It’s almost over

The world is on the brink of ruin.

King Galor sits on the last piece of farmable land.  The shadow has crept right to his door step.

On this map, the shadow lands have crept right to your doorstep.

The rest of the world is ruined.

Hope through magic

But not all is lost.  For Galor has the ability to revive land.  He must save up his mana, revive the land and build on it.

You have a spell that will revive the land and allow you to build on it.

Expansion

The Sorcerer King does not consider Galor a threat…yet

Reviving the land to build a new city.

My new city makes the Sorcerer King a touch nervous

Day 84

Galor continues to expand and fortify while trying to protect the shards as best as he can.  This, however, gathers more attention from the Sorcerer King.

Expansion is a missed blessing.  As the doomsday counter goes up, so too does unrest. Unrest is by city and is not related to population. Unrest takes away from precious logistics.

The Sorcerer King has noticed Galor’s expansion

His forces have begun to target Galor’s settlements

Logistics is the most limited resource. Having to spend precious logistics to guard cities is very problematic. Galor realizes he will need help.

Other Survivors…

Far to the East is the Imperial remnant.  They are what is left of the last Imperium, the alliance between Kraxis and Magnar that arose when the Sorcerer King first arrived on the scene.

Tandis the Warrior meets with them and they offer a deal…

Tandis isn’t comfortable meddling in their politics

So what’s it going to be? Murder on behalf of the Kraxis ruler or fight the Sorcerer King alone?

Ultimately, Tandis agrees.

He soon arrives at Grilok’s tower.

In my debug version, I get to see the choices not available due to my stats.

Unfortunately, he’s already in league with the Sorcerer King and Galor is not wise enough to get him to deviate from that course.  And, worse, he was too powerful for Tandis to defeat. Galor will have to find another way to get Kraxis on his side..

These efforts have not gone unnoticed

Without allies, it’s going to be almost impossible to build up the force to stop the Sorcerer King (particularly since I haven’t hooked up anything that lowers unrest!).

Having failed with the Imperial Remant, Galor finds the Frozen Realm, hanging on in the very far west.  Tandis agrees to a rescue mission.

The Sorcerer King sends his lieutenant, Aegethon, to intercept and kill Tandis

Aegethon is one of the last remaining servants of the Dread Lord, Curgen.

But Tandis is more than he appears as well.

Hurt, out of spells, it’s just sheer might vs. sheer might…and one despair scroll.

With Aegethon destroyed, Tandis finds the Sorcerer King’s secret key.  Now, he only needs to build up an army capable of taking on the Sorcerer King..

Tandis also successfully rescues Drodin the dwarf, winning the favor of the Frozen Realm.

The Sorcerer King is now most definitely out to destroy Galor.

(Morever, really looking forward to a better SK portrait )

The known world on turn 164 (tiniest map)

A united force of Dwarves and Men now seek the Sorcerer King.  But will it be enough? Will have outposts hold off the Sorcerer King’s powerful force?

Galor’s goal isn’t to meet might with might.  The Sorcerer King is incredibly powerful.  Rather, to send his strike force into the heart of the Shadow lands and use his powerful magic to pave the way in.

The forcing going in will need a lot of stuff

(note: In the beta we still have a very finite number of things to craft, this will become ever more exotic as we go forward)

The Sorcerer King recognizes the threat and begins to send more and more armies at the Kingdom’s few cities.

Tylan is destroyed.

At that moment, Pariden has succumed to the Sorcerer King and declared war on Galor as well.

Galor’s Hypnotism has gotten increasingly powerful has he has leveled up.

With the outter guard defeated, the Sorcerer King himself is confronted.

Tandis is powerful but the Sorcerer King is much stronger.  Galor’s mana is depleted from supporting Tandis through his campaign to reach the Sorcerer King.

With the Sorcerer King’s minions down, Tandis moves in. He uses blinding strike to take out the Sorcerer King’s vision for the rest of the battle.

Surrounding the Sorcerer King isn’t necessarily a good idea, he has many spells that punish it.

Tandis casts Lethal focus to greatly increase his attack.

With mana gone, swarming is all we have left…

And the Sorcerer King continues to punish it.

Most of the army is dead but The Sorcerer King is badly injured as well.

He goes down.

Victory and Final Thoughts

I was happy with the general feel but it’s definitely still an early beta.

In no particular order:

• The minor faction quests are pretty buggy. The dwarves didn’t supply me with the units they were supposed to.
• The Revive land spell in my game was too cheap so it was too easy to build cities.
• Need to make sure we provide skills to lower unrest.  I do NOT think it should be accomplished with city improvements.
• Need a lot more interesting spells. I know they’re coming (I have a lot on my test box) but not having them hurt.
• I think the free floating camera I played with should be an option for all players “Storyteller camera”.
• Need more crafting recipes. A LOT MORE. I never felt really satisfied with the quality of them
• I think the high level SK units should do more arcane damage to force me to have to craft arcane defense items.
• The Sorcerer King needs more spells in general.  He will soon be intervening in the tactical battles too just as Galor (you) can do already.
• Lot more content still needed. It’s in the pipeline but definitely needed.
• Happy with the overall direction things are taking.  I’ll do another play through when the Dungeon Master stuff gets implemented.

Story teller camera was fun.