Sacrifice: Persephone Mission 3


For this mission, Persephone gives us a really solid unit, and a decent spell.


Troll
700 Mana, 2 Souls

Say hello to the one unit where Persephone's unusually high health regeneration is an actual advantage: the Troll.

The Troll's unique gimmick is that its regeneration never stops unless it's dead or at full health, where other units stop regenerating in combat and when on the move. Backed by Persephone's increased regeneration, Trolls gain a little over 60 HP a second. Their own base HP is 1600, so 60 a second might not sound like much, but it's more than enough to let Trolls shrug off light damage, particularly since Trolls have 40% resistance to melee and 10% to ranged damage. That means a melee unit's base damage per second needs to be over a 100 to start having the ability to slowly kill the Troll, and ideally it's much higher than that if it's going to kill the Troll in a reasonable timeframe. And given the Troll will be busily pounding away at its tormentor the whole way....

The Troll is my personal favorite of its class of melee unit. I tend to use Netherfiends more in real terms just because they're paired with Animate Dead, but on their own merits Trolls are fantastic and fantastically splashable. In the phase of the game they first show up, they tend to last a surprisingly long period of time. They also benefit from the fact that the competition at this level isn't particularly fierce -there's merits to the other gods at this level, but Pyro is the only one I'd consider fairly generally a notable competitor. The other three gods are worth considering for specific, relatively niche reasons, but the Troll is really the default great choice for this level.

They also make for a fairly ridiculous solo Guardian as far as delaying a Manalith's destruction goes. They might not be able to fight back against ranged tormentors, but with the full 75% damage reduction a Manalith provides they're forcing the enemy to dish out more than 260 damage per second to be making any headway at all. (Between their 60 HP regeneration and their innate ranged resistance) Small early-game armies may take so long to push through that it's simply not worth an enemy's time to try. This is only mildly important in the campaign, but from a multiplayer perspective they're probably the single best possible Guardian in the game, especially since they're an investment of a mere 2 souls. Their innate 40% melee resistance also means just trying to mob them with melee is still a slow plan, in addition to one that gives them the chance to fight back.


Grasping Vines
500 Mana

I'm not much of a fan of Grasping Vines, personally.

Its effect is simple: it immobilizes a single target for 9 seconds. By 'immobilizes', I actually mean 'stops movement and only movement'. Where Freeze is a complete lock-out, Grasping Vines leave the target free to attack, cast spells, and use creature special abilities. It also doesn't work on fliers, and of course shields block it. Its timing for acquisition is also a bit annoying, because the units that are particularly worth hitting with Grasping Vines -aside enemy wizards- haven't shown up yet.

Immobilizing a target does have several uses, letting you keep a melee unit from reaching the fray quite so quickly, preventing an enemy wizard from scooping up souls quite so readily, preventing a fleeing unit from successfully escaping, etc, but overall it tends to be a bit underwhelming in my experience. I dunno, maybe it's a bigger deal in multiplayer, but in my opinion the main point in its favor is that it's paired with Trolls.

To be fair, I'm not a fan of the disable/slow spells in general, and compared to the competition at this level? Grasping Vines is probably the best of the bunch. Level 3 is probably the most mediocre level set in the game, honestly.

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The actual mission is... oddly complicated, and also its scripting seems to be horrifically broken.

First of all, we're returning to the topic of the bizarre pointlessness of the 'kill Thestor or don't kill Thestor' Boon decision. We killed him. I didn't go back and redo the mission but skipping the Boon to have Thestor here and mess with your head. Yet here he is anyway, just fine. I honestly really hope that's a product of how horrifically broken this mission's scripting is, because if it's intentional that killing Thestor doesn't prevent him from rejoining you here...

So, broken scripting. I had four different attempts at recording this mission prior to this success. In each case, Zyzyx didn't say anything past the Troll and Thestor descriptions, and in fact aside the not-really-an-exception of Buta's taunts ("Pyroborea!" etc) no non-standard dialogue happened at all... and banishing Buta didn't end the mission, except that if I pressed Escape I was instantly given the Victory screen without explanation.

Eventually, I did what you see in the video: select the Troll first, by itself, and wait for Zyzyx to finish his description. Then select Thestor and wait until Zyzyx to finish that dialogue. Then finally approach the Manafount to be attacked by two Firefists while Zyzyx remarks on how they're Trolls and Persephone won't like that. With that sequence of events done, the rest of the mission seemed to function correctly.

Notably, this mission was much easier in the takes where I broke the scripting. I suspect this is connected to the fact that Buta's AI doesn't actually activate until you've triggered the Firefist attack, though I'm not entirely sure what the issue might've been. I don't think he was using Dragonfire in those takes, for one, and I know for a fact he wasn't summoning as large of armies. I'm wondering if maybe there's scripting that gives him extra souls if you wave off Shakti, and it wasn't firing in those takes? I'm really not sure.

Then there's that abrupt decision-point where Mithras has an utterly inexplicable line about a 'difficult decision' even though no decision was presented to Eldred within the mission. That's how you get your Boon: if you choose to handle Buta on your own, Persephone promptly gives you the Boon, as seen in this video. If you decide to let Shakti help you, well....


... you get that video.

The obvious difference is the two Phoenix Buta gains, of course, which is shockingly out of depth relative to, you know, level 3. Weirdly, though, the game is actually soft-pedaling things here; the Phoenix may be kinda terrifying, but not only is Shakti helping you but accepting Shakti's help quietly vanishes a lot of Buta's troops. That first Manalith of his is suddenly unguarded, and so too are his overly-early Bombards missing, and frankly the Guardianed Bombards were a lot nastier to deal with than a couple of Phoenix are. Though you do also have your initial Manalith taken away, because it's actually Shakti's. The interesting thing is this seems to be the initial map setting; if you pay attention in the first video, you might notice the smoke rising up from it is green, whereas the Manaliths I summon myself give off a white smoke. And Eldred's team color is always white while Shakti's is green.

Also, not only is Shakti a second wizard at all -and I've been over repeatedly how 2v1 is so big a deal- but Shakti is actually an entire level above both you and Buta, so her help is a bit more substantive than you might expect. (Though, oddly, she didn't seem to use her Level 4 spells)

Incidentally, this is the only time Phoenix are in any way acknowledged by the actual plot, and... we don't actually get any info on them. They just randomly show up in response to Buta begging for help, each get a line, and there you go.

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Narratively, we're seeing early signs of the coming endgame contrast between James and Persephone: just as in the James route we had James deciding to defend himself while Persephone went on the offense, so too do we have Persephone in this mission asserting that offense is important and taking matters in her own hands. She's even willing to commit two wizards to this, however junior one of them might be.

It's also interesting to note that Persephone is apparently aware of how slippery and treacherous Stratos is. A first time player might not notice it, since she alludes to it obliquely, but Persephone saying that she has Stratos' aid 'at least for the moment' is suggestive. And of course this mission involves Stratos' spies helping Persephone pull off a stealthy attack. It's interesting to note that James seems to be the only god Stratos fully fooled -everyone else seems to know Stratos has chronic backstabbing disorder, even if they don't suspect him of having summoned Marduk.

On a different topic, we've finally seen the James/Persephone/Stratos alliance be confirmed in all three routes... and in all three routes how James came to be a part of this alliance is never addressed. He just is. This bothers me for a few different reasons. It's pretty clear he's allied with Persephone and Stratos because him and Persephone are meant to be 'good' gods and Stratos starts out looking like and pretending to be another 'good' god, as far as meta narrative reasons, but in-character-wise it's pretty difficult to buy that Persephone the warmonger is in an existing alliance with James the peace-seeker, especially given how we've already seen that she's vaguely contemptuous of him. Not as bad as Stratos is, but she's fully convinced his way of doing things is self-destructive, and that he's basically an idiot for not seeing that himself.

(It's actually funny to note that only the 'blatant evil' gods seem to actually respect James to a meaningful extent. Pyro only turns contemptuous toward James once the attempted alliance fails, and we see that Pyro has a habit of ridiculing anyone who he feels has turned against him, suggesting the contempt in question is hot air blown for psychological self-defense. "I don't need him anyway, that spineless worm!")

It especially burns alongside the flagrant arbitrariness of the Pyro/James alliance falling through. I'd be a lot more interested in seeing a version of Sacrifice's plot where James and Pyro ally, Stratos and Persephone ally, and Charnel is secretly allied with Stratos. Trying to turn the plot into looking like a straightforward Team Good Vs Team Evil bit is just boring and unnatural to the world that was made.

Oh well.

See you next Persephone mission.

Comments

  1. When I did this mission (and I did it without Shakti), I killed the Firefists without triggering Buta's AI. It didn't activate until I got in the line of sight of his first manalith's guardians. Didn't really make the mission much easier, but it just reinforces how janky Sacrifice's scripting can be.

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    Replies
    1. Wow. What is with this mission, seriously...

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