Back to Two Worlds again, and I last left off in a cave mowing down skeletons, but after loading the save today, it kept crashing after fighting a couple more rooms of them. I proceeded a bit more slowly, quicksaving more often, and managed to finish them off without any more crashes. Only to discover that there wasn’t anything interesting in that part of the cave anyway. Oh well.

I explored a bit more of the map, finding the eastern army camp and doing a handful of side quests there, including one where I had to steal the camp commander’s underpants. After that and a couple more side quests I had left over, the only other ones left were ones that seemed to be bugged or were impossible to finish for other reasons.

So, needing new things to do, I crossed the river via the bridge south of Qudinar and started exploring the southern part of the map. I made it to the town of Ashos on the western side of the map, where there were yet more side quests to do. This time they were necessary though, in order to get the key that would let me into their temple. In there, I found the water stone I needed for the relic. Two down, two more to go.

Upon leaving the temple though, the entire town had been slaughtered by orcs, which I had to fight through to make it back to my horse. At that point there was only one thing I could do — break into all of the houses and loot all of their containers. Hey, they don’t need it anymore, and it’ll help me wreak, uh, vengeance, or something.

I’ve got a ton of alchemy components on me now, especially after clearing out the town, so the first thing I’m going to have to do next time is whip up some more permanent stat potions.

I’m also level 52 now, so there obviously isn’t a level cap at 50. Item level requirements are capped at 50 according to the patch notes though, so I might now be at the limit of how powerful equipment will get. I’ve also started trying to collect matching suits of armour, since apparently wearing an entire set of the same set number gives you a *huge* defense boost, and there are still monsters that can kill me in only one or two hits.

It was yet another day of screwing around in Two Worlds. I first finished off the duplicate mage quest, though the solution didn’t really please either of them. I popped up to the Karga camp and easily got the relic frame for the main quest since they’re now pleased with me after wiping out their enemies. I also stopped by the nearby Karga cave and found “The Cure” there. No, not the band, but a barrel-like container. Unless they’re inside it… In any case, I don’t even know what it’s for yet.

I went to the city of Qudinar for the first time to turn in a couple quests that needed me to go there, explored the city a bit, and picked up more side quests. I then spent some time running back and forth and around in Cathalon to complete some of the side quests there, too. None of which were really all that remarkable, and most just required finding and talking to the right people.

I then wandered around the map, exploring more roads and smaller areas that I’d skipped before. In one cave I discovered dead knights, an annoying new enemy that constantly kicks dirt in your face (this is not the beach!) which keeps you from attacking or defending yourself for a few seconds. I also revisited the old boar cave and the tower I had discovered early in the game, easily dispatching the monsters that I couldn’t scratch before. The cyclops at the tower had a couple of decent rings on him, at least.

Since I was wandering down that road anyway, I stopped at the second Thalmont Node and had another telepathic conversation with my sister, who went on and on about the relic and how it’s not just a myth and blah blah blah… Nothing all that important in the end, really. Just point at whoever needs their head lopped off.

I also found a cave on the western side of the map with even more new enemies, tuloks and demons, and they completely kicked my ass, usually killing me in one hit. Apparently I’ve still got some growing to do.

And I was finally let into the village of Gorelin, though there wasn’t really much there aside from a few shady merchants and one NPC for a quest I’d started at the excavation but have essentially abandoned anyway, since it was for the opposing faction. Oh well.

I’m level 47 now, so I should probably be focusing on wrapping up these side quests and getting back to the main quest again. There’s still a big chunk of the map to the south that hasn’t been explored yet, too.

Not as much progress in Two Worlds tonight, though after reading up a bit more on some forums I learned how to make the horse more useful than I thought it was — it has its own inventory I can transfer loot to, and I forgot that I can hit ‘h’ to call it back to me, getting it unstuck as well.

I also learned about how to use alchemy to make permanent stat increase potions, and spent the first chunk of time just making and drinking a bunch of them. Mostly for the elemental resists and willpower and dexterity stats for now; I have to save up more ingredients for strength and vitality potions.

After that I completed a couple more minor sidequests and wandered around a bit, eventually ending up at the excavations. After talking to a few people and being able to free an imprisoned woman there, I found that this was where I was essentially forced to choose sides between the clans. Karga seems like the less evil of the two, so I helped the woman and became kill-on-sight to the other and had to fight my way out of the excavation.

Now I should be able to get into that camp that refused me entry earlier, at least.

I continued on with Two Worlds today, though after picking up all the quests in the city I left and decided to work on stuff elsewhere instead.

I started out at Four Stones village, where I cleared out a nearby dark tower of necromancers. There was a teleporter to a balcony high up on the tower, but there didn’t seem to be any point to it. I did pick up a new horse there though, and this one’s a skeletal, undead one, kind of like the undead in WoW have.

After that I headed south to Windbreak village, and along the way I ran across orcs for the first time. They’re not all that tough; I’ve actually had more trouble with random bandits that I run across (which seem to be the only enemy type that the game matches to your level). Upon arriving there I did a handful of otherwise unremarkable side quests, including clearing out a couple orc camps, which were a bit tougher just because of a large number of archers, which are still a pain.

Then it was off to a fishing village on the west coast for another handful of side quests, including a rather pointless one that involved a huge amount of running back and forth. Oh well, it got me some xp and gold at least. After finishing up there, I then headed straight south to find the cave where an orc called White Head was hiding, for one of the earlier side quests. I also ran across one of the relic stones I need for the main quest in that same cave, conveniently enough.

Today it was back to Two Worlds again, and I got quite a bit of questing and leveling done, putting me at level 26 (of 50, I think) with pretty good equipment. I’ve still barely touched the main quest, but at this rate it should be pretty easy by the time I get around to it.

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I hopped back into Two Worlds tonight, where I talked to one of the main quest NPCs and got the next main plot goals: finding the five parts of some family relic, with directions to first two. Which I then promptly ignored in order to go wander around for my own jollies.

I figured I may as well continue working on those initial side quests, so I headed off to Brumhill village on the east side of the map. It was mostly wolves and bandits along the way and the occasional bear, which are really easy to kill since their attack animation is so slow. At one point I found a cyclops by a tower, but upon approaching him he killed me in one hit, and that’s how I learned that a target’s name being red is a Bad Thing. So instead I just stole the stuff from his camp and ran off.

I also ran across a scout, who gave me a quest to retrieve some totems from grom war camps nearby, and the first camp was just down the road a ways. My first attack upon the camp resulted in my almost immediate death, since a whole mob of them came running at me at the same time and I wasn’t quite prepared. The second time went a lot better since I was able to split them up into smaller groups and use a nearby healing shrine to keep from dying mid-battle. A nice spear I’d picked up that does a ton of damage and attacks in a sweeping arc helped a lot, too. I also took their horse, since I’d left my original one back near the starting town.

Along the way I also discovered that ‘ghost animals’ come out at night, and they’re really annoying since they do a ton of damage and are invulnerable to regular weapons, so I had to wear it down with my weak starting fireball spell. The weather also changes occasionally, with rain and foggy spots, and the player’s character apparently likes to say dumb things like “oh, it’s raining.” OH REALLY?

I found an ‘old boar cave’ along the way, but it had an ogre beyond my level and some spiders with annoying poison, so I’ll come back to it later. And a bit later on I ran across a bandit camp. Some wolves had been chasing me for a while, and when I reached the camp, they started attacking some of the bandits, too. It was rather amusing having the bandit leader demand 1000 gold from me in tribute while a full-scale battle between bandits and wolves was breaking out in the background.

I eventually got to Brumhill only to find it had been destroyed by some nearby snow orcs. I tried to fight a few of them but they were fairly tough and I only managed to kill a couple before being chased off by the archers (single hits from their bows could knock off over half my health). I reported back to the starting village to complete the quests, cleared another war camp that was nearby, and found the magnesite deposits needed for the teleport stone quest.

After that I figured I may as well take care of the last war camp in the west and headed towards it, stopping in a large town along the way and picking up a whole bunch of other side quests, and that’s where I retired for the night. And by “retired for the night” I mean “had Two Worlds crash on me,” though I didn’t lose anything important (there’s an autosave every five minutes).

Again, not the greatest game, but it’s still kinda fun to just screw around in the world.

It’s time to start a new PC game, but I’m a bit sick of shooters for now, so it’s time to get to one of the handful of RPGs I still haven’t started yet. The candidates are: Oblivion, Two Worlds, The Witcher, NWN2, and Gothic 2 or 3. The Witcher is supposed to be the best of the bunch, but yesterday I started with Two Worlds first instead. The word-of-mouth is that it’s a rather average game, so it’ll probably be less disappointing than if I were to play it after a really good one.

The first impressions are that the graphics are fairly decent. The terrain is perhaps slightly less pretty than Oblivion, but the people’s faces are much better (though they were supposedly much worse before the patch I applied). The map looks decently large given how little I’ve uncovered so far, and there are teleporters for getting around quickly.

Combat is a bit simplistic in that you just click the left mouse button to swing your weapon and the right mouse button to fire your active spell. You’re usually attacked by a group of enemies though, so the real trick to combat is in positioning yourself so that your swings hit multiple targets, avoiding putting yourself in a spot where multiple enemies can hit you, and withdrawing effectively in order to heal or regain mana.

You get a horse early on from a side quest in the starting village, but the horse controls are notoriously awkward in this game. It’s not so bad when you’re just riding from place to place, but it becomes really difficult if you try to take advantage of the horse to do some mounted combat, since you waste most of your time just trying to get the horse turned around and going the right speed so you can take a swing. You’re best off just dismounting whenever you want to fight, which is fairly often.

I did a couple side quests for the starting village, running off some bandits and activating a teleporter a ways away, but most of the starting quests require you to travel to a village fairly far away for some reason (and you can’t teleport until you reach the teleporters on foot and activate them first), so I haven’t done those yet. I also did the first few quests in the main story, putting me back in ‘telepathic’ contact with my kidnapped sister. The plot isn’t all that exciting so far, though. An ancient evil, someone trying to awaken it, an important artifact in my family, blah blah blah…

The first handful of levels came fairly quickly, giving me a lot of stat and skill points to spend. I wasn’t sure what the magic system was like though, so I’ve been going mostly for warrior-oriented passive skills, so that I’m stronger in straight-up combat without having to use any special skills. I’m using a bit of magic as support (healing, really), but I probably won’t dabble in the other skills until I get a bit more experience.

There’s also an alchemy system and I’ve been finding components for it all over the place, but I don’t have the skill yet so I can’t do anything with them. It’s not a starting skill, so I have to find someone who will train me in it before I can even put any points in it, so it’ll have to wait for now.

Overall, it’s not really that bad a game so far, or at least not nearly as bad as some of the forums might have you believe. It’s no Oblivion and it has its flaws (the aforementioned horse controls, some horrible voice acting and silly Elizabethan dialogue, mainly), but it’s still kinda fun. I’m playing the PC version though, and the 360 version has a different control scheme that a lot of people dislike, and some performance problems that I don’t see on my fairly-new system.