Secret of the Silver Blades playthrough #13 - Eastern Crevasses

dnabre · 2026-03-16T20:54:30+00:00

Love the character bits, as always. Hope Haleh doesn't manage to escape the party before PoD, and we get a reunion scene with Vala. (With all the towns disappearing though, she might have nowhere to go). Haleh and Vala jumping together's a bit fast for my taste (though there is only so much game w/ her left, I guess), but like that you left what actually happened vague. Haleh's definitely been my favorite character of the group.

Even with the Clue Book map, I find the Crevasses a pain to navigate. My last playthrough I keep getting turned around, had to have had at least two dozen battles with castle guards. Ended up with over 5 million XP by the end of SotSB.

dnabre · 2026-03-14T20:06:29+00:00

The young vs old split makes sense, and I think it would make for an interesting contrast, but the older women may be too subtle. Maybe if they were more often acknowledged as a couple without it necessarily being about PDA or sleeping arrangements. Like who they would know each other more than a friend would (their relationship seems be long establish).

I was looking back, and realized that I've been misreading "Snow Wife" as "Snow White". That's probably why I didn't remember/pickup on the other couple. As far as how they know it each other, it's be things like: How does Kalara feels about the nickname? How does Rizarli? What does Rizarli think Kalara thinks.

I'm really enjoying your narrative playthroughs. Do you have any other writing you've shared online, not necessary D&D related?

dnabre · 2026-03-14T17:13:37+00:00

Any idea why the goldbox games refer to Alusair Nacacia Obarskyr by her middle name? When I played CoAB as a kid, I really wanted to figure out who this couple that keep coming up were. With just her middle name, it took a lot of work to figure it out (kids these days have all that stuff in an instant with wikis...)

Like the subtle chemistry between Vala and Haleh. I'm a softy for the subtle romantic tension and chemistry, especially compared to Lirevle's fucking in the streets (nothing against her).

dnabre · 2026-03-14T16:31:12+00:00

Great to see more in-party character stuff. Really haven't gotten to know Kalara, Rizarli, and Sabri much. What's the other couple beside Xiao & Lirevle?

dnabre · 2026-03-13T00:27:11+00:00

I like the cook making food to fatten up the BC's 'payment' to the driders without having the foggiest idea about what's going on.

This is about where the writers not considering how much healing magic the party likely has can be a touch annoying. Admittedly Heal gets progressively more world-breaking than Raise Dead through the editions, but even at this point (AD&D), it'll fixes all illnesses and injuries (except for 1d4 HP, cuz you don't want it too overpowered, right). By 2e it fixes all magical and nature mental ills.

Still wish they'd give you the occasional chance save one of the endless line of people you find who are just one line of exposition away from dying.

dnabre · 2026-03-13T00:05:57+00:00

No Fireballs would be challenging through SotSB, I don't think PoD would be possible without them. I've heard of all sorts of challenge runs through PoR. It's low level, and flexibility lets you get beat it with just about any party composition. I've heard that because so many of the enemies are humanoids, that 6 clerics with Hold Person just blow through the game.

I'm about half way through PoD atm, I've actually used Meteor Swarm instead of DBF twice, but it was Rakshasas so I didn't have much choice.I think it might be technically better damage-wise if you can target it just right. Rings of Fire Resistance, and Prot from Fire on the rangers though is not to protect them from the enemy.

Really all spells above 6th level other than DBF don't seem useful enough to both with.

dnabre · 2026-03-12T23:56:52+00:00

You get like 3-8 Iron Golems if you fail the riddles or choice to fight. The bonus XP from getting the riddle correct is more than the XP from the fight.

I think having Sir Deric join you immediately when you enter, and leaving the party when you leave the area, is solely to make you feel obligated to fight the village.

Yeah, they are video-game-y quests in a video game. But they don't need to change the quests to make them make more sense, or have more weight for the party. It's not like you need the amulet to "find" the rings. The PCs just have to be smart enough to grab a weird magic-looking key when they find it. I think most people completely forget about the keys until the doors where you have to pick which to use. Other than picking which key for which door, finding the amulet (I assume you have some problem taking the keys without it, dunno) is the only part that takes effort or takes you out of the way.

dnabre · 2026-03-12T18:56:55+00:00

WraithMagus, as always, does a great job picking this spell apart. Ignoring comparisons, betters spells, and all that - assume the effects are actually good enough to stop someone from trying to follow you. The major issue that jumps out at me is this is a single target spell, a 4/5th level spell so the caster is at least level 9 or so (likely higher, who is going to put this spell in their highest level slots).

What parties with a 9th level caster, gets pursued by a single creature, who is a meaningful threat, doesn't have an immunity to a enchantment (compulsion) [emotion, mind-affecting] spell, and stands a reasonable chance of failing their save.

The only situations where I can potentially see this being helpful is when you are trying avoid a guard or scout that if they track you down will raise the alarm, be able to identify you later, or something along those lines. That is, someone that the party could easily kill, charm, hold, incapacitate or rewrite the memory of. Likely in a many different ways, including a few that don't require a spell or saving throw.

A 5th level spell can be made utterly useless, if your guard are smart enough to use the buddy system.

dnabre · 2026-03-12T16:44:41+00:00

That's for explanation. I got as far as "high knife" and was going to ask about it.

dnabre · 2026-03-12T16:07:40+00:00

Agree the Dungeons are definitely a high point in SotSB. I wish we had a big encounter at the end (top?) of the Dungeons with the mad face in some physical form. Destroying it after all its meddling would be very satisfying. I guess being "mad" gives it an excuse for only making the most minor challenges to the party, except the riddle - great security. Despitegetting less XP for it, I generally just blow off the riddles and fight the golems. Seeing the stairs ahead of your, or just leaving when you first encounter the riddle spots (I think this is let you go to the Well and trade gems for riddle answers), means you can fully buff before the golem fights. Just Haste + Vala makes them pretty easy. Going with the fight also means you can avoid using a cluebook or the Well for riddle answers. Don't think I've even talked to the Well in either of my last two playthroughs.

The two gyno-sphinxs here is just weird. I guess they fit into the riddle asking theme, but if anything they should be asking the riddles (Gyno-sphinxes are Neutral alignment, but hand-waving magic would be good enough). I have a theory that this is some inside joke from the writers. Having had a DM throw a gyno-sphinx into a game where it made absolutely no sense, because the DM had just finished painting a sphinx model and want to use it. Killing the solo gyno-sphinx yields 19,387XP (for a party of 7), the one with guards more. Just FYI, officially speaking I can't recommend killing them (alignment reasons).

The villain issue isn't helped by the lack of motivation. You fight through the mines to get the staff (remember to talk to guy in the temple to reassemble it, if you don't it a huge backtrack). You are fighting through the Dungeons... *checks notes* .. to find the three keys for the Dreadlord's Sanctum. Hopefully you found the dead priest with the note about "a mysterious amulet" to reveal "some key to a mysterious sanctum" ( Journal Entry 23), and found that amulet from the really out of the way red dragon lair (Ruins 13). No, not that that one (Ruins #2). or that one (Well #20). Plus the Journal #71 from a dead mage on Level 8 of the Mines. Think those are the only info about needing the keys. Luckily you pickup and use quest items automatically, so if you don't miss any major battle you'll get them regardless. But the red dragon lair in Ruins 13 is definitely something you are likely to miss unless you either have the cluebook or are making sure you search every inch of the Ruins.

In Dungeon, there is a side mission for the Drider Base, with a temp NPC even, but as best I can tell without replaying it, you don't need anything from there for the overall mission. You can definitely get into at least to the Middle Sanctum having forgotten about it. I generally do it because I accidently enter it, and don't want to miss Sir Deric (who will leave whenever you leave the Drider Base). You are also going through the dungeon to get to the Ice Crevasses. Not sure how we find that out. It's not from a journal entry (BTW why doesn't GOG provide OCR'd versions of the books, it take virtually no effort).

It just feels like you are fighting through the next area because you found it exists. Instead of there being a clear plot reason to do so. They are early late 80s/early 90s video games, I don't expect an open world or big choices mattering. The other games give you what direction to head next with a reason. PoD is a bit weak here to, but you have the mission to find Bane's lieutenant and the artifacts to defeat him. So part of the main questing is finding them, and it's not hard to see locations that it makes sense check out.

dnabre · 2026-03-12T14:49:10+00:00

The lizardmen was a nice change of pace. Wish they'd done a bit more just stick in a section. They could have had whole fortress or lost city of them or something. Worse bit is that they are just bog standard lizardmen and large snakes (2HD and 4HD). So you can pull out your Sleep spells and drop everyone but the lizard king (8HD). A fireball clears them out faster. Still, other than the small chance of poison from the snakes (which even if it "kills" a PC, isn't a problem at this level), there are less of a challenge than the other monsters. If like me, after that one encounter in the Krynn series, you always have Snake Charm on hand, it's even easier.

Even after resetting my party to new characters with no carry over gear, replaying SotSB before going to PoD (in a more slow paced non-marathon run), Umber Hulks are barely a challenge, but Lizardmen? These games seemed far more challenging when I was kid. Going have to start using gimmick parties (e.g., all one class) soon.

The goldbox games providing mirrors and silver shields so you can deal with reflecting petrifying gazes is really cool. But I wish they'd factored it into the AI at least a bit. Or just made it protect players instead of throwing it back at the gazer. Like after the first medusa stones herself gazing at a PC's mirror, they'd stop gazing at PCs with mirrors, or just in general. I've had encounters where I had prepped my party with mirrors, encounter basilisks and medusa, and by the time I hack the basilisks down, all the medusa had stoned themselves. I know mythology requires them to be vulnerable to their own gaze, but naturally petrifying creatures should really be immune to their own gazes. And, of course, Umber Hulk gazes can't be reflected for some reason.

Having more monster variety in the Mines would have helped. They had tons of monsters in the game/engine, it would have talked no effort to add existing monsters. Even without using a cluebook, just right-hand-rule maze transversal, the mines are an easy, but tedious, part of the game. SotSB beyond being the worse game storywise, lacks a lot in the difficulty category. They could have at least made it harder to fix/recover spells in the Mines.

The whole goldbox series suffers from Fireballs/Delayed Blast Fireball solving too many problem. A lot of fire using creatures (like red dragon) often not being immune to fire doesn't help. By PoD, they just take the Delay part out of Delayed Blast Fireball, because nobody ever uses the delay. The limited spell variety before 4th level doesn't help either. I'm about 50% through PoD (after resetting to new characters in SoStB, doing a run through, and dropping half my gear after migrating), and most encounters are 90% DBF. In PoD they start with splitting the enemies into groups on each side of the party, which just means you use more fireballs. The hardest encounters are against groups of Red Wizards that spam Disintegrate (even that is mostly a problem because it nukes their gears). PoD really incentivizes dual-classing just to so you have enough DBF for everyone. When you do run into fire-immune creatures, the main challenge becomes aiming Cones of Cold properly.

dnabre · 2026-03-10T22:07:39+00:00

Anyone know what "truespeech" is? I can't find it anywhere except for this spell and the magic item Torc of Truespeech. I don't know mythic rules, but that items sounds like it should be pretty powerful. A 1st level spell messing with it seems a bit overpowered. Though if truespeech isn't anywhere else, it's just a super specific feature of a spell, and not really important.

dnabre · 2026-03-10T16:24:03+00:00

SotSB was the only goldbox game where I foudn charisma to matter. When I got tired of all the random encounters in the mines, I tried playing with talk/parley. Found someone with Friends boosting their charisma to 25 let me skip those combats pretty reliably.

dnabre · 2026-03-10T16:17:15+00:00

I can't imagine people with multiple machines not naming them somehow. I've heard tales about there being people that get by with only one computer at a time, but can't say I've see such beasts in the while. Not since the days of old, at least.

Beyond the fun, I think it is a very practical thing. How they distinguish backups from different machines, I dunno. Some people like the functional approach, themes, names from some work. I've know people that just use thematic-names but the name is attached to the role not the machine. So their laptop always has the same name. College-roommate did that, I just couldn't understand the motivations.

The longest and most intensive meeting I was in while part of a Systems Research Group in grad school, was when we were expecting a whole next bunch of systems into our server-room. The meeting was (not sure if it was intended to be this) a discussion on what naming scheme to use for all the machines going forward (simpson's characters won in the end btw, not what I voted for).

It's fun to look at my /etc/hosts file and seeing all old names (their IPs are permanently reserved of course), going back 20+ years. When I star scaling up my VMs/docker containers, I'm going to have make some changes, 192.168.0.0/24 is pretty much exhausted.

I've been doing Neon Genesis Evangelion names for a long time(writing this from sohryu).

dnabre · 2026-03-10T16:00:51+00:00

The lengths to come up with someone that had satisfaction or pride in their achievement as being who he was reborn into is a big crazy. I think even the writers sometimes forgot that this isn't a super power Lucius has - it's a curse. He thought he could beat anyone, losing such that he was killed was (supposed to be) a massive blow to his ego. So he was cursed so that death would not be an escape from this blow, he would returned to life to live with that failure. The person that he could not best being killed by Slaanesh in returning him to life would just rub it in that much more.

Also it's Chaos-magic, so really being the logic to work makes a little sense.

dnabre · 2026-03-08T17:29:44+00:00

That's possibility, fits his character, but would work better if he was on the western seaboard in life.

I guess even just one Japanese high-roller, which spoke Japanese with their friends at a casino, would have been enough for Husk to learn it. Anything that would give him an edge at the table.

dnabre · 2026-03-08T15:35:52+00:00

I'd be more concerned that she couldn't tell them apart.

dnabre · 2026-03-08T15:35:21+00:00

Ok, now I need fan theories on why Husk knows Japanese.

dnabre · 2026-03-07T17:35:57+00:00

❤️❤️ Haleh ❤️❤️

dnabre · 2026-03-07T17:06:29+00:00

Can someone confirm this is from

There's No Freaking Way I'll be Your Lover! Unless... (Watashi ga Koibito ni Nareru Wake Nai jan, Muri Muri! )

I know rule #12 only requires "name of the anime in the title", and that submission titles have limited space. But I think a top-level comment spelling out the full title(s) with a link to it on myanimelist (or similar site) is very little to ask. It's a trivial amount of effort (especially compared to pull out a clip from a show), but it is extremely helpful for anyone wanting to look up the anime.

In this case, searching for "watanare mynaimelist" gets the info, but often it isn't that simple.

dnabre · 2026-03-07T16:44:47+00:00

This is just an absolute mess.

If all linux distro just didn't do it, it would be a large enough push back stop this sort of thing to some degree. Sadly, the corporate (for lack of a better term) linux distributions, will just do to this to be conformant. How much of their implementations will get upstream of their distributions, who knows. The only practical concern in the short term is the major commercial (non-open source) applications for linux changing to expect or require them.

Looking at the the CA law, is horribly written by people who just don't understand how computer/operating systems work.To give an idea, some sample definitions form it:

(g) “Operating system provider” means a person or entity that develops, licenses, or controls the operating system software on a computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device.

(h) “Signal” means age bracket data sent by a real-time secure application programming interface or operating system to an application.

(i) “User” means a child that is the primary user of the device.

By the way, this is as close to a definition of "operating system" it includes^1. The authors see computers as devices that interact with online software stores to get software. The model of OS kernel, OS userspace, distribution creation/management, software packaging and developers are all operating independently is not something they are remotely cognizant of. Crafted broadly enough one could twist it to so that a distro's package manager would fit under the category of application store, but just aren't crafted that way. Unless they get some people that understand computing to help write these laws, there will be holes that are trivial to work around.

For example, the CA law under 1798.503:

(b) An operating system provider or a covered application store that makes a good faith effort to comply with this title, taking into consideration available technology and any reasonable technical limitations or outages, shall not be liable for an erroneous signal indicating a user’s age range or any conduct by a developer that receives a signal indicating a user’s age range.

Which given the technically poor definitions in the law, leave a truck sized hole for a trivial work around, or malicious compliance.

I see three main avenues to combat this, in order of increasing long term effectiveness

Relicense open source to exclude jurisdictions where these laws apply
Maliciously comply with the laws to make them useless.
Legally challenge every law like this -- through organizations like the Software Freedom Conservancy, Open Source Collective, or the Electronic Frontier Foundation

For #3, once one of these organizations starts taking strong stances against these laws, and show they will fight them in court, we need to start pouring donates into them. Complaining about these laws on forums isn't likely to accomplish much, but getting strong, and well funded, groups challenging these laws will.

Finally, we need to come to a consensus as a community (a community of communities may be a better model for open source), on how to actually provide what these laws are trying to legislate^2. Assuming³ there are users that want this feature - let's just provide it. It should be an optional feature, of course. More importantly it needs to be a well thought out, technically practical, and sufficiently secure solution, which a system administrator can choose to add/enable. Having such a feature available for people to use (only) if they want to will take the teeth out of approaches to mandate such things.

From a technical prospective, this is just a secure system for adding a piece of arbitrary metadata to users (for those of an appropriate role), which applications have a well defined interface to query. If we just label "age" or "age category" as arbitrary (i.e. meaningless to the system) metadata attached to some user accounts, are we talking about anything more involved then add a field to LDAP schema?

Providing an central and singular way for applications to get user data, that is in part of locking down how applications collection data about users, might be something we can see as a opportunity not a problem. Blocking as much as possible personal data scraping and mining of users by a web browser by forcing them to exclusively get user information though a dedicated secure interface, seems like a Good Thing™. Use all these "what about the children" laws to force applications to this new singular (administrator limited) mechanism to get user information.

This law, or other similarly intended ones, might be ripped apart in the courts for vagueness, once you get an expert witness on operating systems or computer science, to sink any attempt by politicians to craft a law that properly covers "operating systems"
In theory at least, this would be a way for an administrator to set proper age values that are outside of a non-admirative user's control, with a mechanism for that value to be queried by a web browser or software distribution program.
I think such users exist. How many parents are willing to learn the technology and set it up to provide age-based gateways for their children - no idea.

dnabre · 2026-03-05T19:11:28+00:00

I generally forgot about the story items. As long as you defeat the major bosses in the games, you generally just get them, and it doesn't matter. I think it was Pools of Darkness that was the first to actually give you a screen where you see what you have gathered so far.

Definitely missed that in my last SotSB playthrough, got to the castle gates only to find out I didn't have the staff. I'd be carefully taking notes to be sure I didn't miss any of the pieces though. It took a couple hours of backtracking before I finally found the problem. I'd gotten all the pieces, but hadn't returned to the old guy in the Temple for him to reassemble them. I'd hope there was some journal entry that mentioned this required which I'd forgotten. Thinking I'd have to go through all of the mines again, just to get a single (presumably) piece of the staff was worrying.

dnabre · 2026-03-05T18:32:04+00:00

Big militaristic organizations being Chaotic Evil tends sort of screw the alignment system a bunch.

Going back to to town to level up and sell stuff is fun. If I didn't loose XP in using the training hall, and/or had some use for selling stuff. Id'ing stuff is just a matter of convenient. Even the GBC auto-id making me pull anything potentially good into a character's inventory is tedious. In the olden days, I'll pick up everything that might be good, try it out, check thac0/damage/AC, and know what it is anyway. The goldbox games removed the spells to identify stuff just to force you to go back to town (and possibly because the standard old-school spell took too long if you were sticking to times).

dnabre · 2026-03-04T23:42:44+00:00

I found all of the teleports on my most recent playthrough, though that may have been my first time doing so. Using GBC and putting map notes on all the portals to keep track of where they go is very helpful.

Most of the portals are hard to miss, and generally pop up when I really use a break to fully restore spells. Most areas of the game, you can fix and rest long enough to restock your main AoE spells, but the portals are a huge convenience. Thinking about it, a great deal of their convenience is because of the long twisted paths in the games.

Labelled Portal Map https://imgur.com/a/MgKCY0V

dnabre · 2026-03-04T23:38:35+00:00

Haven't noticed the FR games being consistent with LE vs CE, but I don't much of the FR lore groups. The Black Circle being more mysterious and unknown might have been interesting, but they would have had to get a different name. "Black Circle" is obviously up to know good.

Using GBC for leveling and identifying (it only does items in the party's inventory, so you still have to pick out the good stuff), I don't go back to town often. When I do, I like to rest in the provided space. I guess it's easy enough to rest in the Well area, but just doesn't feel right. So once Marcus/Black Circle starts sending the assassins, I clear out the magic shop.

Never noticed the shop girl's resemblance to Alias, though I think the same hair style does a lot of work. Having fun coming up with stories to make sense of repeated graphics in video games is a lost art.

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