bonuses to various stuff.
Brawlers rely on dexterity, cunning, constitution and strength. There's only enough stat points in the game to max out 3 stats. The limit is 60 per stat, but there are various ways to increase a stat past its limit. We're going to focus on dex, cun, and con.
Talents are all of the skills your character can learn. Most are available based on your class, although some can be learned from quests. Talents are split between class trees and generic trees. Class talents are specialized, core abilities and generic talents.. are generic. Races also get race-specific talents, except for cornacs.
Inscriptions replace potions and scrolls. The design goal behind inscriptions is to eliminate the time spent by the player "farming". They are unlimited in use, but have cooldowns attached. Unlike many other RPGs you cannot rely on a large stack of potions to get you through a tough battle.
Inscriptions come in two flavors: runes and infusions. Runes are magical glyphs drawn on the body like temporary tattoos. Infusions are natural substances smeared/attached to the body, like nicotine patches.
Prodigies are badly named special talents you can get at level 30 and 42. I'll talk about them later.
Anyway, let's proceed. I put 3 points into dex. And I put 1 point into Rush and Vitality. Rush allows you to quickly get next to an enemy and attack it. If your attack doesn't miss, then the enemy gets dazed for a few turns. It's great for dealing with ranged enemies.
Vitality lets you recover faster from poisons, diseases, and bleeding. And if your HP is below 50% you start regenerating faster. It's a passive ability, so it works automatically with no cost or cooldown.
Every race has it's own starter dungeon and backstory. Dwarves are unique in that they start off with a friendly NPC.
Our character, Urist McBrawler, is at the center of the screen. He has a brown border. At the top left of the screen is our portrait.
Next to our portrait (to the right) is a bag, which displays our money. Gold is the currency of this world. We have only 10 pieces of gold, because we're poor. Dwarves love money. A poor dwarf is a sad dwarf.
Further right, there's our name and beneath it, our level. The bar with the clashing swords is our experience meter. When it maxes out we gain a level.
The red bar is our health. And the beige bar is our main resource, stamina. Stamina is used by most of the physical combat talents and it is affected by fatigue.
Fatigue is a penalty that increases the cost of your talents. It's affected by the armor you wear. Heavier armors greatly increase your fatigue. We'll be using light armor.
At the top right of the screen is the dungeon's name and map. It starts out blank and fills in as we explore the level. At the bottom of the screen is our talent bar. You can increase the size of it by clicking the lock located at the bottom right of the screen, which lets you adjust the UI.
Our talents:
1. Resilience of the Dwarves (racial) - temporary buff that increases our armor and saves.
2. Uppercut - Finishing move that damages and stuns an enemy. Length of the stun effect depends on your combo counter. The combo counter is unique to brawlers. Every time you punch someone it goes up. Every turn spent not punching someone causes it to go down. It's used only for finishing moves.
3. Double Strike - Punch an enemy twice for reduced damaged. It has no resource cost and a very short cooldown.
4. Striking Stance - Increases your accuracy and pugilism damage. It's a sustained ability, which means it will stay activated, until turned off.
5. Physical Wild Infusion - Removes a random negative physical status effect. And reduces the damage you take for a few turns. All characters, except the undead, start with this infusion.
6. Regeneration Infusion - Regenerates your health for a few turns.
7. Rush
0. Orb of Scrying (item) - Allows you to identify artifacts. All characters, except the undead, start with this item.
The guy with the green border next to us is Norgan. The creatures with red borders are enemies: 2 orc warriors and a grey mold.
Here's our buddy, Norgan. As you can see he's more powerful than us. Powerful enough to clear most of this dungeon by himself, unless he gets unlucky. Norgan will run off to kill whatever happens to be breathing halfway across the level, so I commanded him to stay within 5 squares of me.
This dark, dank dungeon is full of vermin, mold, and orcs. Orcs are the only notable enemies here. They hit pretty hard and like to spam sun infusions, which blind us for a few turns. Normally, these guys would be around level 2, but we're playing on Nightmare difficulty.
Our quest log.
This is our 1st battle. I used resilience and tried moving to a safer position. One of the orcs used a sun infusion, which blinded everyone for 5 turns.
I activated my wild infusion, but it didn't remove my blindness. Why? Sun infusions also cause you to glow, which is considered a negative effect.
When my blindness wore off 3 more enemies entered the battle. 2 rats and another orc warrior. I started getting hurt, so I used my regen infusion.
6 against 2? Norgan laughed at those odds. Norgan killed 5 of them without breaking a sweat. We still managed to get our first kill.
We started off with iron gauntlets, rough leather armor, a brass lantern, a pickaxe, orb of scrying, and a transmogrification chest. Pretty standard equipment.
The chest is a special item that you get by doing a certain quest later in the game. Once you have it all your future characters start out with it. I'll talk more about it later.
Anyway, we found our 1st item. A pickaxe with 11% nature resistance. I replaced our old pickaxe with it. I also found a pair of gloves nearby that converts 30% of our damage into nature. And causes us to breathe poison gas on enemies on a critical hit. I replaced my iron gauntlets with them.
I found a sun infusion while exploring. I decided to use it.
Eventually, we managed to reach level 2! I put 2 points into dex and 1 point into cun. And I put 1 point into Double Strike and 1 point into Disengage. Disengage lets you jump 3 squares away from an enemy.
Author
Topic: Let's Play Tales of Maj'Eyal (Read 18584 times)