New Toy!

One fine day, a friend of mine asked me about graphic cards. I lamented that due to my system specs, I cannot get any of the latest graphic cards, and the nVidia 6600GT (which I already have) is probably the best I can get for AGP-based motherboards.

Well, the surprise for me is that he said there are now AGP versions of the GeForce 7 series of cards. Lo and behold, he was right! A quick look at Hardwarezone confirmed that a typical AGP GeForce 7600GT is available for about S$260 or so!

So, I wasted little time in heading out to Sim Lim Square (Singapore’s unofficial electronics centre) and grabbing one of those babies. Seeing as everything I have still works, and there is very little reason to upgrade my Pentium 4 3.0Ghz Hyperthreading PC, a $260 upgrade to keep it usable for a couple of years more is pretty much worth it. Perhaps I might get a 2nd harddisk to beef up storage, but otherwise I do not foresee myself spending anymore money on this PC before I spend about $1,500 or so for the next PC (probably somewhere in 2009 or 2010).

Performance wise, I’m very satisfied. In fact, more than satisfied. For example, previously I could only play Oblivion comfortably on medium settings. Now, with this new 7600 GT, I could easily put it at HIGH and still feels ok to play. Oblivion does look better too! Same goes for Gothic 3, the game I am currently playing, and Neverwinter Nights 2. All graphic options can now be at HIGH (with some minor tweaking to disable some stuff I do not want) and still get pretty decent frame rates!

Colour me happy 🙂

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Ben Sala

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.

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Liberation Of Braga

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 ™ 🙂

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