Tutorial: Blood River Massacre and Outskirts

The Blood River Massacre scene was impressive. From the standpoint of a new player, I enjoyed finding lots to loot and having a companion (Robert Villines).

I was a bit confused when he asked me to join him because I thought he wanted me to follow him, but instead he ended up following me. I didn't need to summon him, and didn't check my inventory to see if a summoning item was there, but I did read the notification that said that a summoning item was being added to my inventory. After he escorted me to the boat and sent me on to Blood River Outskirts, I wondered what that had all been about.

Sometimes instructions from the game flash on the screen, but they usually disappear before I have a chance to read them. At first I was afraid that I was missing something, but later I discovered that these instructions were in the chat window and I only had to scroll back to find them. (Later I discovered that these don't persist very long - see bottom part of this post.)

At one point (I can't remember just when) I was told that I could jump by pressing the spacebar. That was nice, and gave me the illusion that I would learn important things just by following along. When I reached the practice dummy, I was told to hit it with a Searing Ray. So far so good. I know how to fight! The enemies on the bridge on the way out of the Massacre scene were easier to defeat than I remember. Only one attacked at a time, and Robert was there for me.

At the Outskirts, I was greeted by Eilliana who told me to seek out Alberic and gave me a cloth cap. No instructions appeared telling me how to don the cap. Luckily, I am not a new player, so I opened my paper doll and dragged the cap to it from my inventory.

On my way to Alberic I no longer had Robert to help me and I was attacked by two Vigilantes at a time. Searing Ray had a long cooldown, so I totally relied on the auto-attack of the Rusty Swords I had picked up. I thought to myself that I was a pretty poor mage with only one spell that took ages to fire off.

Since I am not in reality a new player, I pulled up the skills menu by hitting "K" and discovered that some other skills (Fire Arrow, Flame Fist, Ignite Weapon and Gust) were also available. I quickly dragged them to my combat bar, but I wondered if a new player would have done that.

I finally dragged myself up the hill to Alberic (I was encumbered with all the neat loot). In the middle of a conversation he showed me a salute and the conversation ended automatically. I had to re-engage him to get him to continue to talk.

Looking back through my chat window to find out the name of the salute that Alberic taught me, I discovered that none of the conversation with Eilliana or the early dialogue with Alberic or anyone else is recorded there. Only the very last conversation with Alberic is still available. But with all the boxes checked I can see everything I ever looted and all the remarks the NPCs make.

I unchecked "combat" in order to shorten the list a bit. Here is a screenshot of the chat window with "misc" checked:


And here is a screenshot with "misc" unchecked. The conversation in the middle with Alberic is the only conversation in the whole chat window that can still be seen. It seems that real dialogue disappears from the chat window (only the very last being kept), but all the other garbage is faithfully recorded. This is not good. Even as an experienced player, I have the need to scroll back and look up what has already been said.


EDIT: I regret naming myself Toasty Woasty

 

"Misc" contains different kind of information. Even if you toggle it off in chat window, it is shown in dialogue window I posted it as Feedback and two times as a bug.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...lor-is-still-shown-in-dialogue-window.112590/

I assume there is no Weapon against this Armor called 'by design'.

Oh Roy, how would you sing your fine song today, if you would like coming home as an Avatar?

May be this way?
"Sometimes it's hard to face this game every day... tonight let's took the 'by design' words beside ...

... coming home ...