Picked up Eschalon II earlier this week. Love it. I actually prefer the simple graphics and color palette. Much easier on the eyes. The game almost feels closer to Nethack than Baldur's Gate. Also: I love the sound effects in this game. Really brings it to life, from the rolling of the dice on the character creation page, to the buzzing of the dragonels, to the squishing sound walking in the rain. Weather and darkness is a brilliant addition too; I love that the game manipulates the interface, effectively, to simulate the character's difficulties, especially when it's pitch-black and I have predator sight.

Took me several attempts to build a decent character. The system forces you to make genuine tradeoffs, and my first characters were too good at everything to be good at anything. I imagined an alchemist - warrior - wizard, but was being stomped by Blackbiters, so I scrapped that and now have a level 13 alchemist - melee fighter with 22 alchemy and 13 foraging.

Favorite moment so far - being surprised by 10ish cursed undead at that Necromancer monument west of Broken Blade, quickly surrounded, but creating/downing a potion of haste, stoneskin, greater protection, then throwing a demon oil iii at myself and watching the zombies flee, and then standing in the flames where only one or two could hit me, and easily taking them down. With potion of haste iii, the weapon special attacks becomes basically obsolete, since it cancels haste for some reason, although with enough materials you could remix a potion of haste every 5 turns. Best use of Demon Oil is crowd control.

Question: does the material quality of a weapon determine the number of enchantments it can absorb? My tungsten sword blows up when I give it four enchantments.

All items have a maximum of 3 enchantments possible.

Material effects how quickly it degrades with use if you are using the weapon/armor wear down choice. Tungsten will last longer before needing to be repaired than bronze. It also has a higher base damage.

This game forces specializing in one thing early then broadening out using trainers. A pure generalist has a lower to hit/damage.

That's definitely the most creative solution to that trap I've heard! I always end up adding a little alchemy near the end of the game so I can imbue my equipment, but you're making me think I should try a dedicated alchemist build.

Hope your alchemist-warrior wears metal armor, *full* metal armor .

Alchemy without circles!

Completed the game. Reflections:

Speaking of full-metal armor, the durability of heavy armor is a big factor in its favor. When a trap blows up it won't destroy your heavy armor, and the armor will last many rounds in a tough mob fight, or dungeon crawling without having to rest after every encounter to repair. Don't know where damage reduction comes in, though. Fully kitted out end-game with some very good armor (all hardened of course) I was at 79 armor points, but 0 damage reduction points. DR jumped to 15 when I downed a stoneskin potion.

Funniest moments:
The trapped chest where 10 black slimes appear. After detonating the chest, I unlock it and open it. "A black slime has seen you commit a crime!"
The Tauri drop steak.

Wish there were more large-scale battles; they're fun. Apart from an early red-wolf, I never once encountered a one v. one fight where I was remotely threatened. Admittedly for the bosses I drank several potions before joining combat, but then they too were all pushovers. The Tauri entrance is a good example of a pitched battle.

In general I though the enemies could have been tougher, but maybe I only happened to pick a particularly strong build. I would like to have seen waves of enemies, where sleeping was impossible, and a player was forced to rely on the stuff in his inventory. The warehouse of spiders worked well in this respect, for instance.

Loved the puzzle elements. Thoughtful and elegant. My favorite being the combination lock puzzle in the final room. In general the level design was immersive and satisfying. Most beautiful moment was walking up the lava river into the volcanic lake. Also kudos on the spider mosaic.

Wish cartography were coupled with actual character vision. It would make exploring more difficult and more exciting. With a few points in cartography I could explore most maps in complete darkness by following my character on the mini-map. This also made the potentially brilliant invisible maze puzzle in the Orakur dungeon merely novel, since the paths showed up on my mini-map.

Speaking of the Orakur dungeon, with all the pipes and pumps and lava it reminded me of Dwarf Fortress.

What do you think of the ending Belloc? Do you think Shina was telling you the truth?

I think the Orakur are from Eschalon, but I don't know what motivation Shima had in lying, especially when he was at the point of death. If the orakur have been watching you your whole journey, it's a bit odd that Shima would have to voluntarily be imprisoned and die just to have the opportunity to speak with you.

There's clearly a connection between the dwarves and the orakur. There's an image of the two side by side somewhere. Both are ingenious craftsmen, both are small, both live underground, both are civilized races. I think the orakur used to be dwarves, but delved too deep, you might say, and practiced some sort of magick that gave them extraordinary powers of intelligence and mind control, but altered their bodies and made them lust for power, a kind of fall from grace. Perhaps they rebelled against the dwarven king. They were cast out of dwarven society. This would explain the dwarven fear and rejection of magick.

Clearly the Orakur wish to remain unknown, hence the One seemingly mind controlled Wendy into killing her brother over his book. Question: why was Faramurk abandoned? Perhaps as Shima indicated there is strife within the Orakur over what to do with the Cruxes. Almost certainly the Cruxes have something to do with time travel.

Let's don't forget the element of space travel. It is mentioned in both Books 1 and 2. If the Orakur weren't on the space ship (seen in the opening segments of both books), who was?

Did I miss something? I don't remember seeing any spaceships in either book... Both intros started with a starry sky, and book 2 had a shooting star. But that's all I saw...

If you search the word "bright" in Book I you will find (under the History of Thaermore) that in the year 300 there was a bright light seen in the sky, followed by an explosion in the west. That could be a space ship, or it could be something else.

The "shooting star" in the Book II intro could also be a space ship or not. My guess is that there is going to be something about a space ship in Book III. Can't wait to find out........

I'm always amazed that people ever notice these things. The most significant thing I ever noticed was that selling stuff got you money. Either way - I think that Belloc made some good points/connections that I never thought of. That's one of the things I really love about this trilogy - you never really know everything for sure. It lets you decide how certain things happened.

I see what you did there. One of my favorite animes of all time.

Totally making a light armor fire mage and naming him Roy Mustang! X'D Epic Roy is Epic.

Im with you on that one Vroqren. lol