We begin... in a tavern.
Last time, we left off with the goal of increasing our number of companions and wrecking some Aserai faces. We start off by adding Aladlis the Huntress to our ranks. With decent scouting, one-handed, and crossbow skills by default, she's a welcome addition to our main war party and will be invaluable in the future.
(I've collected her in my off-camera campaign too, and she's one of my toughest soldiers in that one).
I don't have much to give her immediately, but her kit will improve as we win some battles and gain some free equipment. For now, I give her a banner, replace her sword, and provide her with a spear. It's not much, but it's a start.
After getting her a modest kit improvement, we do a bit of smithing and inventory management and then notice that there's a pretty good offering up for grabs for winning the local tournament - a Banner of the Knight. We're not sure what this does yet, but most banners we can win from Tournaments are high value so it's worth it even just to sell it.
We start out strong, with a solid javelin to the back of our brother's head.
Siblings, right?
Our strong start quickly turns around though, as we find ourselves on foot against two mounted units, and we're wielding a sword and no shield. Yikes, not a good place to be. So, we high-tail it for a horse and hop on. At least if we have a horse as well, there's a chance we can still win this.
We take several more hits, but dish out plenty ourselves before we drop one of our enemies off their horse. Normally, this would be a good thing... but she's got a spear. And I have a short sword.
One good thrust over the nape of my horse and it's all over for me.
I'm sure whatever that banner was... it was probably very good. But we'll never know because I ate a spear.
Having been defeated in the tournament, we head south to help our allies take a nearby castle, and get to participate in perhaps one of our first almost-night sieges. I love these, as the flaming balls of death they hurl down on us during these look absolutely fantastic at night.
We assault the walls with ladders, making it unscathed past their artillery fire and the majority of the archers on the walls.
This brings us to a tip for assaulting via a ladder - if you have a shield, hold right-click (or whatever the shield button is on the controller) and you'll just walk up the ladder instead of crawling totally defenceless like the rest of the group.
It's not a huge benefit, but it does give you some small amount of cover as you're climbing the ladder and that's better than nothing. Usually, we're sitting ducks on these. On the flip side, if you're a defender and you're looking to level your bow, crossbow, or thrown skills... the ladder provides a great place to do so. Climbing is pretty slow and as predictable as it gets.
Once we take the walls, the Aserai melt before us and I'm able to hang back and get some easy skill experience just tossing javelins down at the folks clumped to defend the gate.
Once we're on the walls, the defenders get absolutely wrecked - we push them back and conquer the castle in a mere 4 and a half minutes!
Immediately after we move to assault Husn Fulq again - I feel like this is a city that sits in such a point as to make it exceptionally hard to hold until you capture additional territory east and south of it. There are a few cities like this I find, where they basically get captured, lost, captured, lost... over and over again.
The siege is definitely in our favour, though with 500 attackers against 200 defenders, it's possible to lose this if the defenders are capable.
We take point and help move the siege tower into place, and then are among the very first units to step into the waiting arms of enemy units. Pushing through them, I split off from my men who charge down the stairs to help get the gates open. I, meanwhile, head up the tower to take out the person manning the Scorpion ballista attached to the tower. Fewer giant spears raining down on my units is always helpful.
With at least one siege defence weapon down for the count, I rejoin the troops pushing through the city, and we make short work of the remaining defenders before taking the city and earning a much-deserved bit of rest and relaxation.
Which is when I meet my third new companion - Wusur the Engineer. Folks like this are super useful - it's hard to be a jack of all trades in this game, so finding folks who fit a niche you're not good at is invaluable in the long run.
We take a moment before selling our loot to outfit Wusur with anything that is remotely better than what he came to us with - which was basically nothing. Improved boots, new bracers, a better tunic, and some weapons round out his kit fairly well for now. We'll eventually want to improve this more - he's pretty important and we don't want him to die in some random battle. After all, we have castles and cities to siege, right?
We take on one last quest before calling the video to an end. It's a simple one - deal with some poachers in a nearby town.
They never knew what hit them. Poor poachers.
After that, we head back to the nearest city to rest and relax and make plans for what to do next time.
As far as our character growth so far, we're doing pretty well. We have a sizeable retinue of companions - enough to start caravan trading soon if we want to - we're level 19, and we're fielding a respectable army. With 42,900 Denars in our pocket, things are looking really good for us. Joining the Khuzait has provided us with the breathing room we needed to get back on our feet and actually get a bit ahead. Now we just need to decide what to do with that breathing room.
Until then friends, Happy Gaming!
Check out the video! The link is below.
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Dear @oblivioncubed,
Your support for the current HiveSQL proposal (#138) is much appreciated but the proposal will expire soon!
May I ask you to review and support the new proposal so HiveSQL can stay free to use for the community?
You can support the new proposal (#247) on Peakd, Ecency,
Thank you!
100% always will have my support on this. Thanks for the reminder friend.
Thank you for your support @oblivioncubed, really appreciate it! 👍
Without imposing and as we are in a renewal period for proposals, if you could take a look at the HiveBuzz Proposal Renewal as well 😁
Already supporting! I may have an alt that isn't though, I'll find out what @worldbuilder's votes are in a little bit here and toss it on if its not already.
The proposal you already support is proposal #199 which will expire soon.
The new proposal for the coming years is #248 (https://peakd.com/proposals/248)