Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Chapter 10: They Are All Kept Equal, By Hatchet, Axe, and Sword

After the ship they were aboard was attacked and sank, our party finds themselves fortuitously washing ashore on the island they were headed to, at Farr Windward. Or, it could be considered non-fortuitous, as Farr Windward is a colony meant to hold the insane, and those otherwise not fit to be in regular society.

Farr Windward comes from the established Forgotten Realms lore. I think it's a very cool concept; it's an insane asylum in a fantasy world. That's not something I can recall being done before. I think it's obvious the designer of Treasures was also taken with the idea, as Farr Windward is the most developed side quest I found, and arguably the only really interesting part of the game.

This is the picture that greets the party as they emerge from the island's tunnels; a not so subtle hint that this isn't your typical village.

As the party arrives, they are swept along in a raucous parade. They soon find out that this celebration is actually a funeral procession. This is presented as strange, which to most people it might by. I honestly hope people are celebrating at my funeral or wake, but ya know, maybe I belong in Farr Windward too.

The colony had many unique items for sale; mostly different types of their biggest export, "farrberjiks". These included farrberjiks, farrberjik lined robes, fuzzy farrberjiks, and farrberjik lined boots. As they were all quite expensive, I couldn't resist looking in the clue book to see if any of them were actually useful. It turned out that the farrberjik lined boots acted as boots of striding and springing, which allowed the user to jump in combat, which worked like a dimension door. I thought they were going to be very useful for my thief to get behind opponents, but unfortunately I didn't end up using them that much.

My favorite items were the "certificates of normalcy", not wanting to appear to be queer, I of course picked these up immediately.

The party was approached by an interesting fellow who introduced himself as Ougo the Strange. He noted the party's normalcy, perhaps it was our certificates. He seemed harmless enough, so was added to the party.

Ougo gives hints like this. Here he is saying the walls have "ears", meaning that there is a secret door leading to spies.

This one took me a second, 10 Gil to the first to decode what Ougo is saying.

With Ougo's help, the party discovers that the guards of Farr Windward are also spying on the inhabitants; keeping detailed files on their every move. It would seem Farr Windward is not just an asylum for the insane, but also an internment camp for the politically inconvenient.

After discovering the spies, I couldn't find anything else to do, so left Farr Windward. Ougo would not go with us, so I felt there was probably something more to do in the town. I checked the cluebook, because I didn't want to miss anything here. It turned out I had missed a secret door (Once again, this is how every dungeon in this game works: find NPC, fight enemies behind secret doors). 

Behind this second door, the party finds a man who is about to be branded with the distinctive red circle that marks Farr Windward's inhabitants. Anyone marked with this brand is not allowed to leave the colony. Ougo grabs it excitedly, and leads the party back to the house of the man whose death was initially being celebrated as they arrived. It turns out, his death was a ruse.

Ougo is apparently an excellent living statue. Haalbok covers him in white paint, and this convinces the guards at the gates that he is in fact carved from wood. 

The party then makes their way to the other side of the island, through long, dark tunnels. Since this is Treasures of the Savage Frontier, we can't have a section that is perfectly polished, so the tunnels have an insane encounter rate. I feel like it's a bug, one of the many things QA should have caught, in my opinion. I was fighting very tough encounters every few steps.

Being the heroes of Ascore bearing a gift for the leader of Orlumber, the party is granted audience. Then Ougo springs to life!

  

The man yells "But... I'm normal!" 

Ougo replies "I also feel I am normal."

Ougo suggests that the brand be declared to have no meaning, and then the problem will be solved. The ruler of Orlumber relents, to save himself.

This is all presented in a somewhat righteous fashion; letting the free-thinkers free in a sense. I personally have my qualms about releasing the certifiably insane back in to the public, but hey, its just a game. The point of not persecuting people simply for thinking out-of-the-box is done well.

Altogether, I did really enjoy Farr Windward. Like I said, it is arguably the best part of the game, the only thing that comes close is the end game, but I'll get to that later. The unfortunate part here is that it's a side quest, easily missed if the party simply decides to leave the island.

Truly, now everyone is "normal."

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Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Chapter 9: Savage Love

Amanitas directs us to our next destination, the isle of Mintarn.

There are a number of docks in Treasures. Arriving at the correct one at the appointed time gives the player the option to go to one of the many islands in the game. I'm probably going to sound a like a nit-picker, but honestly all the boats and islands just make me think this game is designed around the idea of "It's the same, but MORE!"

The Company of the Brazen Pennant is a nice call back to the first game, though.

As usual, I spoke with the NPC, then had to search the island for the enemy. In this case, I had to calm "The Tyrant", ruler of Mintarn, and convince him that we were here to help; not to attack on Waterdeep's behalf. The fake Waterdhavians had made landfall and occupied a good portion of his island. I also met Jagaerda, from Gateway, who was a pleasantly more mature conversationalist this time around.

The Tyrant is understandably unhappy that his docks have been taken over.

Exploring Mintarn was a bear. At least one character was knocked unconscious every other battle, and they were routinely getting killed, requiring a trek back to the temple. There were a ton of fire giants, who were hitting for 25-35 damage per hit. I assume this is a bug; I checked the 1st edition Monster Manual (Purchased by pdf from DriveThruRPG), and it lists fire giants as doing 5-30 damage. It's easy to rest in this game, and the temples are free. I'd prefer the combats to be less difficult and have less places to rest, though. I think D&D is at its best as a game of attrition, otherwise the combats are more about luck, because in order to challenge a player who is always at full power, the foes must be of equal power. This makes combats 50/50 at best.

Amusing descriptions did not make the combats any more fun, unfortunately.

I took care of business as usual. After a number of tries, I was able to defeat a Zhentarim first in the Axis of Evil battle, and get the final crystal. I received a magic weapon as a reward, which I gave to Jagaerda as my other characters didn't have much use for it. She wouldn't leave the isles, so I decided to go to Orlumber.

Then things got a bit crazy. All I really wanted to do was get back to home base, rest, and train. However, going back to the mainland would mean leaving Jagaerda behind. Then, as I board the boat, my girlfriend is captured! She gets taken off in a skiff headed North. I can't follow it directly, so I decide to head to Neverwinter and look for her. Upon arriving in Neverwinter I'm immediately searched by guards. They find a planted note (This trope gets VERY tired in the Savage Frontier games, it seemed like I was constantly getting set-up and framed, with nothing I could do about it), and I am taken before Lord Nasher. He decides we are to be sent to Orlumber... All that because I simply wanted to get back to Yartar with its vault and training hall. Normally, open world games are lauded, and generally I agree, but here again is shown the potential pitfall. "I'm just trying to find the Inn," is what I'm naming this trope. That's what I want to say to all the characters who approach me with quests in Elder Scrolls games whenever I enter a new town.

Sometimes this game is too much. To recap, in ten minutes of play time: my girlfriend was captured, I changed course, was then searched and captured by guards for something different, then sent to an island on a ship, which was itself attacked. That's right, the ship I am sent to Orlumber on gets attacked by pirates, and there is a scripted scene where one of my characters grabs the keys to their cell, and they barely escape before the boat sinks. This serves the slight purpose of having the characters arrive on the island as free men and not prisoners, but it still comes off as pointless filler. In fact, I think it would have been more interesting if they had been delivered as prisoners, and the player actually needed to do something to escape.

So, I think this game has issues, I'm sure you're probably picking up on that, dear reader. I completed the game before Christmas, and its hard enough to get myself to write about it, let alone create the fiction accompaniments. I may have to pass on those for the rest of this one.

I'm eagerly awaiting the moment when The CRPG Addict makes it to Treasures, because I want to contrast his opinion with mine. I believe he has much more patience than I, so it will be a good check to see if I'm just being a negative-nancy because this game didn't live up to my expectations.

Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Chapter 8: Love is in the Error

Entering the market, the Heroes were overwhelmed with noise. Everywhere they could see were throngs of people. More than a few were browsers, but most were engaged in haggling, making purchases, or conversing with their friends about the ins-and-outs of being a rancher.

Even with the din of so many folk engaged in trade, heated voices could still be heard coming from one end of the market, in a remote stall. Hands on the hilts of their weapons, the party investigated. They found a group of men arguing. When they approached, the argument stopped, and four of the men immediately drew sinister looking knives. As their black cloaks were swept aside, upon one of their forearms was revealed a tatoo... of a purple kraken.

It looked something like this; more kraken tats at the source.

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Next up, Amanitas clues the party in that there is trouble in Longsaddle. I think this is about the time where I really started to feel the game was very repetitive, and got increasingly frustrated. The Longsaddle map followed a pattern that had been established: find the NPC, then fight what feels like the same battles over and over.

Treasures does deserve credit for atmosphere building encounters like this, but in the end there wasn't enough substance in between to satisfy me.

In this case I was fighting Banites, griffons and harpies. There's nothing wrong with griffons and harpies, expect that I'd been fighting loads and loads of them all the way back to Gateway to the Savage Frontier. Here in Longsaddle, the ranches around town are being overrun by men and beasts. You clear one of griffons, then are directed to the next one to clear it of harpies, rinse and repeat a whole bunch of times.

There was a kind of fun moment where you can push past this guard, and find out he is being held by Krakens, bound hand and foot. Which is then tempered by a battle with... the same enemies you've been fighting since getting drugged in Yartar.

...Then it's griffons!

More griffons!

...and harpies, oh my!

After defeating all of the battles, Malchor Harpell, the magic-using leader of Longsaddle appears and lays out the main quest pretty point blank. More Kraken and Zhentarim plots are unfolding, he says, then goes on to say that the autumn Council of Mirabar will be meeting soon in that great northern city. They will vote on whether to support Waterdeep against Luskan. "Only the Heroes of Ascore" can uncover all the plots in time for the Council. Without presenting evidence of the plots, Mirabar will likely vote against helping the Lord's Alliance, which could spell doom for the northern cities. The whole thing sounds a lot more interesting on paper than it ends up being in the game.

Malchor transports in, gives you a five-fingers-to-the-face plot-slap, then transports away. "Malchor out!"

The Tower of Twilight, where it is mentioned above that Malchor is presently occupying, looks like its a side-quest. I explored it a little, but after a battle with a horde spectres decided to skip it. I aint about no level-drainin' undead.

The ground begins to show the signs of approaching winter.

Now is a good time to mention that Treasures adds a new mechanic to expand the Gold Box engine, weather. The fact that "Winter is coming" is alluded to a number of times. After Longsaddle, the game even depicted this by changing the ground to have a frost/snow covered look to it. It was a nice touch.

The game also updates you on whether it is clear, raining, or snowing as you travel. Rain and snow impede movement in battle. On the surface this sounds like a neat addition, but in practice, like much of this game, I think it came out a little half-baked. I think it would have worked if rain and snow also impeded sight and range along with movement; as far as I can tell they do not, though. This means that the already overbalanced magic in the game becomes even more powerful and important. More dependence on magic means more luck based encounters that are determined by saving throws. That is the last thing a Gold Box game needs.

Another new mechanic played a part while I was in Longsaddle, that of romance. A chance to romance an NPC all the way back in 1992? Revolutionary right? On the surface, once again, it seems like a neat addition. Then there's the half-baked part. Once the characters have declared their love, they (according to the clue book) begin to fight better when both are in the party, and less effectively when one of them isn't. That's fine, but if one of them goes down in battle, the partner goes berserk. The bad part of this is that the AI isn't great, so my berserk character would start making very bad decisions that would often lose me battles. This continues the themes of this game, it's neat for the storyline, but overall it's not worth it. The mechanic would been fine with a simple fix, make them "enraged" with a bonus to hit, penalty to AC, and leave control in the hands of the player.

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The Heroes of Ascore were making camp in the woods outside of Longsaddle. It was twilight as tiny white flakes began to descend upon the party. The air had that peculiar crispness and chill that could mean only one thing, "Winter is coming," Chode Hammer observed.

"We've seen plenty of snow already, I'd say it's already here," Aria commented.

As Marcus got their fire started, the others noticed that Augustar and Siulajia were acting a bit peculiar. It was not peculiar that they were arm-and-arm, that was normal, but they were whispering intently and seemed a bit nervous.

The two stood, and Augustar cleared his throat. "Siulajia and I have fallen in love with eachother..." he declared.

Never one for subtleties, August got straight to the point. After the two proclaimed their love for eachother, they promised to fight just as faithfully for the good of the party, if not more so than before. They asked for acceptance. After a moment of silence and glances, around the circle of the firelight, all agreed they would support the two. Hugs and congratulations were had all around, and for a night at least, the threat to the North was forgotten.