Imperialist Looting For Fun And Profit! Let's Play Renowned Explorers!

It's so nice to both be good at Friendly victories and also get the best reward for them.




The encounter opens with - mercifully - the boss escorted by only two Voodoo Pirates (one of them a dart-blower who will go down very soon).

More pirates will join as the battle progresses. But if we can finish Roche quickly, that won't be an issue.

Speaking of our ghost nemesis...




Yes, he's immune to physical attacks. Which would royally suck if we were an Aggressive crew.




We'll start by having Emilia wag her tongue at Roche so we can go to Devious stance.




Not much damage, but it'll set Pedrinho up for an epic hit.




To further weaken Roche, we'll have Maria use her Seduce move to Impress him.




Roche is still not feeling the pressure... but Pedrinho has yet to act.




Party Time can only get a double hit here. But it'll take out the Voodoo Dart-Blower before she can silence us... and hit Roche hard enough to get his attention.




And boom goes the dynamite!

Kids these days still say "Boom goes the dynamite", right?




We're now in Friendly stance, for a Speech Defense bonus.

We'll need it.

Yes, after one round, we've taken almost two-thirds of Roche's Spirit... but we've left him with the Excited mood for +25% Speech Power.




The bad guys take their turn. At the start of this expedition, the Voodoo Pirates struck down Maria in like two hits with physical attacks. But this pirate instead opts for a Devious attack of an element (Terror) that Maria is resistant to.

As you can see, it's not exactly super effective.




After that, Captain Roche attempts a Terror bomb attack against our whole crew. I knew this was coming and so maybe I could have spaced our crew farther apart, but...

... but Emilia is also Terror resistant, so between all our resistances and our boosted Speech Defense, Roche's blast isn't very effective, either.




Start of round 2.

Roche has succeeded in inflicting the Terror debuff on all our crew... which is kind of stupid, because Terror only reduces your Attack Power (not your Speech Power), and he's already immune to all physical attacks.




Let's have Emilia restore everyone with her Tranquility move. I'm not really concerned about everyone's Spirit points, I just want Pedrinho to get his Excited buff back.




With his groove restored, Pedrinho gives Roche a Disarming Smile.

The ghost captain takes it really well.




We're still aiming for a Friendly victory, so Maria ends the turn by using her basic Excite move against Roche.




We're so close to defeating him now.




Now it's their turn. Unless they pull a miracle out of their asses (ie go super Aggressive and beat down our crew), we'll win this encounter with our Resolve intact.




Foolishly, Roche's crew does NOT go Aggressive. The Voodoo Pirate from earlier tries the same feeble Terror attack against Emilia that he did against Maria.

Good work, guy. Just 20 more of those, and Emilia will be in real trouble.




Next, Roche's Terror attack on Pedrinho has a bit more bite (because Pedrinho isn't Terror-resistant like the ladies are). But it fails to ruin his Excited buff.




Finally, a new pirate who joined the battle after round 1 managed to close with Maria. He attacks her by -

*sighs*

Come on guys, just USE YOUR SWORDS. It'll work much better on us!




The Hurricane of Rio is tired of this half-assed excuse for a Halloween party, and decides to escort Captain Roche off the field for a polite lecture.






Okay, question answered. The voodoo pirates would return to purple smoke form when the Emerged Island descends, and then I guess they rematerialize when it rises.

Nice to have that cleared up.




Maybe it's just me, but I think we should have the option of equipping Emilia with Captain Roche's hat. She would look so cool wearing that thing around!

We have absolutely no levels of Athlete or Rogue, and the boost to Collect token yield would help us most.




All in all, an excellent expedition.

Now let's check out our haul!




Simply epic all around.

We got almost enough Renown from this one expedition to satisfy the victory condition of the whole game, we can finish off our Engineering papers, and we'll be able to buy enough gear to ensure our whole crew is as badass as Pedrinho.




Free tip, newspaper - the term for our rise to the top isn't "upstart", it's "meteoric" or "spectacular".




We don't need any more Renown, but (unlike last time) our choice of an expedition will actually be something of a choice this time.




Here we get to decide which resource (Gold, Status, or Research) to boost the Renown bonus for.

As we've reached the "bragging rights" stage of Renown gain, it's a largely meaningless choice, but we've been focusing on Gold for a while now, so we'll go with that.




Yes. The time is approaching to decide where the Hurricane of Rio will strike next.




Now we get the usual per-expedition choice of which city to unlock. The first three offer various combinations of shops and entourage halls, but it's the final choice which will benefit us most.

Wait, three MORE places to spend our Insight? Did I forget how the Insight unlocks were SO lame last time?

Oh, that won't be the case this time, tyrants.

You'll see when we get to the preparation for our final expedition.




There we go. If we survive one more expedition, we'll be set for life touring the world and explaining to people how awesome we are.

But first we have to get there.

Now to vote on our final expedition. We have - once again - three choices.




Shangri-La, the original final expedition of the game - and yet further evidence that this game has departed from anything resembling real history.

This map offers our ultimate showdown with Rivaleux and his crew. Be warned, though, that the description does not exaggerate. This is a very difficult mission, where we must attempt to collect three keys on our way to the final node. Mercifully, the locations of the keys are revealed at the start, the keys are all treasures in their own right, and each key we obtain grants a buff in the final battle.

Interestingly, the final treasure we get depends on our crew's approach over the whole game. So far, we're on track to get either the Friendly / Gold or the Friendly / Research one.

Nonetheless, the encounters on this map are generally brutal, and almost every spin threatens Resolve loss for failing. Also, the final battle is Rivaleaux AND all three of his crew members (each of whom is almost boss-level in their own right).

All told, if we go to Shangri-La, I think we have enough resources to have a real shot of winning.

On the other hand... over the course of this run, we really didn't trigger enough events with Rivaleux's crew for this to be as dramatically compelling as it could have been. Sure, we had other great encounters and rewards, but we never got to know our arch-nemesis better.

You, as a voter, may or may not care about that.




The Lost Island, courtesy of the More To Explore DLC.

This is the endpoint of the Anti-Explorer plot, as we investigate and defeat their threat to the Renowned Explorers once and for all.

This map is for people who though the Rebel Flagship in FTL (and the Shangri-La map of this game) were bullshit. Here, we get a choice of three distinct final bosses (one a physical behemoth, one a social monster, and the third just an unending wave of pain), and even the option to flee the island at the midpoint. Don't be fooled, though - like Shangri-La, the encounters are dangerous and Resolve losses for failure are common.

There will also be dinosaurs and general "lost world" tropes.

(While you're weighing your vote, don't get too excited about the Nature nodes. We won't get to spend any tokens or Discovery upgrades we get on the final expedition, so they're good for Renown / bragging rights only.)

And option 3?




So for our last option... we already have enough Renown. We could just go back to one of the earlier maps, curbstomp it, and go home with a win.

I know, I promised at the start of this thread that I wouldn't do that... but this LP belongs to you guys, too, so if you seriously want to do that, I will entertain the option.

In the meantime, check out the above pic. Notice how our airship is placed on the map like a playing piece for a board game? If you look at the other expedition briefing screens in this thread, you'll see the "airship playing piece" in each one, too. I think that's neat!

So now we vote on a location, tyrants.

• Shangri-La will test everything our crew has with Shangri-La demons and Rivaleux.
• Lost Island will test everything our crew has with dinosaurs.
• Some other map is a legitimate but wussy choice.

Your call!

Either final mission could be good. I think I slightly prefer Shangri-La.

The Lost Island. Rivaleux is merely a pompous jerk and Emilia already has more renown than he does but the Anti-Explorers are a threat to all explorers.

Maybe they were going for a Devious victory?

That would look cool but it feels out of character for her especially when compared to her sun hat (for lack of a more specific term).

I say we go for the dinosaurs. Rivaleux is small potatos, not nearly important enough for us to waste time on.

We have elected to go to the Lost Island. Rivaleux may be a jerk and the closest thing we have to an archrival - but we have already far exceeded him in Renown, and living well is the best revenge.

The Anti-Explorers of the Lost Island, on the other hand? Actually, we haven't even met them yet or learned much about them at all. But we're explorers, dammit, so we can't have any anti-exploring happening on our watch!

Now to prepare for our final expedition! As we go, we'll keep in mind that the Lost Island welcomes Engineering skill. We also need to improve our combat stats (especially Armor) as much as possible.

The first thing to do is spend our Status, since it's the resource we have the least of and it might affect our other expenditures.




Allow me to introduce the final specialist of our run. This ladies man and mechanic will teach Emilia the Engineer - Steam Engines skill.

He will also make every Study token yield +1-2 Status, but at this point, we couldn't care less about that.

With that, we have only enough status left to get Helpers. I pick a Student, which will boost Research from our Study tokens still further - although at this point, we don't really need any more of that, either.

Now we can check out our new Insight jobs.




See the Discovery token among that pile? The three new jobs are based around the three rare tokens - Treasure Hunt, Secret, and Discovery.

The Chinese Pagoda is the "Discovery" one, and so every Insight point Emilia spends is now worth - well, about the same amount of Research and Status as before, but over 100 more Gold!

And with 7 Insight points to spend, that will be quite a lot of Gold indeed.




From our last expedition and all our Insight points, we easily had enough Research to finish the Engineering field.

So the rest of the Engineering papers gave us this:

• Apparatus Artists: +3 Collect tokens when a level 3 Engineer or level 3 Rogue succeed at a spin.
• Improved Cargo: We gain +3 Supplies capacity.
• Hyperspeed Airships: Access to interstellar travel Access to a secret shop with hideously expensive epic items.

That last one is what will really push this run through the roof.

We also had enough Research left over to unlock a new field (offscreen). For this final unlock of the entire game, I choose Anthropology. Opening this field grants us +4-6 Research per Encounter token, which we'll never get to spend.

Now let's check out that Secret Shop!




The secret shop - which, yes, is actually, seriously, officially called the "Secret Shop" - offers both trinkets and defense items. In this screen shot, you can get an idea of the shop's price range. Wow.

These items are even better than the so-called legendary items of our starter Red Market Square shop. The defense powers (both Speech and Armor) are equal, but these items come with a extra buff to Attack or Speech Power, plus a free skill.

We're not saying no.

Tragically, that Epic Engineer Momento only offers the Engineer skill that Emilia learned a minute ago, but the Epic Diplomat Armor is just right for Maria.




For Pedrinho, we'll pick out the Epic Quick Thinker Momento, which will give him another level of the valuable Quick Thinker skill and further boost his Speech Power up the hurricane path.

As for Captain Emilia, I opt to get her a mere Adventure Armor from the starter store. Doing this will save enough Gold that (after selling back Pedrinho's and Maria's old Master Momento gear), we'll have enough to also get Maria an offensive item like we wanted earlier!

Boosting Maria's speech attacks would make so much more of a difference during encounters than just giving Emilia an extra perk.

We might also have enough left over for a final trinket or two.




After our spending spree, this is what our final stats look like.

Everyone has a LOT more defense (both kinds) than before, and both Maria and Pedrinho have enough Speech Power to starkly annihilate anyone who gets in our way.

Keeping in mind the Engineer challenge, I also moved Emilia's Trowel & Broom over to Maria. Maria can make better use of the T&B's Defense-reducing aura, and now Emilia has room for a Chemistry Set, allowing us to sneak one last Engineer perk onto her character sheet. (Emilia is now at Engineer 3, which should be enough to get by.)

With what little Gold we have left, the last thing we bought was a cheap Good Book to boost Emilia's offense. It barely makes any difference.

(The levels of gear, if you're curious, go Decent / Good / Master / Adventure / Legendary / Epic.)

Finally, all those Insight points earlier also gave us enough Status to get a couple of Merchant helpers, which I buy offscreen before we embark. Because we don't really care about that, either.

It is now time for the Lost Island.




Here it is. The ultimate challenge. The final battle. There is no turning back. With this, we will become either the greatest explorers ever or just another statistic.

We have come a long way, tyrants, and we have endured much. We have seen breathtaking victories over impossible improbable odds, we have pressed on in the face of soul-shattering heartbreak, and we have proven again and again that neither the RNG nor technical glitches can defeat us.

So, too, have we witnessed incredible things in our journey. We have encountered caves of unstable crystal, 19th century ice cream vans, ghost pirates, prehistoric glowing plants, hugging mummies, a goddess of war, infectious voodoo, dinosaurs (soon), and - most epic of all - a hat that is so impossibly tacky that being close to it saps an enemy's will to resist.

We have watched a human being transform himself from a one-man riot to the Hurricane of Rio.

The crew we have built has become an irresistable force - and the Lost Island will not be the unmovable object to turn us.

But if I am wrong and we don't make it back, tyrants, then it was an honor to serve with you.

Enough platitudes. Lost Island, ho!




Our arrival is greeted by inexplicably purple fog.

Is it possible that we failed to navigate to the Lost Island, and are instead about to encounter a time-travelling Prince?




Ah, our first glimpse of these Anti-Explorers that Rivaleux and Chairman Pinkerton were so excited about. In fairness, these guys DO look like total douchetorrents.

Our crew laughs at their foolish warnings that we're on private property. The people of Saxon Island, Mali, the Memphis Desert, and the Emerged Island will all attest that our crew has absolutely no respect for the private property of others.




The victory types are irrelevant, as we will never be able to spend resources again, and we already have all the Renown required to win the game. But we nonetheless should feel a certain satisfaction that the reward for Friendly victories continues to grow.

If we had gone far enough down the Anthropology tree, we could have gotten the paper that offers more Supplies for each victory of a chosen type. THEN we'd have a final expedition where our victory types still matter.




Our Anti-Explorer foes are coming in Devious, and have absolutely no resistance/immunity to the Excited element.

What a great chance to test our crew's new power!




We'll open by having Maria use her Seduce move against the lone Anti-Explorer Enforcer.

It's here that I notice that these guys are vulnerable to Seduce's Impress element.

This is going to be a brutally short encounter.



The sight of Maria's leg makes the Anti-Explorer Enforcer completely rethink his position on whether our crew should be here.




These guys have like 120 Spirit points, but Maria took one down in a single hit.

I'd say that gear we bought for her is working out great.




Two enforcers left. We'll have Emilia weaken one of them with her patented Amnesia Shot.



And then both of them will get to tell their friends that OMG you guys we partied with the Hurricane of Rio!





Our friendly approach has ALWAYS proven its worth.




Damn straight, narrative.

Neither man nor beast nor war goddess nor ghost nor game crash tells the Hurricane of Rio where he cannot go.




What, exactly, does Renown smell like?




Our objective for this map.

Our MIDPOINT objective, actually. Most of what we'll find on this map - before we get to that node - will be bullshit. Hitting that node will reset the map and give us a choice of three different final nodes. So unless we spot a treasure node on the way, we're going straight there.




That last encounter, as laughable as it was, pushed Pedrinho to his fifth and final level.

This time, we have a choice between the perks of "Fun Party" (Party Time will start healing crew members in his radius at one-third power) or...

...yeah, that.

How could we possibly resist making Party Time even more absoludicrously powerful than it already is?

Now to make our first move on this map.




Bereft of any treasures to influence our decision - and no longer caring about resources whatsoever - we will take the path of least Supply loss.




Well, la dee dah.

What the hell is IN that "numbing fog" to make it so numbing, anyway?




Next move. We will continue to proceed east-ish towards our target node.




Emilia is correct. Once we get to the target node and disable the fog-creating machine, all the fog on the map will lift, and nodes like this one will become interesting.

Huh, a Supply node. We'd go for it, but a) it's not in the direction of our goal, and b) the 2 Supplies it would cost to go there would blunt whatever Supply gain it offers.

Also, these Supplies might be of more help after we hit the target node and reveal the map.

Northeast, ho!




This song and dance is growing tiresome, I know, but we will be at the target node soon.




Unfortunately, the 2 Supply path that ends in an encounter is the best way forward. All the other directions would end up costing us more.

Besides, you know that we're not done showing off how badass we are.




So the Anti-Explorers insist on foot patrols even after they've covered their whole island in numbing fog.

As supervillainous organizations go, I think these guys may well be the precursor to COBRA.




The game decides to throw a curveball at us.

See the red skull icon under the Friendly victory? We're going to get punished if we dare win that way.




So we're up against two Anti-Explorer Enforcers and four Anti-Explorer Dogs. The enforcers we're already familiar with, but the dogs are glass cannons - they have few Spirit Points (for this stage of the game), but can hit pretty hard.

Between that and the Friendly victory punishment (in this case summoning a "Sharpshooter squad"), this battle will require a bit of finesse.




We haven't yet suffered an attack from an Anti-Explorer goon, and I don't intend to start now. Maria is going to one-shot this punk with her Seduce move.

I refer you to our previous gif when Maria wrapped one of these guys around her finger.




With the enforcer out of the way, Pedrinho tries out his Disarming Smile against one of the dogs.

We're in a Friendly stance now - which lowers our Armor because of their Aggressive stance - but that will soon change.




This Anti-Explorer Dog trained its entire life for this moment, but the Hurricane of Rio is not impressed.




Finally, Emilia steps in to wag her Devious tongue at the remaining dog.

She ends up fumbling her attack, but no matter...




...because the mood is now Provocative (enhancing our Grit), that dog couldn't possibly get past Emilia's Armor to down her with one hit, and the other enemies don't have the move points to get to our side of the map yet.




You had one job, Anti-Explorer Dog.




Start of round 2.

Maria will teach this poor dog the true meaning of sadness.




Now sit on the sideline and think about what you did, Anti-Explorer Dog.




Next up, Pedrinho is proceeding in Devious mode to take out another dog...

...and fumbles his attack.

I keep forgetting that Pedrinho's basic Devious attack sucks. We would have been better off just staying Friendly and fighting the Sharpshooter squad, too.




Emilia jumps over to make a last-ditch attempt to take out that dog.

We should not expect her to succeed.




*sighs*

So close, and yet so far.




End of round 2. Both of the dogs will be able to attack us on their turn.

But that's why we bought all those epic-level defense items, right?




Despite their glass cannon attack power, the Anti-Explorer Dog does an unimpressive amount of damage to our captain.

And she's not even one of our crew with epic armor, either.

Meanwhile, the other dog takes a bite at Pedrinho and misses. Mostly because his Grit is so high right now that his base dodge is 42%.




Start of round 3. I'm sick of dealing with these guys, so - Friendly punishment or not - it's Party Time.




Pedrinho is one of my favorite characters in this game, and his dance animation is but one of the reasons why.




Like so many other occasions, once Pedrinho has broken out his dance moves, the encounter is decided. The remaining Anti-Explorer Dog is defeated in a wave of Maria-induced sadness, and the remaining Anti-Explorer Enforcer takes Emilia's shovel to the face.




Oh, good. More Grit and Speech Power for Pedrinho.

And since this is the last expedition, that's technically a game-long bonus, too.




Oh no, please call in backup. We want to see this. I mean, that beleaguered patrol is somewhere on a large, densely fog-shrouded island prior to the invention of radio.

How would their backup even know what's going on?




We'll end our update here, with a very interesting looking node that will let us get around taking another 2 Supply step - and my observation that our crew's new combat gear is helping them as much as we'd hoped it would!

Next time, we will have the climactic midpoint of this expedition - and the big reveal of the Anti-Explorers and their horrific plot against all explorer-kind!

Perhaps so, my friend, but you'll notice throughout this run that while I may vastly prefer Friendly victories, I've never permitted that to get in the way of survival.

That's one issue with the AI in this game. Most encounters only have two or even one mood they focus on, so it's possible to exploit that if you keep your crew flexible. There ARE specific encounters that will switch between all three moods to try to counter you - the Mummy encounters and the final battle with Rivaleux are examples - but if I could enable that for EVERY encounter (or at least every boss), I would.

IN OTHER NEWS: I won my first game last night. I'm gonna steal a little of your thunder here, if you don't mind.

Not in the least. To the contrary, I'm happy that this thread has inspired others to play and enjoy this game.

Yeah, most of Pinkerton's recommendations are full of crap. I think I turned them off for this LP, for obvious reasons.

While the screenshots don't show it, one thing I find really cute is when you reload your game after saving it, your tokens will quickly drop into place at the top. But when you have as many tokens as THAT, the process can take a couple of minutes to finish! It makes me feel like the game is going out of its way to acknowledge your success.

Anyway, congratulations on your astounding victory! It's even more impressive, considering that I find Status to be one of the more difficult paths. But the Shangri-La path is a lot of fun if your crew can handle it - all of the encounters with Rivaleux's crew on the way reveal a little more about their character, even if the final encounter reveals that Rivaleux truly is the egomanical blowhard he's always been. It's also funny awesome that you included Emilia in a crew with Kiwi and Yvonne, as she's uber-nice while both of them are so incredibly mean.

Time to hit that Nature node with the special event!



We are past the Renown threshold for victory, and we will never get to spend resources again. Ergo, we give zero bangs about losing tokens.

Climb the volcano!




See? When you conquer your fears, you conquer the RNG.

Absolutely not.






New map markers to hunt down - including one that already has a treasure.

We should go to the original target node and lift the fog first.




It could be uber secret Anti-Explorer treasures, too! Just what we need to really blast our Renown through the stratosphere.

(Yeah, I know I've been acting like I don't really care about our Renown anymore, but I still kinda do.)

With the volcano resolved, we will proceed southwest to that Science node. It's the quickest path to the target node.




Wow, you have to be a level 5 Naturalist to get the special option here.

This is going to be good.




We receive a couple of rare tokens for our trouble - the first rare tokens of this expedition, in fact.

Now it's camp time!




Here it comes, the final campfire card of the game.

Tragically, only now does Pedrinho's personal card appear. I know, it seemed like his crush on Maria was HIS story, right? Because it was Pedrinho making all the moves while Maria just sat there and looked pretty before rejecting him. Nope, that was all Maria's card.

Anyway, it's tragic because the benefit of Pedrinho's card - better yield from Insight points - is useless now (we'll never spend Insight again). Also, like all the other story cards, it takes multiple expeditions to play out. As this is the final expedition, we'll never see how the epic of Pedrinho's special cup of coffee plays out.

Such a waste.

Meanwhile, Eye of the Tiger grants +3 Supplies and a free Survival perk. This is another card that would have been much more useful earlier in the game.

But... Supplies! I know, but we'll get all the Supplies we'll need when we beat the target node. WHICH IS NEXT.

Secret Report gives +25% boost to all yields from Secret cards. That probably would have been great if we were in Mogri's personal game (where he won ALL the Status), but it's almost useless to us.

So Resolve+ it is. With both a mid-boss and the final boss of the game approaching, we'll want all the Resolve we can get!







With our Resolve now higher than ever, it is time to face the target node.




Yes. We CAME to this island to investigate unusual activity, so let's go investigate the damned unusual activity.




At last, the mystery of the Anti-Explorers will be revealed!

At least another part of it, anyway.




A steampunk doomsday machine!




While I won't spoil the leader's identity, it suffices to say that he will be the COBRA Commander to our GI Joes.




The Anti-Explorers line up to get rocked by the Hurricane of Rio - and Pedrinho does not intend to disappoint them.




This time, no form of victory is deprecated. Charm, insults, fists - whatever, just dominate these motherbangers.




The forces arrayed against us include two Anti-Explorer Enforcers and two Anti-Explorer Dogs, which we are already familiar with (and are not particularly afraid of).

The last enemy is new - an Anti-Explorer Sharpshooter, who is Excite-resistant and can attack in a line, hitting multiple crew members at once.

We're still not particularly afraid.




We'll open by blitzing to the edge and having Emilia hit one of the goons with her shovel.

Yes, we're going Aggressive here, but trust me - we have a plan.




Not pictured: The Anti-Explorer Enforcer asking "Was that supposed to hurt?"

No, I didn't expect it to do much to him.

What it's set our crew up for, though - I promise you he'll notice THAT.




Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the triumphant return of Maria's Heartplay move. It counts as a Devious double-hit move now that we're Aggressive, and it'll get the +25% Hostile power bonus.




This was supposed to hit twice, but the Anti-Explorer Enforcer couldn't even take the first shot.




With no more bad guys in reach, Pedrinho has nothing to do but cheer Maria on.




On their turn, only the remaining Enforcer is close enough to engage, and we finally get to see their basic physical attack - an amazing pro wrestling-style flying tackle.

Unfortunately for him, Emilia's gear prevents the attack from doing much damage.




Start of round 2. The remaining Enforcer and dogs are in a nice group, begging for us to mow them down.

We'll start by having Maria seduce the goon.




Sweet RNG Jesus, almost 200 damage. Maria can't take out a group in one move, but she can hit a single target harder than the Hurricane of Rio.

Keeping the Sharpshooter's line attack in mind, Emilia repositions herself to wag her tongue at one of the dogs.




Did you know if you make an attack dog mad enough, it'll slink off and leave you alone?

Do not try this in real life.




Pedrinho will close out the round by running behind the trees where we can barely see him and Exciting the remaining dog into submission.




The Hurricane of Rio has crushed men, goddesses, and the soulless dead. What chance did a mere Anti-Explorer Dog have?




The round ends in Provocative mode, granting us +25 Grit against the Sharpshooter's inevitable gun attack.




Able to hit only one of us, the Sharpshooter wisely goes after Emilia, hoping to at least cost us a Resolve point before she's taken out. But our Grit-boosting strategy pays off and she misses!

We will not give her another shot.




Start of round 3. The Anti-Explorer Sharpshooter is Excite-resistant - but not Rage-resistant. Disarming Smile deploy!




I didn't notice this before, but that Sharpshooter is a really tall woman.




The Sharpshooter is on her last legs, and I elect to have our captain finish her off with a shovel blow.

Because when you take a shot at Captain Emilia and miss, you better be ready for the shovel.




That's the sound of Shovel beating Gun.




Victory. With an expedition buff that Emilia doesn't really need.




No, game, it is Maria who is the cruel one among us. Just look at her smirking at the Anti-Explorers' anguish there!




Anti-Explorer whining aside, this is another challenge where we get to pick which approach (and skill) to use.

Engineering first!




This node is the reason why the expedition briefing pimped the Engineer skill. This ONE roll is that important.

Unfortunately, we didn't quite get Emilia enough Engineer skill to be comfortable here. We could use a Tool to make it better, but let's check out our other option.




Ah, the "Homer Simpson facing an impending nuclear meltdown" approach.

Our odds here are even worse, though. And the third choice from before only gives us 1 Supply - and a -20 Armor debuff for the rest of the expedition. No way.

Going back to the Engineer choice, Tool in hand!




All that last-minute Engineer cramming paid off!




If we can't take the whole machine, just give us a piece, I guess.

Let's check out our new bling!




Only Renown really matters now, so let's get some Engineering Renown.




And here we go.

At this point, the fog lifts and the map nodes spring new icons - including treasures.

But we'll take a better look at that here in a minute.




Because nothing in the Renown Explorers universe is more mobile than an island.




So our choice now is to either push on in search of the Anti-Explorers' ultimate secret, or leave the island now and end the game with what we have.

I think we can dispense with a vote on that one.




Now THIS is what we'll end up voting on.

And we're still not turning back.

So, the three mysteries are as follows:





All the way across the map from us. Argh.






Of the three mysteries, this is the closest to us.






Roughly in the middle of the map, this is the final mystery.

(If you've been paying attention, this is the same mystery as the earlier-mentioned "secret document that talks about a terrible beast.")




Which, indeed?




Oh, right. As we proceed towards whichever mystery we pick, the map will regularly pull this dick move on us - an event that costs us a Supply point, and there's nothing we can do about it but not waste time moving towards our goal.

Speaking of which, we now need to vote on which mystery (and which final boss) we want to face.

Even with the map randomly reducing our Supplies, we will have enough to reach any of them, so that isn't an issue. Also know that beating any of the three mysteries will end the expedition. We will not be able to explore the others.

As such, this will be the last real vote of the game.

Your choices:

• Door Number 1: Confront the Supreme Scientist who leads the Anti-Explorers.
• Door Number 2: Check out the red dot secret marked on that LANDDELVER map.
• Door Number 3: Test our crew's mettle against the ravine secret / terrible beast that must never be taken to the civilized world.

Just to make your vote more interesting, I will not post outright spoilers for the mysteries, but... I CAN warn you that one of these would be not very hard for our crew, one of them would probably annihilate us outright, and the remaining option would be hard but probably doable.

Vote wisely, tyrants!

Door #1

I'm very curious about #1 and #3.

Here it is. Our last update. The final challenge. The home stretch. The die is cast. Our target is identified.

We have decided to take down the mysterious Anti-Explorer Supreme Scientist leader.

We have chosen wisely. This will be the easiest of the three final encounters for our particular crew.

If you're curious, the other two encounters were...

...a battle with a tyrannosaurus (!) who is uber-Aggressive, never changes moods, and can hit hard enough to one-shot a crew member even with legendary defense items. "Always Aggressive" is by far the hardest type of encounter for our crew to manage, so this one would likely have straight up annihilated us.

...and the third final encounter was a battle with a velociraptor queen and her endlessly spawning brood. There's a bit more wiggle room for non-Aggressive moods and you only have to take down the queen, but this can still be a rough fight.




That's a nice-looking treasure to the south, and it'd be a shame to leave it behind when it's, like, right there.

First, though, Emilia has a level up!




For Emilia's final level, we choose to increase her healing Tranquillity power by 50%. The other choice - allow it to damage enemies at -50% power - isn't attractive because Emilia has the weakest Speech Power of our crew. So she needs the healing boost more than a weaksauce attack!

Now it's treasure time.




Quick Thinker? Survivalist?

Pedrinho, you're up!




This had better be a dinosaur.

(I promised you guys that the Lost Island would have dinosaurs, and right now you think I'm all talk.)




All Tacticians who have studied Guerilla Warfare know how to make dinosaur-worthy traps.

Pedrinho is not such a Tactician, but he's going to step up anyway.






By this point, the Hurricane of Rio's powers are no longer confined to the dance floor.




If we risk studying the beast, we get 5 Study tokens.

We have outgrown the need for Study tokens, so we choose instead to increase our odds of later success.




If we grab ALL the treasure, we get 4 extra Collect and 4 extra Campaign tokens.

Let's just keep our eyes on the prize - and on not losing Resolve.




As if there were any doubt.




Let's see how our new bling can drive up our final Renown score!




What boring excuses for bonuses.

Let's choose anyway. For SCIENCE!




Emilia's fears are justified. It would be foolish to face the Anti-Explorer leader without the Hurricane of Rio by our side!




Back to the map. Yet another treasure lies within our grasp, but we're done banging around. Our goal - the Supreme Scientist - is far to the northwest, and that treasure node's exits do NOT lead us any closer to that goal.

We'll start by going back the path we came.




We get all of two steps before THIS happens again.

If we continue on the path I've set, we can hit two more Supply loss events before we're in trouble.




So here's something I never got to show you guys before.

That black skull icon means this node has an Epic Encounter. These can easily end the game if you're not prepared, but they also come with wild rewards if you can handle it.

These encounters can show up randomly from Expedition 2 onward, but I just never had a opportunity to do one for this LP.

Unfortunately - this close to final victory - we shouldn't take the risk.

I've played this encounter before, and it's pretty damn nasty for a non-Aggressive crew.




Just three more steps to our goal.

That treasure to the southwest is actually one of the other final endings, so we're not going to do it.

It's also the tyrannosaurus battle.

So we'll proceed to the Supply node instead.




Another chance for Pedrinho to shine.






All right, let's check out this tuba-playing whale.




At least we won't have to face starvation debuffs before we fight the Supreme Scientist.




One more step, then it's ultimate victory or ruin.

The penultimate node DOES look kinda interesting, though.




The forces of evil know him as the Hurricane of Rio, and tremble at his approach. But his friends and his captain know him as just Pedrinho.




An ordinary man, lacking in Survivalist skill, does not get the option to ride sauropods.

Pedrinho is not an ordinary man.




No, Pedrinho, it's a good day to be you.

After his slide down the sauropod's neck, we still have the option to watch them anyway.

Okay.




This is not a particularly rewarding use of our time.




Let's get the hell out of here.




Whatever, ladies. Can we please go win the game now?




We are so done with this.




The final move of the game. Right here.

As they say, the boatman waits for us all.

I say we send him the Supreme Scientist as our warmup act.




Hey, remember in Black Panther when Killmonger made it to Wakanda, and he's getting ready to fight Black Panther, and Black Panther told him it's not too late to back down, but Killmonger was all like "I lived my entire life waiting for this moment! I trained, I lied, I killed just to get here! I killed in America, Afghanistan, Iraq! I took life from my own brothers and sisters right here on this continent! And all this death just so I could kill you!"?

We're not quite to that point with this guy... but we did risk staying on a sinking island just so we could hunt him down.

We are so totally NOT leaving.




The possibility we should worry about is whether the Anti-Explorers have a Supreme Riot of Rio.

Oh wait, that's what we have.




Get ready!




It WOULD be funny if the final boss of this game were indeed Santa Claus.

But as you're about to see, tyrants, the truth is even more ridiculous.




And the absurdity of this game and its universe reaches a zenith.

This must be the only non-Creationist game that will ever exist where the final battle is with Charles Darwin.




To be fair, this is a totally legitimate point. All through this LP, we've been poking fun at what exploitative, irresponsible jackasses our crew really are.

Anyway, this part allows us to debuff Darwin before the battle by using things we've done over the course of the game. Honestly, this is a great idea and I hope that Renowned Explorers 2 (if and when such a game is ever developed) makes more use of it.

We'll start by waving our copy of Origin of Species 2 in his face.




"And just for the record, it has been very well received for explaining the existence of giant sheep, mummies, and ghosts" is one of my favorite bits of text in this entire game.




Time for a generic proclaimation that human progress can't stop won't stop.




There really should be doubt in his mind, since the real Darwin wouldn't hide knowledge from the world.

But of course, we long ago accepted that strict historical accuracy was never a goal in this game.




With no options left to debuff him further, the final battle is upon us.

If we'd had a mean crew member, like Kiwi, we could have straight up insulted him, too.




While the REIS version of Darwin has everything you'd need to be a Bond villain (a secret island lair, an army of themed henchmen, wacky ultra-tech, and a goal that hurts the world), I think his villainous threats could use a little work.




Mood is irrelevant now. Only victory matters.




So we're up against one velociraptor-riding mad scientist and four of the familiar Anti-Explorer Enforcers.

Luckily, the henchmen will not respawn during this battle (unlike certain other boss battles) and Darwin is coming in Devious, so things are looking good for us.




A triple shot for Party Time is lined up right out of the gate, and we're not wasting it.

In one move, two of the Enforcers are out of the equation, and we're at Persuasive for +25 Speech Defense.




A third enforcer soon succumbs to the power of Maria's leg.




Maria and Pedrinho kicked so much ass that there are no targets in Emilia's reach (except for Amnesia Shot maybe, but we're not going to waste that).

So she's just going to enhance Maria.




End of round 1.

The Supreme Scientist and one Enforcer are still up. I doubt they'll be able to take Pedrinho down in one round.




Darwin attempts to make Pedrinho sad, but fails to do enough damage to even ruin his Excited mood.




The final Anti-Explorer Enforcer in the game does slightly better.

Slightly.

Start of round 2.

That last Enforcer actually took away Pedrinho's Excited mood (he's terrified now), so let's have Emilia cheer him back up.




With his Excited mojo back (and the +25% Speech Power bonus that comes with it), Pedrinho has a nice chance of one-shotting the last Enforcer.




The Friendly approach is not proving that you're full of win, but getting your enemies to proclaim that you're full of win.




Again, we have a final crew member with no real target.

She will buff Pedrinho, because Pedrinho is kicking so much ass now and he needs to be as Excited as possible about that.




End of round 2. It my hope that the Supreme Scientist will continue to plink us.




The Supreme Scientist repeats his experiment of trying to sadden Pedrinho.

It's not very effective.




Start of round 3.

Darwin can only plink us, but he has like 550 Spirit Points. He's specifically resistant to ALL Friendly statuses (Excited, Confident, Impressed), but vulnerable to Enrage.

So I'm going to use Pedrinho's Disarming Smile to speed this along.




As ever, the gestures of a properly-executed Disarming Smile are a mystery, beyond the ken of lesser explorers.




Next, Maria sneaks behind the trees to use her basic Excite move.




Then Emilia plinks him.

Thus ends round 3.

Unless the Supreme Scientist switches up his attacks, this is going to be a certain - and very slow - battle.




And so it is.

Every round from now on, Darwin continues to plink our crew members for piddly damage that Emilia can easily heal on our turn (if it's even necessary).

Then we plink Darwin two or three times back, except when the Devious mood pips fall enough for us to risk an Enrage attack.

Continue this pattern without variation or interruption, and you have the next (and last) 3 rounds of this encounter.

This is a specific flaw with this particular boss battle. Darwin does have some harsh moves that he can whip out if you go Devious or Aggressive on him... but for a player like us who is actually willing to plink away at Friendly, he's a kitten.

Compare this to the showdown with Rivaleux, where he has a counter for all your moods, or the Tyrannosaurus battle, which is super-Aggressive and even if that's how your crew likes it, the beast is going to eat your Resolve like candy unless you're badass enough to finish it first.

So rather than making you sit through all that, we'll just skip to our victory.




I don't feel particularly honorable, but whatever. Let's get our final treasure now.




A much better place for US, sure. A better place for everyone else? Not so confident.




So we get a dinosaur fossil (instead of a living dinosaur), Darwin goes back to being a responsible scientist, and... I guess the Anti-Explorers are still out there.

I feel happy for Darwin, but sad for everyone else.

No wait, I feel sad for Darwin, too.

Because "William McGonagall" was probably this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McGonagall




More Naturalist-flavored Renown, please.




Our ultimate victory is officially secured. Now let's attend our own ceremony where everyone will proclaim us the most Renowned Explorers ever.




Our final haul.




Our final score.

To be brutally honest, 5800-ish is not all THAT impressive among what the real REIS wizards can get. You'll notice Mogri himself posted a score of almost 20k earlier! But 5.8k will do just fine for a LP with an audience who were largely unfamiliar with this game (and where I mostly avoided risks except when the payoff was too sweet to ignore).

Now let's enjoy our victory procession of "Explorer of the Year" party events!




Hooray! Go us!




We don't "look like" we're the best explorers, WE ARE!




We've been at the top of the explorer scoreboard for so long, I'd be surprised if Emilia even remembers what Rivaleux looks like.




Meh.




Awesome victory pose power, activate!

And so things end as they began. Even with Emilia being the center of attention as she is officially crowned the Explorer of the Year, she STILL cares far more about that butterfly than the world around her.

Well, tyrants, it was a lot of fun to do LP with you. Thank you for reading, and I hope that you all enjoyed it as much as I did.

After this run was finished, I was thinking of doing another REIS run, but I'm a little burned out on this game right now. So I think my next LP should be Ancient Domains Of Mystery (the new graphical version with extra features, classes, races, and dungeons!), Sword of the Stars: The Pit, or maybe even XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.

I wonder if anyone here has an opinion on which I should pick?

Mogri did an LP of Ancient Domains of Mystery 1.1.1 quite some time ago. How different is the new graphical version?

I've never seen anything of Sword of the Stars so I think I would be most interested in that one.

A lot has changed in ADOM in the years since then.

Aside from the new graphics (and music), there are now achievements, numerous quality of life enhancements (bug fixes, autoexplore, more unified menus, choosing your starsign, more explicit quest instructions), startup options to raise/lower difficulty, two new races (Ratlings and Mist Elves, IMO both interesting), two new classes (Duelists and Chaos Knights, again both interesting), player ghosts and uniques (although these aren't as interesting as in Crawl), random dungeons (they spawn on random tiles of the world map), quite a few new handcrafted locations (Frost Caves, Volcano, Ultimate Dungeon, Bordertown, etc), a few new sidequests, and two new endings (Most Stupid Follower Of Chaos and Nihilist endings), and probably other things I can't recall off the top of my head.

I'd say there's more than enough to warrant another LP, if people want to see it.

Sword of the Stars actually began life as a 4X space strategy game. SOTS 1 was well-received (after all its expansions) and today remains a widely-respected game of the mid-2000's. SOTS 2... not so much. Someone else can recap the controversy if they wish (I choose not to dwell on it), but you will not find the love for SOTS 2 among the fans that SOTS 1 enjoys.

After that, however, the developers brought the franchise to the roguelike genre - Sword of the Stars: The Pit, where they again found success.

Besides the change of theme (still in a dungeon, but it's sci-fi where most of these games are fantasy), the Pit offers a different take on the genre. Your equipment degrades as you use it - in Crawl or ADOM, you often die because you made a single mistake and got ganked, but in the Pit, you die because you made dozens of little mistakes and let all your weapons/armor disintegrate (and THEN you die quickly). Also, your skills and crafting are way more important than most roguelikes.

I did not realize The Pit was a roguelike instead of a 4X. (Wikipedia was woefully lacking on info about that specific title. I probably should have googled it instead.) To be honest that does make me a bit less interested in it.

There was also an LP of X-Com: UFO Defense but I don't think anyone has covered X-COM 2.

Eagerly awaiting the expansion where Emilia and Co. explore the island of the Dahan and get counter-smiled by Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares.

This sure was a ride.

Bravo!

I'd be happy to see ADOM, though I'd certainly read either of the others.

He did indeed, and I was waiting to play it a bunch myself before reading this LP because of my usual crippling fear of spoilers!

Anyway, I've now beaten it a few times, and this game is rad, and it would never have been on my radar otherwise, so thanks! (And I let myself read the LP now too, which was also rad!)

Congrats on the victory and thank you for playing and introducing me to this game.

As for your next LP, whatever it is, I'll be interested to see it.

Thank you for the kind words, everyone. I'm happy that I could bring this game more love, especially from such a fine crew as you all.

I have decided that my next LP here will be the deluxe ADOM - though I will hold off for a little bit, as a rather big new patch is in the works. There's plenty of new things to see and comment on, so I'll expect it'll be a nice ride (though also frustrating, you know, because roguelike).

The LP moderator, Falselogic, may note that this LP is completed.