Last week we learned something very important about the Battlespire: it’s going to kill us a lot.
Time to take inventory. Things we got:
- Note that doesn’t tell us anything
- Sigils that don’t do anything
- Bags that hold
- Bags that hold
- Bags that hold
- Bags that hold
- Javelins we can’t use
- Bags that hold
- Bags that hold
- Bags that hold
Things we don’t got:
- Pants
- Slacks
- Trousers
- Hose
- Leggings
- Crotchgard(tm)
But you know what they say: when you’re going through Hell, keep going. Unless going forward means toppling headlong into a canal of lava. In that case try backtracking and exploring one of the other forks of the Hell-based roguelike dungeon crawl.
-Winston Churchill
It’s during one of these mopey post-magmal backtrack sessions I come upon the following playmate:

So this is how we roll in the Battlespire. Meet a gnarly-ass monster; approach and make boisterous conversation, inevitable brief and very awkward pause followed by a rash assbeating. In this case, though, the whisk is held firmly in daedric claws.

The guy revs up and knocks me literally from one end of the hallway to the other with a single blow. In the process I lose a few of my personal effects, such as half my healthbar. I don’t know if you have medical training, but in layman’s terms, I need that.
Right now fanglypuss might be getting cocky–if he’s overlooked two details. Number one, I have made a long and proud career out of avoiding getting hit by people I’ve just insulted for no reason. Number two, my health regenerates. Number three, I don’t play by the rules.
While he winds up for the second blow, I take a jog around the block. Take in the sights. Get some air in my lungs. And when I’m ready, I pivot on my heels and see where I’ve left him.

Let’s see if we can’t get him unstuck from the wall by smacking him repeatedly. Oh, we can’t? I’m sorry to hear that. I would hate to exploit questionable advantages if it means defeating opponents above my skill level.
Once he’s drubbed I canvass the neighborhood for additional monsters, loot. In most games you’re looking to follow a certain trajectory with your equipment: get a good mundane bonus, escalate to a better mundane bonus and a magical effect, find something shinier with a magical effect to your particular liking, then find the cheesy-sleazy-lemon-squeezy Prima fodder hidden up some optional NPC’s keister and effectively retire from having to play the videogame.
Currently, my goal is “conceal junk.” My secondary goal is “amass an imposing and professional arsenal.” I have only partially failed the second goal.

One other important thing I’ve learned: it’s possible to feel more humiliated after putting clothes on.
NEXT TIME: MARTY MCFLAGRANT PLOTHOLES
The Best of 2012

My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2012.
Shamus Plays LOTRO

As someone who loves Tolkein lore and despises silly MMO quests, this game left me deeply conflicted.
Silent Hill Origins

Here is a long look at a game that tries to live up to a big legacy and fails hilariously.
What is Piracy?

It seems like a simple question, but it turns out everyone has a different idea of right and wrong in the digital world.
Why I Hated Resident Evil 4

Ever wonder how seemingly sane people can hate popular games? It can happen!
My favourite part of the image is still the expression on Fightman’s face.
Good thing he doesn’t actually have pants. The continuous self-crapification could lead to some unpleasant laundry bills.
Hey, yeah… how did his pants crapping skill increase if he’s lacking some vital equipment? What’s going on, here?
Aren’t all Bethesda games a little buggy? I can see them screwing that up.
My favo(u)rite would be in Daggerfall there was an issue with the effect/name table where you would get X of leaping (I think, it might have been jumping) which increased your skill in dragonish. A close second would be falling out of the world (all. the. damn. time.) because the dungeon tiles never quite lined up properly. Third…I don’t know. Probably having duplicate town names in the database. Which would cause you to fail a quest because it wasn’t possible to get where the game wanted you to go.
I just want to say that I’m in love with this series. The Cotton Eye Joe joke had me in tears.
You want me to HNNNRRGH myself? Isn’t that the kind of thing that got Shamus in trouble with Google Ads?
Oooh,so thats why the monster attacked.I too would be pissed off is someone interrupted me while I was HNNNRRGH!
That sword appears overlarge. I believe your combat effectiveness may improve should you decide to use a real weapon and not a LARP foam sword.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. It’s 50% too big to look like a real sword, but 50% too small to look like an anime megasword.
My favourite part is that gauntlet that doesn’t fit over the vambrace. My second favourite is that the shirt looted from a dungeon appears neatly ironed.
Well, you have access to lava and big, flat swords, it’s easy enough to do, and the heat will kill whatever ghastliness you manage to smear on it.
Wait,didnt you make yourself immune to practically everything?How much damage would that thing deal if you havent done that?
All of it, I assume.
immune to “magic, fire, ice, lightning, and poison”
sadly, “claws” and “getting thrown across a room” aren’t on that list :(
(and from last episode, we also know “lava” isn’t on that list – which is fine. molten rock isn’t actually a form of fire. too bad he can’t trade fire immunity for heat immunity)
I feel like fire immunity is pretty useless unless you’re also immune to heat, since it’s a pretty common side effect of fire
My favourite part is the position he’s holding that oversized sword, which I’m sure is entirely coincidental.
My second favourite part is that the shoulder of the shirt appears to extend over his chin.
I’m pretty certain that “HNNNNNGGRH” has a MUCH different context in today’s pop culture. Which would make that monster’s line to you even more terrifying.
I’m not entirely sure you didn’t just Photoshop a shirt into existence here.
You’ll be able to tell when he photoshops it, because the parts will fit neatly together.
I personally can’t wait to see what he looks like with a helm on. The question is, will it clip with the shirt?
Honestly? The blue shirt. It looks like he just came off his shift at Best Buy.
This is amazing. The cotton eyed joe thing had me in stitches.
My favorite part is the shirt. If I saw a man walking through a dungeon full of horrible monsters wearing a shirt like that, I think I’d be horribly afraid.
My favorite part is that loincloth coverage has been achieved.
Aside: what season of spoiler warning is the cotton-eye joe thing from?
We made Cotton-Eye Joe-ks in the Hitman: Absolution season, but this isn’t a reference, particularly. More like a parallel joke; both came up because I associate it with twitchy or circuitous motion.
This is one of those examples of my liking something while also finding it kind of intrinsically fucked up. The major cover is by Rednex, a Swedish band that affects an outrageous southern US demeanor complete with feigned toothlessness, guileless goggle eyes, and sipping from jugs.
I’ve been as guilty of redneck jokes as anybody, but I think part of the reason the southern US hates everybody else is that it’s been hundreds of years since anybody took them seriously.
(I’m also pretty sure Rednex conflates the deep south and Appalachia, two intersecting but not remotely culturally homogeneous regions, but I’m not an expert and that’s neither here nor there.)
I mostly blame the heat. We’ve calmed down considerably since AC was invented :) I tend to separate the South into Low Country & Appalachia, and have a family that’s a mix of both. If someone’s old enough you can tell which they are by asking them what they used to call the Civil War (or that’s what my grandmother told me anyway). War of Northern Aggression is more Appalachia, that Recent Unpleasantness is more Low Country.
There’s been a blending of the two since the railroads were built and rich Low Country folks could go into the mountains to escape the heat, and of course class makes a difference as well (my great-grandfather farming in KY had a very different life from my great-grandmother daughter of a plantation owner, even if they both could trace their roots to Scotland).
The only thing I know about Appalachia is that it’s a theme in phpBB. Also might be a desktop wallpaper name or somesuch.
Um, think… poor mountain farmers and miners, most coming from Scotland and Ireland. Great music, good scenery (less craggy than the Rockies, way more flowers and trees), and some quirks. Like an afternoon snack being bread or a biscuit (Southern, not a cookie, or corn bread or whatever breadish product tis around) with buttermilk, as buttermilk keeps better in hot weather.
Ohh, that glitched mob brings back memories, while I haven’t played Battlespire I have recently played through Might and Magic VII and the cheese is strong in that one as well.
I was playing MM7 when all of a sudden it turned into an A-10 simulator as I strafed down seas of Giants with my depleted uranium blasters.
I like the broken looking thing between the bag and the dagger.
Got a question, though: Why did the dead guy with the note in the last part have all these clothes? And he, apparently, continued to have them after being looted. That’s what I like about Cahmel, always considerate. helpful and respectable.
The Cotton-Eye Joek made me giggle like a madman. Well done, Rutskarn.
My favorite part is that the sword is sufficiently oversized to stab the aggravating-to-scroll inventory system with.
Favorite part? That your should-be-two-handed sword is a weight-backwards, thrusting design, and not a weight-forward slasher.
It’s a hill-giant-size gladius with a human-hand-length hilt. (Apparently custom-built for hill giant presidential candidates.)