Arcanum Ironman Contest: Dwarven Mage

Background: Recent talk about people playing dwarven mages and doing so in an Ironman mode inspired me to create a contest.

Rules: You may use UAP or vanilla 1.0.7.4, no other modifications allowed. Your character must be a dwarven mage and use magick as their primary way of attacking, so you can have no combat skills above apprentice level, and can't raise them higher than 8/20 either. To spice things up, let's also discourage the use of Black Necromancy and the Harm spell. We play on Moderate difficulty, though harder difficulty is allowed if one so wishes. More importantly, there can be no Save/Reload. You're only allowed to save your game if you intend to quit playing. Bad choices remain chosen, dead characters remain dead. Please describe your character's death as colorfully as you can, and provide screenshots of your progress.

The winner will receive fame and glory, as well as a greatly increased e-peen!

Contestants: Dark Elf: Ealdor. Harm: No. GANGBANGED TO DEATH BY A BUNCH OF PUTRID RODENTS JUST OUTSIDE OF DERNHOLM.

Dirtman: Muradin. Harm: No. KILLED WHILE DEFENDING HIS DWARVEN HONOUR AGAINST KING PRAETOR AND HIS HENCHMEN.

Xz: GrimGeir, Harm: No. LOST IN RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY.

Dark Elf: Sindri Darkstone. Harm: No. DEAD DUE TO WOLF ALLERGY BEFORE REACHING TARANT.

magikot: Magmi. Harm: No. DEATH FROM FIERCE CREATURES.

Archmage Orintil: D'worrf Dat'Sukks. Harm: No. MERCILESSLY SLAUGHTERED BY A PESKY GNOME! THORVALD WOULD BE ASHAMED!

Archmage Orintil: Uglid Worph: Harm: No.

Dirtman: Blackbeard. Harm: No. ASSRAPED TO DEATH BY A NAKED HALFLING! REMEMBER KIDS, USE LUBE.

Dark Elf: Dvalinn Swordcrafter. Harm: No.

Arthgon: Bonecrusher. Harm: No.

papa_dog_1999: Lor the Found. Harm: No.

 

Alright, so here are the very first screenshots of the adventures of Ealdor, the dwarven sorcerer!



The title screen. Hooray! Hoow many times haven't I laid my eyes upon the stylish steampunky title screen?



The options screen. Just go there to make sure that the difficulty is indeed moderate.



Voila, enter the character creation screen! There's Ealdor, the ugly dwarven warlock in the making. I chose the Sold your Soul background, to give Ealdor's early spells some extra juice (which is sorely needed considering how few spells he can cast before he passes out). Also, if I was that ugly, I'd also be evil.



Since I don't want this to be an easy game, I've refrained from picking Black Necromancy and Harm, like I normally would with a mage. This guy will primarily focus on elemental magick and summons, so I spend one point on Willpower and two points on Fire to get Firewall, my first combat spell (the other two points went to Summoning. You never know when you need an orc).



The shop screen. Sold the nice suit in favor of some classy robes. I also bought all the red and blue potions the store had to offer. Ealdor will surely need them, especially the blue ones.



OH MY FUCKING GOD, WE HAVE CRASHED! Fortunately, there's a human monk here to help me. Says his name is Virgil. Hmmm, that name sounds vaguely familiar...



Because my character is evil I didn't kill Virgil but let him follow me. A healer could come in handy. Now, let's explore this area a bit more thoroughly, shall we?



My first fight! Oshitoshitoshit! Is this where I die? Shall my glorious adventure end right here? Will I be pushing up the daisies instead of wallowing in fame and loose women?



Fortunately, Ealdor's magick is strong. The pesky wolf didn't have fireproof fur and died before his feet. Ealdor gained several points of experience, an inflated superiority complex and the disturbing smell of burnt hair in his nostrils.

To be continued...

 

For fuck's sake, are you saying that you can't see the pictures? Because I can, as clear as day.

 

According to Xz, the images are working now. Fuck, that was almost embarrassing.

Anyway, does anyone care to join or will this be the epic story of one magick dwarf who'll probably die before Tarant?

 

The Saga continues!



The joy of Fire Wall! Just line your enemies up and roast several at once!

Of course, I had to talk with the spirit of Charles Brehgo, and agree to help him lift his curse (he promised me riches, after all).



Of course, our dwarven hero couldn't leave the crash site before investigating the magick chest. Who knows what treasure awaits those given the name of Ealdor? But first, Ealdor had to fight the Kite Shaman, and during the epic battle he passed out...



... but thanks to his loyal companion Virgil, the legendary fight ended with the victory of our heroes!

Before Ealdor passed out, he hurled a Fire Wall at the shaman and gained a level!



Constitution. Constitution. Constitution constitution constitution. That's what your dwarf mage needs. Loads of it.



Before our heroes could reach the chest, they had to burn yet another monster to ashes.

Now, let's see what the magick chest contains, shall we?



What an utter disappointment! Just some money, jewellery and blue potions. Oh, the potions will come in handy, but why is it that whenever you play a half-ogre you find a small suit of arcane platemail, and whenever you play a small character you get this kind of crap? Needless to say, Ealdor is NOT happy!



Angry because of the bad loot, Ealdor decides to spontaneously burn an elven villager to death.



Turns out the elf wasn't innocent after all. Oh well. Good or evil, charred corpses smell the same.

Onward to Arbalah, who instructs me to go back to Charles Brehgo who tells me to go to his buddy Fahrkus. Let's fast forward a bit:



Fire damage is fun, especially when it burns the clothes off of people's bodies!



Right, so I got a blessing from Arbalah for returning his sacred artifact. Contemplated killing him, because I'm evil and that's what evil people do, but decided against it. Arbalah is level 10 and would likely tear my little runt to shreds, so I went to Shrouded Hills instead.

What to do in SH then? Well, I'm too weak to stop bank robberies, and caves full of wolves just isn't something I can do yet. In fact, most quests in SH are too difficult for me at this point. However, being the evil mage I am, I felt obliged to help Jongle Dunne. Hervor is burning pretty nicely, isn't he?



Right, so I informed Jongle about the destroyed machinery. He then told me to pick up a package in Dernholm, which we happily accepted. Catch is, we had to get out of SH, and the bridge was guarded by thieves! Fortunately, we're evil, and therefore destroying bridge materials is not beneath us, even if we had to do it with our fists.

We went to Dernholm and talked with Gladys, who sent us to Archibald. Apparently, Archibald doesn't like people mentioning that women are attracted to him and he attacked! Ealdor was all burn, motherfucker burn, at this point.

We went to the king, who commanded this runty dwarf to collect the taxes from Black Root. That's when it all went downhill...



Putrid Rodents! Fortunately, three of them have lined up and are now being incinerated in my Wall of Fire!

Things take a turn to the worst though...



An image of shame.

Ealdor didn't reach Tarant. He was killed between Dernholm and Black Root by mere rats. He lived a pathetic life.

I will need some time to recover from this grievous loss before I can restart with a new dwarf.

 

Not sure. I used Print Screen and Gimp.

 

Cool! You've been added to the list of contestants. Possibly, a tougharse like Muradin will keep on living a while longer than scrawny old Ealdor.

 

Meh, I really tried, but my game crashed. And since this was IRONMAN I naturally had no saves. Anyway:

I named my character GrimGeir, and gave him the "Sould your soul" background. A must if you want to succeed as a dwarven mage.

I proceeded to spend all my 5 starting points on combat skills, without exceeding 8/20 mind you. Going around at the crash site wielding magic as a dwarf is suicide.


Here are the belongings I had as I crashed, silly me forgot to buy a weapon. Oh well, kicking works too.


So, after going around the crash site killing animals for some time, I naturally encounter the kite shaman. God I hate his bind spell. Anyway after a long fight of nobody hurting nobody, me and Virgil arise as the victors. When I check the chest I find that I got even worse loot than DE did. Ohwell, at least I got an experience point. It goes to dodge.


As always, when there's nothing more to do outside, we go inside. In the cave I talked to the hurting spirit of Charles, I accept his quest to kill Arbalah. Arriving at his house I'm instructed to kill Farkhus. After getting Farkhus' location, I go kill him and get Arbalahs artifact back. After delivering it back to Arbalah, and receiving his blessing, I remember I'm evil. So I decide to kill Arbalah and take his artifact. THAT nearly killed me. Nearly being the keyword. Yet another point comes my way, this time it goes to disarm.
(Sorry no pictures of this)

I finally get my ass to Shrouded Hills, where I decide to help out Jungle Dunne, mostly because I really hate Hervor.


After this I decide to go visit the mine before seeing the thieves about crossing the bridge, I mean, I didn't want to have my ass handed to me, so I needed XP. In the mine I killed all the wolves and found a nice light blue unidentified magical robe in one of the chests.

As I was on my way to the wise woman to have it identified, something quite disastrous happened: my game crashed. =/

 

It really sucks that your game crashed though. I would have loved to see more of GrimGeir.

The fact that your game crashed is also a very good argument against Linux.

 

It's not an argument against Linux. Arcanum was never meant to run on Linux at all, it was developed solely for Windows. The fact that I managed to run it in Linux at all is pretty good.

 

Meh, don't you know that you shall know them by their fruits...

 

Meh, Doc Roberts got pissed at my dwarven summoner for some reason and decided to execute him after he'd helped staving off the bank robbery... there's no justice.

 

No, he's just "misunderstood," yeah that's it. :smash: