Enderal - Episode 5: Color of Your ******* Balls

[Vergil]

Yero was an idiot and the gods or nobility or whoever were RIGHT for telling him his role in life was to be some kind of peon.

But they objectively weren't. He was found out to have innate magical potential and managed to complete the trials to join the order and even become an instructor. It would be an equal tragedy and waste of his abilities to stay in Riverville as a ******** illiterate fish monger as it was to waste them throwing pearls before swine.

[Stack of Turtles]

Yero was an idiot and the gods or nobility or whoever were RIGHT for telling him his role in life was to be some kind of peon.

But they objectively weren't. He was found out to have innate magical potential and managed to complete the trials to join the order and even become an instructor. It would be an equal tragedy and waste of his abilities to stay in Riverville as a ******** illiterate fish monger as it was to waste them throwing pearls before swine.

No it wouldn't: libtards deserve to be ******** illiterate fish mongers.

[Vergil]

Also as far as spoilers go I don't entirely mind if it's something like the additional entrance in the valley or the house in Riverville if it's a place I've already passed through and might come back to later but I'd like to not have too many direct guides on places I haven't been to yet or detailed info on how to get the best weapons/armor/stuff like that. I don't want to just immediately figure out the meta and steamroll everything. I appreciate the feedback and tips though!

[Marcus]

However I already spent a bunch of time wandering around and popping into any and every dungeon, ruin, and cave I could find so I'm just about ready to head out for Ark anyway.

Did you make sure to visit the huge *** castle on the hill to the west?

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As a Phasmalist who specializes in magic, I strongly urge you to go there again and listen carefully.

I take it you also took care of the boss monster in the huge underground temple Old Sherath?

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Of the very few side quests on the Sun Coast, only The Voice from the Water qualifies to be called "quest" - hope you didn't miss it.

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quest.PNG

Surely, you did all bounty "quests" that can be found on the Noticeboard (every settlement has one of those):

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One of the bounties leads you to a cool pirate cave:

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EN-places-Pirate's_Hideout.jpg

[Marcus]

@Vergil One more thing: Once you're in Ark, be sure to finish the main quest as soon as possible. You just have to visit the mage at the temple to finish it. He won't be able to heal your arcane fever, but he will change your body so that your fever only increases by a fraction of what it did before. This is especially important since you're playing as a Phasmalist.

Once an apparition is banished, either due to death, because its amulet was unequipped, or because it entered a city, the phasmalist will have their Arcane Fever increased in proportion to the amount of health that the apparition lost before dying. The maximum amount of Arcane Fever that can be gained this way varies with the level of the Summon Apparition memory, begin 15% at level 1, 11% at level 2, and 8% at level 3.

In general, I recommend that you not ignore the main quests. The developers did not have many resources, so you usually only get lore dumps during the main quests.

You will see and find many interesting things while exploring the game world. However, without these lore dumps, you won't understand most of what you see because you lack the context.

[Vergil]

Did you make sure to visit the huge *** castle on the hill to the west?

It looked too big and important to not be a part of a quest or the MQ and was far enough away that I felt it was unwise to go there so early.

I take it you also took care of the boss monster in the huge underground temple Old Sherath?

Pretty sure I went here and the door was locked

Of the very few side quests on the Sun Coast, only The Voice from the Water qualifies to be called "quest" - hope you didn't miss it.

I did not 100% the entire area I just went into dungeons as I found them. I am sort of having a hard time balancing ******* around with making enough main quest/tangible progress for each part of the LP honestly.

Surely, you did all bounty "quests" that can be found on the Noticeboard (every settlement has one of those):

These I did do and the pirate cave was cool except for when I got 360 no scoped in my stupid freak pervert incel dog head by an archer

@Vergil One more thing: Once you're in Ark, be sure to finish the main quest as soon as possible. You just have to visit the mage at the temple to finish it. He won't be able to heal your arcane fever, but he will change your body so that your fever only increases by a fraction of what it did before. This is especially important since you're playing as a Phasmalist.

You will see and find many interesting things while exploring the game world. However, without these lore dumps, you won't understand most of what you see because you lack the context.

I would rather not immediately bum rush the main quest honestly. I enjoy going at a semi-consistent pace while taking breaks to explore. I'm not enthralled by the story so far nor am I a big fan of the writing so focusing on doing the main quest super fast will probably just burn me out. Nehrim got pretty incomprehensible but that never bothered me. I have enough vague context on the setting from playing that game that I don't feel too lost anyway.

Over all this is not meant to be a perfect playthrough so there is going to be a lot of things I miss. I might have an update where I go back and clear them all if I don't end up doing so naturally at some point but I make no guarantee there won't be plenty of things I miss. I want to naturally stumble upon things like I did with Nehrim and that was one of my favorite parts of playing that. If I'm directed to go to certain dungeons I'm just going to feel like I cheated and might as well just look up a guide.

[Vergil]

Really debating in my mind if I want to add any mods that are more substantial than minor gameplay tweaks but I am a little disappointed by some of the reused Skyrim armors and creatures in this one so I was curious if anyone had any experience or opinions on these?
https://www.nexusmods.com/enderalspecia ... escription
https://www.nexusmods.com/enderalspecialedition/mods/64

[Marcus]

It looked too big and important to not be a part of a quest

► Show Spoiler

The castle is an area for beginners with appropriately strong enemies. The boss of it is a mage with good loot for mages (duh). Also, going there would relieve you of the burden of having to summon a ******* bum as your first apparition lmao (the console is your friend if you need to teleport to places too far away).

That being said, the castle - or at least its outskirts - are actually part of a side quest of the highest difficulty (Reward: 3000 EP plus goodies)... but it's kind of a hidden quest and it needs a bit of preparatory work before it can even get triggered (you need to be in Ark to do that).

Pretty sure I went here and the door was locked

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Well, if you had found this location by following the road, it would have lead you right past a deserted shack which is located immediately outside of this temple.

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The key can be found on the table inside the shack:

I would rather not immediately bum rush the main quest honestly.

That's all right. I usually save the main quest for last as well. Which is exactly why I recommend you to at least go see this mage in the Sun Temple in Ark so that your Arcane Fever doesn't **** you up so much anymore.
_

quest.PNG

[Finarfin]

Really debating in my mind if I want to add any mods that are more substantial than minor gameplay tweaks but I am a little disappointed by some of the reused Skyrim armors and creatures in this one so I was curious if anyone had any experience or opinions on these?
https://www.nexusmods.com/enderalspecia ... escription
https://www.nexusmods.com/enderalspecialedition/mods/64

I installed these two too. Mod is great but the reusing of skyrim/oblivion/morrowind stuff was always something that annoyed me.

[Vergil]

Mod is great but the reusing of skyrim/oblivion/morrowind stuff was always something that annoyed me.

I feel like Nehrim was a bit better about this but also luckier. Oblivion had a lot more generic fantasy enemies like imps, goblins, wisps etc whereas Skyrim has things like Falmer being reused in Enderal which is very distracting to me.

[Norfleet]

So, what's the difference between True Directional Movement and unmodded Genuine Imitation Directional Movement?

[Vergil]

Was busy so I didn't get to play much today and what I did play was mostly exposition and mod tweaking so I think I'll wait and do an update tomorrow.

[Marcus]

This LP is dead. Vergil burnt out. Not from playing the game, but from trying to mod his PC to make it look as gay as possible.

[Vergil]

This LP is dead. Vergil burnt out. Not from playing the game, but from trying to mod his PC to make it look as gay as possible.

I was going to say this isn't true but a consequence of needing HDT-SMP physics for the armor replacer is that that Verzul gets a haircut soon ^_^

[Vergil]

Episode V: Color of Your ******* Balls

Hitting the road a pop up explains how the game handles what would normally be a typical awful Bethesda follow the NPC quest.
Instead of following Jespar to Ark he follows us but only on the set road there. If we go off the beaten path he will stop and wait.
However, there's no need to baby sit exactly where he ends up because he both has his own quest marker and as long as we make our way back to the road he will resume following until meeting back up.
Even if he fails to do this there's a contingency and he'll be waiting at Ark in his expected spot.


Verzul does his best to grit his teeth and bear Jespar's attempts at small talk as best and silently as he can.
After one too many rounds of singing Jespar calls him over to enjoy a "scenic" view of an almost entirely fog and snow obscured landscape. Great stuff. I'm sure he was planning this little maneuver in his head the whole way up here.
After his paltry attempts to look deep and world wise he drops a little bit of lore. Enderal decided to pursue a bit of autarky and close off trade with other countries as much as possible. This probably explains why we had to stow about a girlboss pirate's ship to get here.

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Pursuing a couple caves and a ruin here and there the gang of two makes their way further down the path stumbling across a very inebriated (and slightly creepy) looking man sitting on a log.
He's having a brotherly dispute about keeping watch and the fire his brother is sitting next to looks warm enough that Verzul decides to pass a message along to him

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This works about as well as expected and Ulvar (his brother) has some very choice words for Verzul to relay back to Bunvar.
Naturally he takes it in stride in a calm and collected manner with his own response for Ulvar.

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Ulvar escalates things in a testicular fashion and so Verzul makes his way down to Bunvar once again.
Already sick of this back and forth and sufficiently warmed by both the fire and the jog back and forth the demand to get physically involved in this pissing match is declined.

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Bunvar takes matters into his own frostbitten hands.
The results are about what one would expect from a drunk half frozen ****** pitching a fight with his mace wielding brother.

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Finally, after too much time wasted on sightseeing and tard wrangling the pair arrives at Ark.
Entering Jespar gives a bit of a loredump on what the deal with the Order and the Mages is.

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Moving on a couple steps there's some immediate racism from the guards complete with immersion breaking cursing and a typo (not that I have any room to talk of course )
A pop up explains the city specific fast travel system which is something I wish the Imperial City in Oblivion had sometimes.



Although it would be prudent to not waste time tending to his sorcerous AIDS, Verzul needs both some time away from Jespar and a new pair of clothes.
Dungeon delving and a bit of freelance bounty hunting in Riverville left him with a decent chunk of change so he bought a nice raiment figuring it's probably a good idea not to trudge up to the noble parts of the city in dirty robes he found in a ruin.
Spent about half his total net worth on this by the way

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Finishing running errands Verzul returns to Jespar whose attempts at small talk are immediately shut down much to his dismay and Verzul's utter indifference.
In what I assume is some sort of ****** up prank Jespar auto equips a horrendous and obscene set of clothing onto Verzul despite arriving in noble clothing of twice the value.
He immediately changes out of these clothes and they make their way to the Order's headquarters.

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Jespar gets him in with a lie that's extremely dumb if you played Nehrim and know Ostian isn't the sort of place a stuffy posh perfume seller would be based out of but the guards buys it well enough at least.
Maybe his rhetoric skill is really just that high, though not high enough to impress Verzul.

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It's a pretty impressive looking area and fairly intimidating from the outside.
Their sigil looking a little too suspiciously like that of the Inquisition from Dragon Age aside it's a cool flag.
Jespar gives a brief explanation of the situation with the order and the mages while name dropping who is apparently going to help with the fever.
He makes "Firespark" sound like a pretty important member of Narathzul's order for a guy who apparently missed out on that entire rebellion back in Nehrim. Oh well.

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Walking in Verzul's first impression of Firespark isn't great...

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He's definitely one of Narathzul's mages though. Shave off his beard and I could easily mistake him for Callisto from Nehrim.
The same delightful personality and level of enlightened euphoria that would make a redditor soy gape.

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He shoves his hands into Verzul's face for a reverse palm reading and comes to the shocking discovery the protagonist of the game is special in some way.
After trying to convince Verzul that the visions were just a meaningless dream, Jespar reminds him that the Holy Order allying with the Nehrim Mages and coming to Enderal was predicated on a dream with some similarities to Verzul's and so decides to finally take it a bit more seriously.
However, he turns out to not actually be capable of helping with the arcane fever and punts the responsibility to another mage Verzul will have to seek out in a nearby ruin.

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Once that ends Jespar shoots his shot once more by offering to have drinks at the local inn later if Verzul feels up to it.
So far Verzul is a teetotaler and "good chat" is far from how discussion with Jespar could be described.
Still, the game does give a big FOMO pop up that some quests will disappear if the main quest progresses too far without doing them first so it's up for consideration.

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Changing back into some more functional clothing Verzul decides to check out the impressive looking balcony complete with telescopes to survey the landscape.
Doing so he's reminded of a few key locales he spotted during his time in the Sun Coast he didn't get to investigate.
Remembering the key he found for a ruin and an ominous castle above it, he marks the ruin on his map and makes his way to the local Myrad tower.
Mostly due to needing faster travel but also out of curiosity as to what they even look like.

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Immediately he's impressed and awed by the look of these funky creatures.
The cost for travel is shockingly cheap at only 25 pennies so after a short explanation of how the process works he climbs on back and is off to Riverville to finish up some loose ends!

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That's all for now! If you noticed his robes magically changing towards the end there that's because I ultimately decided to try out those armor/weapon replacers.
I've very happy with them so far although wrangling HDT-SMP physics and it's requirements was a pain due to Enderal being on an older version of Skyrim Special Edition.
Did not realize until much later that I did not get the creature replacer installed so that won't appear in the next part but after that it should be installed and present.
I'll attach the updated modlist below and update the OP as usual.

► Modlist

Next time, Verzul will do a little exploration into some interesting locales he missed on his first go around and hopefully not succumb to his horrible disease while goofing off!

[A Chinese opium den]

Immediately he's impressed and awed by the look of these funky creatures.
The cost for travel is shockingly cheap at only 25 pennies so after a short explanation of how the process works he climbs on back and is off to Riverville to finish up some loose ends!

► Show Spoiler

Soulful, feels very much like a weird creature you'd see in the earlier elder scrolls games.

[DagothGeas5]

Immediately he's impressed and awed by the look of these funky creatures.
The cost for travel is shockingly cheap at only 25 pennies so after a short explanation of how the process works he climbs on back and is off to Riverville to finish up some loose ends!

► Show Spoiler

Soulful, feels very much like a weird creature you'd see in the earlier elder scrolls games.

This type of thing makes me wonder why they reused some Skyrim assets, the talent is clearly there to make something new

[Vergil]

I was very pleased I expected a completely stock griffin or even worse a recolored dragon. The animation gets a little wonky but actually seeing it fly off and fade to black so so fI_Icking sovl. I almost expected it to just keep going all the way to Riverville lmao

[Vergil]

Immediately he's impressed and awed by the look of these funky creatures.
The cost for travel is shockingly cheap at only 25 pennies so after a short explanation of how the process works he climbs on back and is off to Riverville to finish up some loose ends!

► Show Spoiler

Soulful, feels very much like a weird creature you'd see in the earlier elder scrolls games.

This type of thing makes me wonder why they reused some Skyrim assets, the talent is clearly there to make something new

To be fair a lot of assets are still reused just from mods instead of bse Skyrim. I honestly understand the robes being what they are. I've looked for robe mods before and in 2016 when the mod was made it was slim ******* pickings.
Plus the most scene changed a lot since Nehrim. Mod authors were a smaller and less bitchy group when it came to letting people use their work.

[DagothGeas5]

Soulful, feels very much like a weird creature you'd see in the earlier elder scrolls games.

This type of thing makes me wonder why they reused some Skyrim assets, the talent is clearly there to make something new

To be fair a lot of assets are still reused just from mods instead of bse Skyrim. I honestly understand the robes being what they are. I've looked for robe mods before and in 2016 when the mod was made it was slim ******* pickings.
Plus the most scene changed a lot since Nehrim. Mod authors were a smaller and less bitchy group when it came to letting people use their work.

I know the type then (resource mods and all the rest). I am looking forward to seeing how it will play out but, thus far, I am still unconvinced it would warrant an entire Steam page or similar, especially if compared to mods like VIGILANT and others like it. Your gameplay and narration is making me like it much more than I would if I myself played, I am sure of that XD Thus far the part I like the most of Enderal itself are the dungeons and the lore/mystery with the added of the skills and perk trees.

[Marcus]

Still no update yet. You know what this means, guys: With the next entry, the modlist will be twice as long and Vergil's character four times as gay. Sigh.

[Vergil]

Still no update yet. You know what this means, guys: With the next entry, the modlist will be twice as long and Vergil's character four times as gay. Sigh.

The life situation has developed not necessarily to Vergil's advantage so there will be some delays.

[rusty_shackleford]

This type of thing makes me wonder why they reused some Skyrim assets, the talent is clearly there to make something new

it's just a modified skyrim dragon I believe. But it still looks quite good for unpaid amateur work

[Vergil]

Sorry this had to be put on hiatus. I would like to return to it soon.
I still have some footage to turn into an update and the game is still installed and everything so it's not totally abandoned yet.