Reply To: Revisiting Albion
I think that’s exactly what it does 🙂 And how fascinating that there’s an Albion wiki (and unfortunate that it’s on Fandom, which seems only to exist to host wikis that are so advert-laden as to be completely unusable). I wonder what else I can find there…
I’m on Umajo, the fourth island chapter of the game! Beloveno reused Celtic and Iskai graphics as you would expect, but this area is strikingly different – fittingly, as these are the only people who can construct things from metal. It’s really a nice detail that everything is so different here – you haven’t really noticed throughout the game that metal is absent from the everyday objects lying around the houses, but suddenly you see that bathtubs, tables, and other items of furniture all feature metal prominently. I’m really seeing what I love about Albion emerge again – the exploration of the world and its alien nature.
The exposition dump on Dji Cantos is still a bit much for me to take in, but the storyline suddenly comes back here after mostly being forgotten on Gratogel and Maini in favour of a series of rescue quests. Rainer was skeptical of the idea that the planet is aware and vengeful on people who take from it, but talking to the people here seems to confirm that experience and I’m not going to argue! So if our gigantic mining ship digs its claws in and starts drilling, I don’t think it’s going to be long before all our crewmates start dying in mysterious supernatural circumstances. The urgency of getting back to the Toronto is once again present!
Rations suddenly become ridiculously expensive here, justified in-game in that they have to be shipped from elsewhere due to the desert climate. On the other end of the scale, I saw that there was an item called “hammer” available at the weapon smith for 0.1G, thought that it was obviously going to be part of a puzzle later on and encumbered myself with ten of them weighing 3500g each (it appears only one is needed and I would never have thought to try it out without looking at a guide).
I was surprised at the sudden appearance of a stealth section (which everyone loves) – thankfully it was brief and I was able to overhear the ritual and find out the centuries-old magic password within about two minutes. Now I’m spending absolutely years walking down a maze of boring passageways that are blatantly far too long, solving puzzles that involve going to one end of the map then the other – DOSBox-X’s fast forward feature has come in very useful.
