We are back! There is a new console and a new Assassin’s Creed game, but since the latter is particularly difficult to get a hold of this time around, I’m just going to cool my jets and concentrate on finishing my long-form written version of a Twitch stream!
I completely forgot everything I did on my last outing, so I’m curious to see where I’m at.
I am at a rug factory, apparently. My current selected quest is that arena nonsense in Phepka. I might give it a couple go rounds before remembering how bad I am at arena combat before moving on though!
Scratch it…consulting the map I see that this is not the arena quest, though it is in the same general area. Huh. Well, this thing is called Minotaur de Force (hah) Which leads me to believe I’m going to end up in a battle with a bull headed man beast inside of a labyrinth for obvious reasons. After that I think I’ll finish all this quests on this island before moving on and we’ll see where that gets me.
Well, I run into a quest on the way to my destination.
A Man is smuggling deserters to help them escape the war and is on the lookout for a particular guy he agreed to help because the deserter’s girlfriend was crying a lot. He wanted to reunite them. Perhaps. I am always skeptical of everybody, but I like a good love story. Of course I will help him and find out the truth.
I arrive at her house and it turns out the guards killed her to find out where her husband is before I get there. A cut scene happens before I can even dispatch those guard dudes which is kind of hilarious because the game assumes that I killed them to complete this part of the quest, when I actually was successful at sneaking around them for once. (In a cut scene the smuggler guy I met on the road arrives and tells me what a good job I did with the assassinating that I didn’t do.)
Smuggler blames himself for this misfortune, so now I have to either comfort him or be a dick about it. Obviously, I choose comfort, because I am the nice guy assassin.
After that side detour, I travel on down to Minotaur town to meet a man named Leandros and see what he has in store for me. When I get there he seems to be running some sort of tourist trappy / Minotaur scam in which I can complete tasks or pay money to go battle the fearsome Minotaur. I don’t trust it, obviously. This is going to be about as legit as that dude that thought he was a god and got trampled by a Cyclops.
I will slay this “Minotaur” even though I am clearly ineligible according to Leandros’s rules. I am a Demi-God after all. Also, it doesn’t exist anyway.
I have to compete in some Pre-Trials before I can face this Minotaur but on the way there is some guy threatening to jump off a building. Of course, I’m not going to just keep on going without stopping to help.
This fellow was supposed to kill the Minotaur to bring glory and tourism to his poor village, but he is too scared to face him. I try to give him advice, but he interprets it as me advising him to lie to everybody about his Minotaur slaying abilities, and now I have been roped into providing him with an Axe and Armour befitting of a Minotaur so he can convince everybody of the lie.
Oh, well. I agree to it. Whatevs.
I handily find the items and stop the guy from jumping. Yay!?
Back to the trials: I have the option to pay people off for tokens indicating that I completed the trial, but the trials are easy, so I don’t do that. Everybody seems disappointed that they aren’t getting money out of me. I am now in the Minotaur hunting party with two other dudes who run away as soon as we get close, which was probably the whole scam plan, because when I get down in the cave where the creature is supposed to be hiding, I find Leandros himself wearing a bull head mask.
It turns out some bandits? Or Cultists? are holding his daughter hostage and forcing him to run this scam for them. That seems like a wild and nonsensical plan…why couldn’t they just get a cultist to run it? There are no shortages of devotees around, right? Oh, well, who am I to question the ways of the death cult that is ruining my life? Of course I am going to rescue Leandros’s daughter! Perhaps I chose this quest in the first place so I could deal with some more culty a-holes and get another spear shard? I hope sure hope so! So, I rescue the daughter, and having learned my lesson about letting captives go without killing all the bad guys first, I do that.
Then I finish the quest by talking to the girl and her dad. Turns out she wrote down all the helpful information I need whilst eavesdropping on the bandits! What a pal! I am intending to go back and loot all the treasures from the now empty bandit encampment when I am thwarted by a quest ending cut scene. Damn it! Those dudes are going to respawn now, aren’t they? I give Leandros his props for distracting the guards, and he gives me his Minotaur mask. Lol, can I equip this thing? Dare I run around with a dead bull carcass on my head for the rest of the game?
I’m now going to hoof it on over to that town with all the quests I passed up earlier. Thanks to Leandros’s daughter, I know the identity of another cultist and it isn’t a surprise betrayal by one of my friends (yet, I am always suspicious, remember?) Anyhow, let’s go questing!
I find an old ancient ruin, Knossos, King Minos’s old place, and a legendary creature lives here. I swear, it better not be a for real Minotaur. I don’t find one, yet, but I do find an orphan, who is waiting for his dad to come back from hunting…and he never returned. Awww, sadness. I tell him about Leandros, and how he was the Minotaur, but the kid clearly already knows about that old scam, and it isn’t what he’s talking about; now there’s a new mystery to solve and another person to save! Let’s do it!
Well, we make it down to the labyrinth entrance, but without a key, the kid can’t open the door. I have to go find the dad’s old hunting party that made it out alive and make them talk now. “The Swordfish”, the “Collector”, and the Caretaker. They are scattered all around, so they better have some useful information!
I find the swordfish by pressing the townsfolk for info and doing a few quests around a place called octopus harbor, only to find out that he’s being a scardy cat and hiding in an underwater cave from the cult. He thinks I am my sister and I try to reason with him, but he’s convinced I’m going to let the Minotaur out, so he attacks me. Sorry, swordfish, I didn’t want to hurt you since you’re trying to leave the cult and all, but you gave me no choice. The good news is that Swordfish still has a shard! Also, he tells me where to insert the key, which isn’t the most helpful information. I mean, I’m sure I could have figured out where to stick it on my own. A key is a key.
On to the collector, who gives me some helpful information about Theseus’s special armor that I need to defeat the Minotaur. The pieces of it are scattered to the wind; another quest for another time. Right now I only get instructions on how to find the breastplate. It is in a fort, and surprisingly I only have to defeat one guard to sneak in and get it!
I temporarily equip this armor instead of my snake armor, because it’s at a slightly higher level. Never fear, I will switch back as soon as I can upgrade. Although, this is quite nice and shiny.
Now on to the Caretaker, who has been kidnapped. I have to rescue him. He is concerned for the kid’s safety and also informs me that the child has the key.
HE HAD THE KEY THIS WHOLE TIME???? aldkhjfalifjeolnm!
Oh, well, at least I got some good loot out of this runaround. Back at the palace, I procure the key from the child, and am very blunt about his dad’s prospects of surviving. (Not High) He is still hopeful though, so off we go into the labyrinth.
Inside, I follow Theseus’s golden thread straight to the kid’s dead dad. I get his ring as a token and spend the next few minutes figuring out that I’m not supposed to follow the thread the whole way through the labyrinth, and I have to make my own way for the second half.
Once through….
Surprisingly, this Actualfax Minotaur is not that difficult. I do use a whole bunch of arrows though. I think this is one of the Atlantean/Pythagorean objects I’m supposed to be finding because after I wrench the horn off the beast, it turns all phantomlike and disappears into a magic ball just like the Sphynx feather.
I return to the child afterward to deliver the bad news about his dad and I give him the ring to remember him by instead of pawning it at a smithy. Everybody’s sad, but the caretaker is there to take care of the boy so he isn’t alone, and I don’t have form attachments with another wayward child. The last time that happened was disaster, if you recall. Next, I return to the road for more adventures!
My next adventure returns me to the carpet factory I started at, as it turned out a guy there owed me some jewels? I honestly don’t remember a thing about this, but I do have to run around town and take out a bad guy general to resolve the matter and get my drachmae. The other thing I have to do here is take care of a cultist which is pretty easily done. (some of them are just out in the world without a quest attached to them)
Next, I finish up the rest of the locations on the island which aren’t particularly noteworthy. Another child tries to run a scam on me, and I fight another legendary creature for Diana! It is bull of course.
To complete my time on Krete (this is where I am in case the huge amount of Minotaur business didn’t clue you in!) I head back to the arena and defeat the next champion in line which I am now powerful enough to do. I am greeted by a cut scene of old man Skoura watching on creepily and suspiciously. He’s the top cultist dog I’m going to have to fight, isn’t he?
I don’t find out this time, because the next guy is the same level as me and everything is on fire… let’s just say I started off this gaming session by jumping off a Minotaur statue directly into a firepit, so I do not get along with fire. I am going to give up here until I can gain a few more levels.
Since I’m already in the arena combat mood, I choose the other quest that requires battling and head on over in that direction. I have to train with some lady named Roxana to get into this tournament, so that is my next destination.
I make my way to her island where she immediately fights and then flirts with me. I decline the flirts because A. We’re about to fight to the death, and B. WE’RE ABOUT TO FIGHT TO THE DEATH. I am not about that kind of emotional entanglement.
Instead we just spar and Roxana tells me about how she’s doing it to keep her family’s honor, and you know this just isn’t going to end well for her because the game is designed for me to win…eventually.
Alas!
I enter the contest and it is just one big melee with the top two contenders going on to one final death match. LO, it ends up being Alexios and Roxana. Who could have seen this plot twist coming?
I plead and beg with her to tell the contest organizer (what’s his name?) to take this deathmatch and shove it with me so we can go on to live and be awesome. Through this whole thing Alexios is really bummed out by all these cool warriors sparring to death for honor or whatever when they could be having an epic team-up to take down the cult instead.
Well, Roxana doesn’t want to team up. She’s all in on the death match which was what I figured going into this, and her eventual end is made all the more useless when we find out that the whole idea of this tournament was to draw me out of hiding so the cult could find me.
WHAT???
Of course, this pisses me and also Alexios off, because what a waste. Again, cultists, I am looking for you. You do not have to mount convoluted schemes to bring me out of hiding. Just send a mechanical owl with the time and the place; I will be there.
I have to fight the organizer and his thugs now too because they are cult lackeys. Just the cherry on top of the pointless death sundae.
After I finish him off, I go on to clear some more forts and stuff and maybe get my bounty up. I drop my pelts off with Dianna and select a new quest. I might as well work on clearing stuff from the map on my way to finding the statues with the cultist clues on them. That quest I got from my sculptor friend back in Olympia.
As I’m completing locations, I run across a quest. I rescue a man named Eppie from a bunch of wolves and in return he is going to lead me to a god like treasure in a cave. I’m sure there will be nothing but disappointment down there, but am I going to follow him anyway? Heck Yes I am!
Well, it’s pretty uneventful down here and I just get a continued quest to find some Mycenaean armor that is probably well bellow the armor I am already wearing, but whatevs. Of course I will find it for my friend, Eppie! I blow through some locations and collect all the armor to decipher the dead Mycenaean language. There is supposedly some kind of ritual, but I don’t think anything actually happened except some of the words floated around Assassin’s Creed style and my new friend is jealous because Alexios is the only one who can see it.
I make my way around this island, now, slowly fulfilling my destinies until I find a new quest:
Some man has locked himself in a cage on Salty the Bear’s beach in order to protect his parents. The Oracle gave him a prophecy and this is his solution. I hope this guy’s name isn’t Oedipus, because that’s not an entanglement I want to be involved in. (It’s not, His name is Supideo, which is just one letter away from being hilarious, and an accurate description of how his parents think he is behaving.)
Okay, I have to find his sword and shield to give to his parents so they can defend themselves. Fine.
Off to the blacksmith I go, a man who immediately has a crush on Alexios. This blacksmith is not being forthcoming with the sword. I can either get aggro about it or choose the hearts dialog.
Hearts it is! Why the hell not!?
As if it’s going to be that easy though… he needs ancient Greek viagra. I— What have I gotten myself into. ~sigh~
I get the uh…stimulating flowers he requires, but then I get one last chance to back out of sleeping with him. Which I take. He gives me the sword anyway in exchange for the blossoms. As for the shield, apparently I already found it because the cut scene with instructions for this part of the quest transitions directly into the cut scene for completing it.
We sort of learn that Supideo is actually adopted and Alexios makes some comment about what a weird family, which makes me belive… lol, Okay, I guess it’s just the game developers making the same joke I did about Oedipus. A Wiki had to tell me that Supideo is Oedipus spelled backwords. Duuuuuuuuuh.
I am bad at anagrams and spelling backwards, feel free to laugh at me.
The good news is that I’ve finally made it over to quest island. If your remember, I am still in search of the statues!
I’m sure there are many more quests and locations here to complete, so let’s get to it.
Surprisingly, there are actually a grand total of zero side quests on this island, and I am about to lower the difficulty of this game for such dumb reasons (can’t find a statue of Poseidon on this dumb place and I have the mode enabled where it doesn’t tell you were stuff exactly is, it just gives a general area to look.) All the statues on this island that I’m finding are of Hera though. I will look in the Garden of Artemis, but I have a feeling I won’t find statues of him there either. :laughing:
Actually, instead of that, I choose to work my way along the coast line. I mean, if a statue of Poseidon is going to be anywhere, it’s going to be along the coastline, right?
Then, what to my wandering eyes should appear? Why it’s Poseidon! and he’s not even here. He has his own tiny private island which I guess is land belong to the island I’m standing on. Huh. Such trickery.
I swim my way over to him and find the cultist note. I also find a trident with a new engraving that unlocks, get this, underwater breathing! Sharks, watch out! (Also, did I really have to expend all those ability points on extra breathing time when this thing exists???)
Anyway, I head off to the next island and find the statue much easier. It is time to return to Olympia, but first to complete all the locations.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, this island has quests. A little girl needs to find her missing brother. Of course I am going to help this poor lonely girl.
Seems her brother was training at this prestigious school to get to the Olympics and now he’s gone. A. I hope he’s not dead and B. She’s talking about Chimeras. I hope I’m not in for a battle with one.
I talk to the head of the school who is full of himself and doesn’t want to talk about the missing boy. Alexios attempts to challenge him to a sparring match, but he doesn’t want to “waste time on a nobody.”
Bro, I already won my gold medal, but go off I guess.
Lol, some other rando in the school steps in to recognize my oily achievements though. Haha! Take that!
We fight and when I kick his ass, he finally gives me the answers.
Some powerful richey riches have abducted? the star athletes and this guy let it happen for the drachmae.
Unfortunately this tree trunk of the man thinks he was powerless to stop whatever creepy wrong nonsense these clearly evil dudes are up to. So I guess it is up to me now!
The girl, Ide, now has overheard the confession and she’s off to save her brother herself. I swear, if I lose another little girl, I’m going to be… I dunno, emotionally compromised.
Well, the good news is nothing happens to Ide. The bad news is that this is the end of the quest. So, rich dudes making off with students for unknown reasons and I don’t get to rescue anybody???? Disappointment.
Back to Olympa with my Culty documents now and what I find is that my sculptor friend has been murdered! He was not paranoid after all! Poor dude.
Alexios vows to avenge him, so that is what is next!
I look to the documents that I retrieved from the statues to find out what the cultists have to say in their top secret message. I just get more directions to another place with a secret room and I now have to go traipsing around some new islands to find it.
This is actually good news, because I LOVE secret rooms almost as much as Sphynxes.
First, I’m going to see if I can finish up all the locations in Elis and maybe try to get my bounty up in Olympia since there is supposedly harsher punishments there?
Also, a legendary creature is around here, so I may as well give that a go as well.
Bad news.
It’s a boar.
A boar that farts poison gas.
Cool beans (the musical fruit).
After a bit of frustration and looking up tips online, which is severely lacking in any strategy I’m skilled enough to accomplish: I just revert to what I was doing to start with:
Not giving two farts about the farts and just shooting it with my super potent poisonous arrows. Why this poison pig’s weakness is poison is anybody’s guess. Maybe I have just put so many of my eggs into this venomous basket that I’m now OP?
Oh, well. Being a snake is working for me, so I guess I will stick with it!
We have now reached the portion of the game where the forts are entirely populated by cultists that I have to defeat. At least that’s what it seems like. First, I find a temple on top of a hill that’s full of them. Getting caught doesn’t even raise my bounty at all despite being near the Olympic valley.
Next, I get on my boat and head off for my vengeance.
This leads me to an undiscovered island that does have quests on it. I ignore them and head straight for the secret room. It’s supposed to be “In the Middle of the Skyfall Lakes.” I find the lakes and they seem very tiny. I would actually classify them more as ponds. My whole focus is on them, and I am hyped on my underwater breathing trident, so I spend a stupid amount of time swimming around the shallow bottom of these lakes in order to find the ancient temple with the secret room that I’m looking for.
As you can probably guess by now, the temple is not in the lake. It is on a hill overlooking the lake. This place too requires me to not only get the captain, but also all the cultist guards.
There are a lot of them, but either, again, I have become OP, or I actually am getting better at the game finally, because I managed to sneak up on 99% of them! TBH, I am pretty pleased with myself.
It turns out, that Phidias’s cultist notes are actually the key to open the door in this secret room, which isn’t so much “secret” Like…It’s just a room in this building, the only thing secret is the combination lock to get in. (I imagine secret rooms to be hidden behind book cases or at the bottom of a long underwater cave that would have actually required the trident to get to!)
Anyway, at the end of it all, I now have vengeance and Atlantean daggers! Why was the cult targeting Phidias??? Was this revealed way back when I rescued him in Athens? Why did they send him nots with the combination to their secret room? Does anything make sense?
No.
RIP my sculpting friend, we hardly knew you!
