Shades Of Twilight

I finished whatever quests I could in Ben Erai and Lago, without liberating any towns or cities. I really don’t want the Hashishins to be angry at me before I master the 2-sword fighting skill. As I remembered, the guy guarding the pass up to the tunnels in Ben Erai is the one teaching the 2-sword fighting skill. I guess to master it, I need to be able to enter Ishtar so I can find someone who is able to let me master it.

In the meantime, I learnt to make poison arrows. They are pretty useful to take down difficult targets. I find that with the new poison arrows, targets go down faster, but it could just be my imagination. I should actually think about getting my hunting skills up and buy the 36,000 gold “Silent Death” bow which could deal out 115 damage. It’s much less than the crossbow I have now of course, but there is a serious lack of fire/poison quarrels. With the bow, arrows can be made to be fire/explosives/poison. Besides, crossbows are slow to reload. In the same time that I take to reload a crossbow I could have fired off 2 or 3 shots from a bow. Also, I have heaps of normal arrows, which is more than enough to slowly whittle a difficult target down to size.

In any case, right now I’m near Ben Sala, running around one of the ruined temples. On the “Orc Excavation Map” it’s to the west of Ben Sala. Maybe I should skip the stupid place and head on into Ben Sala itself and see if there are any quests to “clear the ruins of undead”. There are heaps of undead at the temple I tell you! So much so I gave up looting the cudgels from the zombie corpses.

I really like Gothic 3’s stories and quests. Even the sidequests make you think about your actions. For example, I went over to Asaru’s camp. If I tell him I’m there for his head, I get to fight him, but I no longer get an option to “join” him. That means I won’t be fighting for the “rebels” over there in Varant any more.

In Asaru’s camp, there’s an NPC called Aila. She’s one of the quest objectives from Braga, to rescue her and bring her back to the chief of Braga. Asaru also tells you to bring her back to him, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security.

When I arrived back in Braga with Aila, suddenly another NPC, Jose, stopped me and offered me 500 gold not to bring her to the chief. If you accept his offer, then Aila will still remain in your group (ie blue name) and won’t be able to leave your group. When you talk to her, no option for her to “Go Back Now!” too. Also, when you finally talk to the chief, no options there to tell him “I have brought Aila back” to complete the quest.

Anyway, one thing led to another, and eventually I agreed to help Asaru attack the town of Braga. Braga is now freed, but the Nomads (ie the “rebels” in this part of the world) are still running around with weapons drawn as if preparing to fight an enemy, which is friggin’ strange. If you talk to them, they WILL put their weapon away, but when you finish talking to them they would draw their weapon and start running around again.

After I had liberated Braga, I headed for Ben Erai. I got some quests, and saved. For some strange reason, I felt tired and actually headed to bed really early too! No, I mean in REAL LIFE ™

Yup, as of last night, I finally reached Varant, the barren desert south of Trelis! It’s day 26 in game time, and my character is now level 43. Amazing huh, he’s higher level now, but much poorer – only about 136,000 gold to his name compared to my previous one which is level 41, but has about 243,000 gold when I last saved him.

It’s probably because I spend less money on the first guy “levelling up”. I still have some skill points left unused on the first one, but on my current one, he’s left with like 14 points or something. In other words, I have been training him up pretty much regularly. Hence, I spend more on him. Also, since I no longer liberate towns and cities after the first 2, less income available from looting all the homes and weapons and items from dead orcs this time around, so money is slightly harder to come by, although 136,000 gold coins isn’t really a small amount.

Also my current character is better equipped because of his better skills too… now he is able to use both a crossbow as well as a regular bow. I am currently leaning towards going with just the bow and drop the crossbow altogether although number-wise, the crossbow does more damage.

Actually, if I really wanted to, I could technically lure orc out of town singly, and kill ‘em, without them ever going KOS on me now that I know the trick to say “BITE ME” when they accuse me of murder.

So here I am out in Varant desert, re-doing the quests for Braga again. I think I might chance it and liberate Braga if given the quest to do so again.