The Apprentices: COMPLETE (Epilogue now posted)

[arles]

Awesome story!

Well done thinkslogically! You really ran an excellent game!

Congratulations everyone =D

[m0rtimer]

Yea, it's been fun for what I played

Only one question remains. And that is how many times we slipped and fell in the river on our way back.

[thinkslogically]

Epic! I'm gonna make that one of me my avatar. What were the stats for the bugbear and leader? and did the lantern do anything besides shine? did we miss any encounters or monsters?

Did Coats still gave to work off the debt for the potions for that stupid alchemist.

Sweet Glad you liked the ending, it's pretty difficult trying to do justice to someone else's character!

Ok to answer your questions, the bugbear had 20/20HP, 4ATT, 2DEF; the kobold leader had 10HP, 3ATT and 2ATT (negated DEF). What made the last fight more difficult was that the bugbear was ordered to defend, so while you would ordinarily have been able to hit the kobold immediately, the bugbear reduced your chances to get past to 25% (cos he was trying to block you and because of his size).

Incidentally, when Coats was defending, he was counted as 2 targets instead of one so he was twice as likely to get hit as any other player (or licks). He didn't get extra bonuses because he was a small creature.

There was an area in the swamp (which I hinted at when you got close) where you would essentially just get lost and see the same screen over and over until the dice let you out or you died from Bogle attacks. The lantern would have given you a bonus to escaping the swamp, but otherwise was just decoration.

There were only 2 NPCs in the game - one was the messenger who you rescued (the bogle was a random encounter there, but provided a nice extra challenge while trying to keep the goblin alive! - Incidentally, had Smells and Dies not explicitly tried to heal her, she would have died from being moved so you did well there. She would have dropped the message she was carrying and you would then have had to choose whether to deliver it or keep chasing down the bugbear).

The other NPC that you didn't meet was Mr. Swampy:



He would have been tough to fight, but would happily tell you about the bugbear who he met and who was an asshole to him. Mr Swampy told the bugbear to check out the bear cave, hoping that the bugbear would get eaten by bears out of revenge / meanness. But, as you saw, the bugbear killed one bear and then continued on to the kobold camp. Anyway, had you asked him you would have got this story from Mr Swampy, and he would have directed you to the cave (but wouldn't have mentioned the bears, cos he's an asshole too).

And no, Coats didn't have to pay off the potion debt I think he did quite enough to warrant a freebie!

[thinkslogically]

Yea, it's been fun for what I played

Only one question remains. And that is how many times we slipped and fell in the river on our way back.

Yeah, you guys got really unlucky with that You got better odds on crossing if you explicity said you were being careful, and worse odds if you were rushing (but only slightly). I can't remember what they were now, but they weren't very difficult odds to beat - you guys certainly didn't deserve to fall in as often as you did

[thinkslogically]

Awesome story!

Well done thinkslogically! You really ran an excellent game!

Congratulations everyone =D

Thanks Arles, glad you enjoyed following it

[m0rtimer]

Oh, I have another question... Regarding the bear cave. What would have happened had we stayed a bit longer?

[thinkslogically]

Oh, I have another question... Regarding the bear cave. What would have happened had we stayed a bit longer?

One more turn and the other adult bear would have come back and attacked you for being in the cave with the cub and carnage. Also the baby bear would have got freaked out and attacked as well, so it would have been pretty bad for you guys. I think I gave the adult like 30HP and 5ATT / 5DEF or something, so it was a fight to run away from really, especially since you were all a bit beaten up by then anyway what with all the redcap shenanigans.

Oh - which reminds me: if you'd got rid of the redcap corpses after each battle then no more would have shown up. They were designed so that 2 turns after you kill one, another shows up. Next turn 2 more show up, then 3. After 3 turns the corpse is stripped, but if there's another one the effect stacks so you could end up with a redcap army showing up (as kind of happened in the forest). I don't think anyone thought of getting rid of the corpses, but using limbs as bait up a tree was a good idea

[Jacon]

What was with the tellers hut?

[thinkslogically]

The teller's hut was just a small puzzle to get the healing wand inside. If you'd tried to open the door, you would have got a warning from the skull about the plant being an alarm, so you would need to find a way past it. If you'd asked the potions lady for a sleeping potion, you could have used that to keep the plant asleep and got into the gut without taking damage from the smoke, but the window worked as well.

Had you woken the plant up it would have started yelling and the Teller would have come and kicked you out. I hadn't really worked out if there would be other consequences, but probably only if you'd failed more than once, and the plant would reset after a 2-3 turns so you could try again.