Hello, and welcome to another report by yours truly. Those of you who enjoyed my FFA reports may be disappointed to learn that this is not one. In fact, I don't know if I will be doing those at all anymore. I've had two reports that were meant to be the NH FFA Chronicles III half completed on my desktop for a while now, but I lost interest in both of them, and they will probably remain unfinished forever.

However, with the insurgence of recent reports that were not starcraft (fencing, dancing, Freelancer, civ3, Zelda, etc), I was inspired to look for a new game to report. Hmmmm, now what could I do... Warcraft 2? Bleh. Civilization 2? Can't find my cd. :[ Empire Earth? I suck far too much at that game to be able to create a good report. Roller Coaster Tycoon? Now theres a fun idea, but it would have to be done really well to keep the interest of the readers, and I don't know if I could write it well enough. Discouraged, I discontinued my search until, by accident, I came across an old game stored deep in the recesses of my hard drive, Exile: Escape from the Pit. I remembered playing this game a long time ago during my days as a prepubescent young lad, and tried to load it up for old times sake. Unfortunately, it didn't work. :[ But never fear, brave reader, for Exile is a shareware game, which means I was able to download it again and play! Of course, it would be the unregistered version, which means that I could only play up to a certain point, but that's better than nothing. While looking for a site to download it from, I happened across it's sequel, Exile II:Crystal Souls. Hmmm, interesting... I dled it, and the report which you are about to read contains the tales of my adventures in rediscovering the fun that I had enjoyed long ago. The 2-D, pixelated graphics, cliched storlylines, and turn based battle system all sucked me back in, and hopefully I will be able to convey the fun of this nearly ancient game to you. The transition between these introductions and the actual reports are always a bit uncomfortable, so I won't bother trying to make it flow smoothly. I'll just end it abruptly right here.

The Story

The storyline behind the game is pretty simple. In a medieval, fantasy world, the corrupt government found a way to teleport anyone that they didn't like into a cavern far below the surface of the earth. Prisoners, political demagogues, criminals, rabble rousers, Koreans, and assorted disliked people were all sent. Once they were there, they built up a civilization in the dark caves. Already dwelling in the caverns were a race of powerful lizardmen called the Slithzerakai, or sliths for short. Most of them were not friendly towards the humans. Not friendly in the sense that they stabbed them with spears a lot. Also living there were the Nephilim, cunning and agile cat-like creatures who were, likewise, not friendly towards the humans for the most part. Even so, the exiles survived in the caves, built cities, fought wars, and thrived. Eventually, Erika, the most powerful mage sent to the subterranian caves, sent a group of adventurers (the characters from Exile I) to the surface through a portal that she had created. They killed the King of the surface Empire, and now, at the beginning of Exile II, that Empire has sent troops into the pits to make war with the Exiles.

Creating a Party

And now for the start of the actual report! After I double clicked the odd looking blue icon to bring up the game, I was asked if I wanted to create my own party or take a prefabricated one. If I remember my experiences from Exile I correctly, the prefabricated party is generally pretty weak, as they have valuable skill points allotted into stupid places, especially for the lower levels, where there really isn't too much use for abilities like alchemy or item lore. I created my party with the up and coming World of Warcraft in mind (less than a year to go!), and I named my characters according to the names my friends and I have decided on. (Oh yes, we already have our entire WoW career planned out!)

Now, in my experiences, I have found that warrior type characters are generally bad at low levels, because giving them enough skill points in Strength and Dexterity to actually do damage usually leave them lacking in either Weapons Skills (Edged Weapons, Pole Weapons, Archery, etc) or HP. Their only real purpose for a while seems to be to absorb damage from the attackers while the mages do the damage. Therefore, even though it is suggested that you have an equal number of fighters and casters in your party, I created only two Warrior types, to leave room for an extra damage causing mage. Dick the Lagger (me) and Matt the Endowed (mattzarella) would just have to do the job of three fighters. The mages, Julian the Confused (Blitzkreig), Dan the Amigo (LuckyNewbie), and DeGroot the Great (Dagomar) were chosen to be my damage dealers, so I gave them just enough health to survive a few attacks and pumped the rest of their skill points into Intelligence and Mage Spells. I chose Tristian the Rabbi (Lithium) to be my priest, which is rather ironic, since he is actually Jewish. With my characters created, I was asked to choose a graphic for each of them.

Wow, after doing that pic I realized how bad these graphics really are. Having to paste them into paint and then into Picture It! probably doesn't help either. Just bear with me please, I'm sure you've all played enough of this genre to have a pretty good idea of whats going on.

Getting Our Feet Wet

Anyway, now that we had our party ready we could finally start off on our quest to kill big bad monsters and get lots of treasure and stuff. Yay! As the game began, we were waking up in our quarters at Fort Ganrick, one of the many forts throughout Exile. I was more than a little disturbed to see that there was only one bed in the room, and yet all six of us had slept there... Anyway, our orders were to find the fort's captain for our assignment. After wandering around the fort aimlessly for a couple of minutes, we found her in the room marked "Captain's Office" (go figure), and she told us of Fort Ganrick's troubles with the Nephilim to the East. Apparently they had made raids on the fort in the past, and now they were planning on a full out assault. She offered us weapons, provisions, and 500 gold if we could sneak into the Nephil Fort and kill their leader. Oh, and we had to bring back his head as a trophy, or we wouldn't get our money. Seemed a little barbaric, but 500 gold is 500 gold, and it sounded easy enough. She even told us that there was a back door to the Nephil castle which was harder to find but much easier to sneak in and attack through.

We left the Captain's office and went over to the armory, where we equipped ourselves with the weapons and armor she had promised. I got an axe and Mattz got a spear, and we both got suits of leather armor and a shield. The spellcasters didn't need weapons, so they only took leather jerkins, except for our good priest, Lithium, who got leather armor. (The armor was stronger than a jerkin, and since he was a priest, the enemies would try to kill him before the mages.) We also picked up some food for the journey from a strange little man who stumbled around the kitchen muttering about cleanliness. No time to worry about him though, we had a kitty's head to rip off. Since we had gotten all the available free stuff from Fort Ganrick, we figured it was time to head out.

After exiting the fort, we decided to try to level up at least a couple members of our party before we tackled the Nephil Fort, so we wandered around the caves aimlessly for a while. Eventually we ran into a group of giant spiders, which attacked us. There were only four of them, and Matt and I stayed in front of the others, distracting them while Lithium healed us. Behind us, the others cast spells on the weak arachnids, and we defeated them pretty easily. Blitz, Dag, and Lucky found that the most useful spell by far was Flame. It was the most powerful offensive spell for their current level, and did pretty nice damage for a relatively low mana cost. Even so, our three brave mages were pretty drained after the fight, so we elected to rest before setting out again. While we were resting, we were attacked by another group of spiders. We dealt with them the same as before, however, and this group even dropped a little bit of gold for us to pick up.

As soon as I had picked up the gold, we were attacked again, this time by a group of goblins and goblin fighters. The goblins looked suspiciously like oversized grasshoppers, but they were no stronger than the spiders. The fighters, on the other hand, were a bit tougher to kill. Lithium had to work overtime to keep me healthy as three of them pummelled me, while Blitz, Lucky, and Dag kept a continuous rain of fire on them. Eventually they died, and dropped a nice bit of gold for us as a parting gift. Then we rested again.

After everyone was fully recuperated, we set out again. I happened to glance at my food indicator, and realized it was half gone. Wtf?! Ok, so when we rest, we become gluttonous pigs. That's a good thing to know. After that, we only rested when we really needed too.

Attack!

We made our way back to Fort Ganrick to buy some more food, since we had already used half of the free stuff. When we entered the fort, however, we saw a horde of Nephilim piling out of the storerooms where we had gotten our armor and weapons earlier. Now how in the hell did they get in there? There was even a Nephil Chieftain and a Shaman, both of which might be hard for us to fight at our low levels. The soldiers came running from all over the fort, and they called out for our help. Well, what the hell, it's more experience, right?

We entered attack mode and hung back, letting the soldiers take all the hits while our mages threw in the occasional flame attack or Lithium summoned a weak spirit to help. Then, Lucky leveled up to level 2! Yay! The added level bonuses gave him a few more spells, one of which was Fireball, a spell that does a little less damage than flame, but it does it to all units in a three square radius. This allows one spell to damage up to nine enemies, if they are clumped. It's quite useful, to be sure. Unfortunately, Lucky got a little bit trigger happy, and ended up frying two of Fort Ganrick's soldiers with his newfound powers. Because of this, as soon as the Nephilim were defeated, all the remaining guards at the Fort attacked our party. Already weakened from that battle and overwhelmed by sheer numbers, we made a mad dash for the gate, since NPCs become friendly again once you leave the city, even if they chased you out in a murderous rage just moments before. Unfortunately, two pussy archers taking pot shots at us from the barracks killed Blitz about three steps from the door. Damn. Since Lithium was about 73420 levels from getting anywhere near powerful enough to do a Resurrect spell, we were forced to either go on without our confused and valiant friend or reload the saved game. Because it was so early in the game, I decided to just reload, since I had saved just before coming back to Fort Ganrick.

This time around, my hesitating to use the rest feature played a deciding feature in our part of the battle. Upon reentering the fort, we again saw the Nephil army attack out of the supply rooms in the armory, but since we had not rested since our first fight with the giant spiders, Blitz, Dag, and Lucky all ran out of mana after casting only a couple of spells. Because of this, the soldiers ended up getting nearly all of the kills, and nobody in our party leveled up. We were entitled to our share of the spoils anyway, and I picked up a nice breastplate and a map of the Nephilim Fort(which I quickly forgot I had, so it was quite useless). Mattz got a nice leather helm, and Dag was now sporting a fashionable leather baldric (which was a bit nicer than the leather jerkin he had previously). Since the Nephilim had just attacked, we went to find the Captain to find out if her offer still stood. We found her in her office again. What the hell, the dumb bitch didn’t even come out to help in the fight! All she could talk about now was rebuilding after the attack, so we couldn’t be sure if she would still give us our reward for that giant cat head she wanted to mount on her wall or not. Either way, we would gain experience in the Nephil Fort, so we decided to go for it anyway. We rested up in our room (taking turns on the single bed, I assure you) and left the fort again, this time without having our friendly neighborhood soldiers trying to kill us all.

Stolen Food and Decapitated Kittens

After traveling east for a while, we began to see signs of the Nephil Fort close by, specifically an action screen that popped up to tell us we were getting close. There was even a skull on a stick waiting for us. How quaint. Eventually we came to a big crack in the wall, which ended up being the “back door” to the fort. We didn’t even see the heavily guarded front door. It was some great secret entrance they had going here, to be sure. We entered, and the cave was pitch black. Apparently the Nephilim could see in the dark, but we couldn’t. At first, I wasn’t sure what to do, until I looked over the list of available spells. Seemed my mages were able to cast a spell called Light. I figured that should do the trick, and Blitz used up some of his valuable mana to enable us to see.

What we saw was a long corridor with a row of windows on either side. Apparently there were Nephil Archers on the other sides of those windows, because as soon as we entered the corridor we were peppered with arrows. It’s a good thing that Flame spells can shoot through windows, because we had no other way to deal with the archers, not having one in our own party. Also, I discovered that the experience received during battle is obviously shared to some extent, because Dag, Lucky, and Lithium all leveled up to level two after Dag burned up one of the Nephilim. While everyone else was throwing fire around, Blitz cast Light again, because his spell selection cursor was still set on that, and I didn’t catch it in time to stop him. Well, at least we could see.

Suddenly, the lights went out. We were completely blind again. Dag cast a Light spell, wasting valuable mana that he would probably need later. Eventually, after crushing the few remaining goblins, we made our way to what appeared to be a large dining area. There were tables all over the room, most of them laden with food. And enjoying the feast were the Nephil soldiers of the fort. They didn't like our rude intrusion so much, and immediately attacked us. Fortunately, magical Fireballs > Cats with swords. Mattz and I even got in quite a few kills, since we were in such close quarters with the feline warriors. Somewhere during the course of the battle, Blitz and I both rose in skill to level 2, and Dag was getting quite close to level 3. After taking the foodstuffs that the Nephilim had not yet eaten (I want chicken, I want liver, meowmix, meowmix please deliver!) and a couple of quick Heals from Lithium, we moved into the next section of the Fort, which was the troop quarters. If we were going to find that Nephil Chieftain anywhere, it should be here. While we were clearing out the living quarters, Matt finally leveled up and joined the rest of us at the uber level 2. Sadly enough, we did not find the Chieftain here, and we were forced to continue still deeper into the underground fortress. I was beginning to wonder if I could find our way back out of the twisting maze.

While I was trying to recall the various twists and turns that had brought us this far, we entered a giant courtyard, with statues of Nephil Warriors all over. Also occupying the yard was the Chieftain we were looking for and an entire vanguard of his soldiers. Instead of rushing headlong into an imbalanced fight, we opted to retreat back into the hallways to use the confined space to our advantage. The enemies would be unable to swarm around us there, and they would be forced to clump themselves into tight groups, which, as you should have learned by now, is ideal for our group's mages. It worked quite well, although we were flanked by a small group of Goblin Fighters that were quickly dispatched. We then proceeded to lay the unholy smack down on the weak little warrior kittens. Mattz and I blocked them from the others, soaking up damage as fast as Lithium could heal us. Blitz got off just one fireball before running out of mana, and Dag soon followed suit. Lucky still had a bit left however, and we were able to destroy the force guarding the chieftain. Then all that remained was to take out the head honcho himself. He had an impressive amount of HP, but wasn't really all that strong, and wasn't much of a challenge. After he fell, I cut off his head and put it in my bag, to prove to the Captain at Fort Ganrick that we were quite capable of such acts of mindless brutality as decapitating cats.

We found our way back out of the fort without too much trouble. Since Blitz, Dag, and Lucky had all run out of mana, we decided that we needed to rest in case we were attacked before we could make it back to Fort Ganrick. We were not attacked however, and made it back without incident. The sadistic Captain took her severed head and handed us our gold. I guess we get experience from completing quests as well, because as soon as she took the head both Dag and Lithium leveled up to level 3. She did not offer us any further quests though, so apparently we were on our own for a while. We set out, and headed south, into unknown lands. Who knew what adventures awaited us? Join us next time to find out!