So, After I Loaded Up The Fresh ROM, I Promptly

saved state over my latest state. So my latest save became not with Dirten in my party and all the things I had mentioned last post, but rather, the title screen of the freshly loaded POR ROM.

F*ck me with a chainsaw.

Anyway, I managed to locate a backup that is... well, who knows at what state it's at? Dirten is still in the party, so it's after I cleared Sokal and got Dirten to join up, but Dayum. Whudded I havva do that fer? /*head slap*/

So, well, anyway. More frightening adventure to follow!

Hello! Sokal Keep Has Been Cleared, The CORRECT Way This Time

I don't see why not. 

Well, this time I tried things a little different. I went exploring the keep the same way that I did last time, giving the skellies the passcode every time they wandered up to see what I was up to. Every three or four steps. You can't say the skellies aren't dedicated to the point of being thoroughly obnoxious.

Grah. Got choice of plans for life insurance. Grush. Only pennies per day.  Gnnshh. You interested?

I fought the small army of ogres, hobgoblins and goblins in the central hallway leading to the center of Sokal Keep. This time most of the bad guys surrendered. Funny that- you'd think watching half of their party being violently and mercilessly murdered was influencing their actions. Weird. 

Remembering what happened last time when I reacted even halfway poorly when I saw dead things, this time I fairly offered the backs of my characters as end tables when a ghost sauntered by.

Excuse me, ghost being? Before I act hastily, I can cut the throat of the girl and you can use her corpse as a darling coffee table. I really want to make this encounter end well. (Female character in background- "Hey!")

When I found Martinez this time, I again erred on the side of caution, and this time instead of disintigrating over half of my party, he gave me info I already had and offered me treasure I had already looted. Hey, he tried. 

You give me this info after I already found the passcode outside in the dirt? Not very valuable info, was it?

After this pleasant encounter (We had cakes and tea, laughing into the night. All ended well, save for the corpse of the girl. Turns out we didn't have to murder her when we saw the ghosts. Oh well, you win some...) we went exploring. The only thing that happened was we caught crabs.

Well, scorpions, really. But the joke doesn't work if you say "we caught scorpions."

When we got back, it turned out that clearing out Sokal Keep was exactly what was needed when they wanted us to clear out Sokal Keep. Funny that. Tyranthraxus' popped up again. Well, his name did.

Who are these other losers? 

Got a right amount of XP we did, and a few of my characters hopped up in lvls- my fighter/cleric became a better fighter, and both of my fighter/magic users became better magic users. All the magic user spells suck at low lvl, but we have 'em!

Hotcha!

We met some bozo named Braccio over at the temple to Tyr on the east side of town (you know what they say about those Eastsiders- they stink, they drink, they steal. And that's the good side of town.)  He introduced us to some bozo named Dirten who managed to join our party. Hey- I'd been wondering why on Earth I couldn't hire an NPC and as it turns out there was a bloody good reason.

We had all caught crabs. B'DUM CHIK!

But with Sokal Keep clear, the docks are now opened and we can go many many different places now. Add this to the open space at the top of Castle ArgleBargle and that's a LOT of free choice open to me now.

Damn boy, you ugly. And ya wearing a funny hat. 'N' ya smell bad.

Next time, I'll see what's going on in Valhingen Graveyard, since I have to clear that place out as well. Many many missions now. I only heard ONCE about getting this once guy's fortune back- I guess I still have to do that but no one ever talks about it. I think they're all embarrassed they even brought it up.

Because they have crabs. Good lord, I don't ever let a joke die, do I?

I have achieved more than I have mentioned in this post. Things are looking up. My characters are horrified to learn that this Tyranthraxus is pissed at THEM but they still aren't the types to just back up and leave. I won't let them :) Free will- HAH! I spit on the concept!

See yez all again very soon!

See? Didn't even mention these guys in the normal text. I think someone else, about a different situation and in a different blog, mentioned due process. Feh- rumour and innuendo are enough to convict a man in THIS city!

I AM Going To Post More On The Game

but I also wanted to pop this in to let you all know one of the reasons I find posting difficult at the best of times. I use gaming and blogging as a crutch to escape from reality :) (it's true!) for many reasons, the largest being my wife's terminal condition. ONE of the many things she has a problem with is congestive heart failure. For those of you who don't know what this entails, the easy version is: when your heart doesn't push the blood fully out through your body, it begins to back up. You end up with excess blood and fluid in your outer limbs, then backing up closer and closer to the heart. When fluid backs up enough that it can't get out of the lungs easily, the excess fluid begins to leak out of the cells and into the air spaces of the lungs. You begin to literally drown in the fluids of your body. The outside symptom of this, one of them, is having a white frothy fluid build up inside of your lungs.

Last night, at 3:30 in the morning, my wife woke up coughing this white frothy fluid out of her throat.

She's "okay" now, but I'm losing my mind again. We're waiting to hear from her cardiologist and see what he wants to do.

It's things like this that make it hard to concentrate on any one thing, like POR for the NES :)  But no fear! I am dedicated to the concept of finishing this game before I turn older and greyer! In fact, I have more posts and more info to follow directly after this post!

Stay tuned, Sports Fans!

I Am Thoroughly Stunned, Unsure Of What I WIll Do Next

I was in Sokal keep. I had the password and the undead patrols were just walking up to me and then away. I fought the army og goblins, hobgoblins, and ogres easily. Crushed them. Got into the center of the keep. Found the Martinez (spectre)? Started the battle.

Now, I knew it was going to be a bitch. It's a "Boss Battle", they are designed to be pig-f*cking hard. What I DIDN'T expect was that after the battle, my 2 standing characters would end up being my ONLY characters. Figtle, Fimu, and Feyemoo all have death statuses (statusi?) of GONE. And they are- there are no ways to fix them, they are "GONE".

Now, if I get myself 3 new characters to go alongside the two remaining characters (both of whom have lost half of their lvls), there is no place to go to get XP for anyone appropriate to that lvl. My 3 newbs and 2 semi-newbs would get slaughtered everywhere they went. So if I just dropped those characters and got all new characters it's even worse- FIVE newbs would be worse off then the hypothetical party of newbs and semi-newbs.

So, really, the only thing that I can do right now is to START THE WHOLE GAME OVER FROM SCRATCH. Now, our dear friend the CRPGAddict may gleefully and happily do that sort of thing without even thinking about it. Shucks, probably all of you people that aren't our dear friend the Addict would simply start the entire game over from the beginning with all new characters without even a second thought.

I ain't all y'all :) I am at a crossroads. I can either a) Quit, drop the blog, go on and just do something else because I so sorry my brozzairs, I don't have the gumption necessary to just start over from the very beginning without a second thought nor care in the world. I suspect that had I bought this game back in the day and had this exact thing happen I would have packaged it all up and taken it back to the store.

Or I can b) work from a save I made just after) I went back outside the keep and got the password, and just before) I went back inside and suddenly found the game becoming "easy".

Is either/or my friends. Not sure what I want to do at the moment- I feel a complete mix of shock/outrage/calm over what a complete game-stopping hoseage I just received. If you could tell me what y'all think, it would be appreciated. Just leave me a comment, please, he'p a brother out.

Figtle Kicked The Skeleton's Skull Through The Makeshift Goal

and shouted "Score!" as Feyemoo jumped for it. When he missed he took a face slide across broken rock and pavement, screaming as he scraped his face down to the bone.

Figtle opened the picnic pack as Ficle cast "Cure Light Wounds", laughing all the while, at his brother. He poured a mug of draught from the keg they'd bought at The Busty Elf back in New Phlan. This picnic was what they needed to shake the horrors of Podol Plaza out of their systems.

"I wonder who all these guys were," said Fimu as she sat next to Figtle, a sandwich in her hand. She gestured at the piles of skulls all around them. Back when they'd first arrived at New Phlan this scene of ancient death and horror (hundreds of human skeletons lay in broken piles in the huge plaza they were playing Skull Ball- men, women, children, all dragged into the arena here and slaughtered, their corpses left to feed the birds and animals. Why? No records were found) would have paralyzed them in dismay. Now it was a place to relax while they picnicked.

"I don't know," said Figtle after draining his mug, the thick, highly alcoholic brew filling his belly. "Not too worried about it, to be honest. Think these guys will be busy a while?" He watched while Thiffling lobbed a pelvis from a broken second story building onto Feyemoo's head.

"Let me finish my sandwich," said Fimu, speaking with a full mouth as she gobbled quickly. "Then let's find a place while these morons play."

Figtle smiled and leaned back against the cold stone wall. Life was good.

Life Updates

I get to see this a LOT. It takes a stupid amount of time to get rid of them as well.

Well, sadly, I still haven't had a ton of time to do much. I just recovered from a scary time when I thought I'd have to reinstall Win7, and I thought I was going to lose a terabyte external drive, AND I couldn't get my comp's high speed USB ports to work. Happy days! Luckily, I am a semi-persistent bugger and I stuck with it. Everything is back to as normal as they get with me.

 

 

How can I stay angry with a guy as cute and happy as that?

So, I've made my way back to the main New Phlan map and headed to the docks. I still thank you, dear readers, for your help. I NEVER would have thought to go there. I knew that having been an active alcoholic for 23 years was going to get me. (I have been sober for 11 years now- awesome :) )

Luckily I can see the... faint... footsteps... ?

Sokal keep is tougher than I like. I'm back to losing half my party or more before I finish a battle. Slow lvluping that way :) Luckily I can pack up and haul ass back to New Phlan as often as I like which is good- my cleric still only knows Cure Light Wounds and that, dear reader, takes a lot of castings to bring someone from 4 back to 33 HP.

 

 

I'll let you kill me if it makes you look happier, okay?

So right now I'm slowly clearing out the Keep. I'll get back into the swing of things- life problems and computer problems got me away from the game long enough it's hard to give it the attention that it needs. And it needs attention, oh yes it does.

 

 

I would guess skeletons from the pic, but they are noticeably lax about matching pics to actual monsters.

Next posting should have me cleared Sokal Keep and feasting on that rich, sweet XP from the city clerk. That bitch.

Mi Zo Apologizo

I have not had any time to get anything done blog wise but this has recently changed. Just wanted to let you all know that I am back and the posting will again commence. Thank goodness. I hate not being able to play when I require it :)