Thea: The Awakening, Horos 2

I decided to play a new game of Thea: The Awakening with Horos. I had completed the game with Horos before and unlocked his first four bonuses. I could choose another new god or goddess and unlock both Svarog and Perun. However, I was bored with low-level deities and wanted to try a longer game.

This article was written based on the new (at the time of writing) build 0.1014.2. The screenshots below were taken from the same build. Note that there is no Horos 1 article - I had not made any record of my first game with Horos.

The bonuses of Horos.

Horos's bonuses supported Sneaking and direct combat. He excelled particularly well at night, giving bonus damage and additional movement. The last bonus, the ability to see at night as in the day, would negate one of the difficulties of nighttime. The other difficulty, the one where the baddies were more aggressive, could be dealt with by simply hunting down those baddies while taking advantage of Horos's nighttime bonuses.

The custom difficulty settings.

New to this build of the game was the ability to customize difficulty. I chose a Huge world size since I planned to play a long game. World Progression and Economy were set to Normal so I did not have to rush and so I had sufficient resources to experiment with. Challenges Difficulty was set to Experienced since I had played this game before and knew what to expect, most of the time.

Enemy Aggressiveness was set to Normal as a precaution. That would give me more time to prepare for Dragons and Zmeys when they appeared. I set Starting Villagers to 9, one less than the usual 10, since I expected a special recruit thanks to Horos's third bonus.

I set Reshuffles to Paid since I was more used to playing cards as I drew them. However, the game later would act as if I had chosen None and would not gave me the option to reshuffle. I did note that the score bonus for Paid and None were the same. It had not been a serious problem since I had never reshuffled before this.

Finally, I turned on Save as a safety net in the event I lose a critical party member such as someone with a high Magic attribute.

I started the game, expecting a long fun campaign and found:

The texture had not loaded!

The texture of the world background had failed to load. Once in a rare while, after loading the game, the world background would load correctly. A beta build would fix the problem but I was weary of the introduction of another unknown bug. I decided to bear with the missing world background for the time being.

Anyway, I was excited to see what creature of the night Horos would give me. I had hoped for a Striga Master. Instead, I received a Goblin Shaman.

The Goblin Shaman that I started with.

Perhaps the Goblin Shaman was a better early-game member. While the Striga Master had more Magic and had Leech, the Goblin Shaman had Medic, which helped keep critically injured villagers alive. The Goblin Shaman had low Magic. I hoped that he would learn more later.

I took a look at my starting resources.

Starting resources in the village.

Of note in the village were the 10 Topazes and as expected, there were two children.

Assigning villagers to a task.

New to the build was the ability to assign multiple villagers to a task. This would allow work to be concentrated on one craft. Also, when gathering in dangerous territory, effort could be concentrated on a single resource so less work would be lost (from an incomplete task) if the expedition should have to flee danger in a hurry. Another positive change was the new work interface that was clearer and easier to use.

The downside of the new task system was that only the main worker had his/her full attribute contributing to the task. Helpers only added half of their attributes. The number of tasks for gathering were limited by the number of gathering spots - in previous builds, the player could create unlimited tasks for gathering.

Later, the Goblin Shaman did learn more Magic.

The Goblin Shaman learned more Magic.

The background of the screenshot above also shows one of the rare times the world background had loaded correctly.

While I was having fun exploring and crafting new stuffs, Horos dropped by to assign some work.

The beginning of the Divine Quest.

Later, I had a Bandit attracted to my village through the buildings I had constructed.

A Bandit joined the village.

In previous builds, I think the Bandits had been labeled as Warriors. Unlike Warriors, Bandits could equip jewelry.

I had unlocked Dark Wood and found one spot close to the village. With that resource, I had built a lot of buildings to attract Goblins. I attracted few Goblins since then but those that came were of quality.

The first who came was a level-10 Goblin Boss.

The Goblin Boss had the Medic attribute!

Much later, I had another Goblin Shaman join the village.

I had a second Goblin Shaman.

The Magic attribute of 8 in the screenshot above is misleading. The Goblin Shaman had an additional bonus of 2 Magic from the village's totem, which he would lose were he to leave the village with an expedition.

Once, a child grew up and was given the opportunity to become a Witch. From what I have read in the forum on Steam, opportunities such as this were random.

It was the girl's ambition to be a Witch.

There were three other unavailable options in the event in the screenshot above. The other options were likely for a Sage, a Hunter and a Medic.

Children in Thea grew and aged so fast.

The Witch had both Magic and Medic, important attributes for survival. Strangely, for a supposedly wise character, she was low on Folklore and Intelligence. I assigned her to protect the village.

On a side note, I discovered that Steel could be used to attract Orcs.

Buildings made of Steel could attract Orcs.

As Horos was mainly in favor of direct combat (with a howl to the moon prior), when the time came to convince him of my worthiness to do his quest, I chose direct combat.

Horos appeared different today.

The main reason I did not like direct combat was the possibility of injury. However, after the fight, I discovered that the wounds my expedition received were gone. That was nice since I had a few critically injured people. Alternatively, it could be that the programmer forgot to add the Wounds. I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I remembered Horos's Avatar Guardians were birds.

On completion of the quest, I had an option I had not in my first game with Horos. I remembered that I had different options when I played that time. That time, I had chosen the social route while trying to convince Horos. Perhaps the options at the end were different depending on how one tried to convince Horos earlier in the quest. Or it could be that I remembered my first game wrong.

There was an option to feed Horos more power.

It would be interesting to see how my choice would affect the ending.

I noticed that Horos's business involved a lot of howling to the moon.

Can you find the spelling mistake?

The missing texture bug had been annoying since I could not see where the sea was or the route marked for my expedition when I was deciding where to move. And I did not want to risk installing the beta build to fix it. Thus, I decided to complete the main story rather than playing around with all the toys I had and would unlock. Besides, I would unlock Horos's final bonus and it would be more fun to play with all of his bonuses active.

One hidden advantage of Horos is the ability to recruit a Striga Master from an event found while traveling at night.

Recruited a Striga Master.

The recruited Striga Master had powerful attacks, Leech and good Magic. He was a lower-level version of the Striga Master that Horos assigned at the end of his Divine Quest. I had a lot of creatures with the Magic attribute then.

Below is a screenshot of the Poludnica Event. I thought I should keep a record of the options and the rewards received. The last time this event happened was recorded in the article on Veles's game.

Not as good as the Dragon Bones from that other time.

Nothing else of interest happened as I completed the main quest. As before, I liked to take a screenshot of the late Elf to the party.

Yes, she was late again.

I wonder what rewards choosing the other options to end the game would give.

As before, the game presented me with my score summary immediately after the event. It was easy to score high with the score multiplier.

Those labels were still not fixed.

I chose to end the game. Reading the end game summary, it was no surprise that Horos would eventually take his place as the only supreme Deity of the new Pantheon. Other than that, there was nothing really special that happened as a result of the choices I made during the Divine Quest.

I noted that at the start of this game, there were a lot of ruins near the village. Looting those ruins gave some early resources, XP and research.

I did not find any Coal resource gathering points at all. Coal was needed as a Catalyst to make Jewelry and Artifacts, unless the rarer Diamond was used instead. Being unable to craft those items was not a serious problem since I could still loot them from events. Also, I had Medics and people with Medic skills so crafting Artifacts with the Medic attribute was not a priority.

I did not have the Cropping Event during this game. The number of children in my village had been low throughout. I was getting enough recruits anyway so the missing event was not a problem except for scoring purposes.

Thea: The Awakening, Contents

Thea: The Awakening, Veles 1

I started my third game of Thea: The Awakening. I chose Veles, the god who had lots of titles but lost them all after the Darkness and was then simply known as Veles. I chose "Craftsmen" as the village focus simply to see what I would get. Back in build 0.1003.0, from "Warriors" I got a Medic and from "Gatherers", a Hunter.

This article was written based on build 0.1008.1. Screenshots were also taken from that same build.

The settings for the next game.

With the latest build, the improvement that I had been waiting for was finally here: The ability to rename.

I can now rename expeditions, villagers and the village!

Interestingly, I got a Hunter with my "Craftsmen" option. I had expected a Sage. Perhaps a Sage was too powerful. Another item of note was that I had some Dark Wood and Monster Bone. I also had five children instead of the usual two. I am not sure if this was because of my Village Focus selection or because of the latest game build.

If I could get one more child, I would meet the requirement for The Cropping.

Some of the starting resources.

I unlocked the Dark Wood resource early, found them to be close by and went to harvest them. That had been a mistake. While I had plenty of Dark Wood, I had no recipe to use the resource in. An important thing to do early in the game is to secure a source of research points from crafting or construction.

I had to beat up a few groups of wild locals to gather enough research to actually be able to do more research.

Finally, after too long a delay, I had my Watchtower made of Dark Wood to attract Goblins. It was only after I had unlocked Dark Wood that I remembered that I could have unlocked Elf Wood to attract Elves, whom I later found out were kin to Veles.

A Watchtower built with Dark Wood.

Unfortunately, I had delayed the construction of my Cabbage Field for too long. Thus, I did not get the child necessary for The Cropping. I might have missed the deadline - if it was not a random event.

I was making slow progress. I was still struggling at turn 72:

The situation at Turn 72.

On the positive side, I had unlocked Dark Wood and Monster Bone close by. Unfortunately, the situation was getting dangerous. There was a group of Scavengers just south of my village.

Things were difficult this time around most likely because I was missing someone like the Vily I had previously. Also, not many people seemed to be attracted to my village. It could be because Lada was not my patron goddess, because I had not built attractive buildings with Ancient Wood (that was so conveniently available in the last game) or because of some balancing that was introduced in the latest build.

On a side note, it was interesting to see how the latest build would change the game rules and to adapt to those changes.

To make matters worse, my villagers were poisoned in an event and the herbs I found could only cure some of them. I had to carry the remaining villagers over to the Herbalist Hut to fix them:

I wonder what game the herbalist had been playing. Warhammer?

The next time I had that poison event (it would happen three times in this game), I chose the water-sprite option instead. The water sprite healed the whole village. However, I had to rush to Dziody to get a curse removed.

I had a lot of Monster Bones. I thought I would try to attract Beasts and see who or what turned up.

A Smithy built with Monster Bones to attract Beasts.

No Beasts took bit the bait, though. Still, the 74 research points from building the Smithy were helpful.

Finally, at the end of Turn 101, I had The Cropping! I was short on defenders at that time. I had decided to send six children to their doom (for five of them) in the arena... mainly to see what sort of superhuman would emerge.

I think that is a spelling mistake.

I got a... Hunter? Well, it was the first male Hunter I ever had - previous ones, including those in previous games, were all female. His stats did not seem special, though he had talking skills and Gathering was good for harvesting resources far from the village. I think I had been unlucky.

The Hunter who survived the arena.

I found an event that Veles could influence, the one where my expedition met a wandering Elf.

The Wandering Elf event.

Through the story revealed to followers of Veles, I had discovered that the Grand University had set off some sort of genocidal weapon of mass destruction that targeted Elves. My guess was that the wandering Elf of this event was one of the victims. I had this event in a previous game and I knew the way to solve it was with a lot of Magic, which I did not have at that point in the game.

Other than the shortage of Magic, my village was still nowhere near ready for Dragons.

I had a positive event happen, the Poludnica Event:

The Dragon Bones were nice but where did that kid come from?

The child was helpful since I got The Cropping again, at the end of turn 111. This made me wonder if The Cropping did indeed randomly turn up. Anyway, hoping for a dragon-slayer or something similar, I sent six children into the arena again.

Six children were sent into the arena.

I wonder where the village elders found all the baddies they stuffed into the arena. And how did they stuff the baddies into the arena? At the end of the event, I had a Hunter, again:

The victor of the arena.

The new Hunter had better attributes that the last. It was possible that XP also applied, at least partially, to villagers gained later in the game, hence the better attributes.

This game had been difficult thus far, especially when compared to the last when I played with Lada. I was so glad that I had selected Normal as the difficulty. I decided to progress with the game and went to convince Veles that I was worthy to do his Divine Quest.

Convincing Veles in a battle of words.

Considering he was level 9, I think Veles in the screenshot above was an avatar. Either that or the Darkness really had mess him up. Or he could be holding back.

Anyway, after convincing Veles, I went on to complete his quest and was awarded a Ghost.

Veles assigned a Ghost to help.

Thus far, I had no Medic, and no one with the Medic attribute. The Medic attribute was necessary if someone was seriously injured in a fight or an event involving sickness occurred in the village.

I had begun using Rubies to craft Jewelry and Artifacts that grant Medic when finally, a Medic wandered into my village. I had still not attracted any Goblins or Beasts at that time.

A Medic joined my village.

I checked my score to see that I had enough points to unlock the first four of Veles's bonuses, if I completed the main story. So I sent my main expedition to the next quest location, which was at the corner of the world. It was nighttime and it would have been better to wait until daylight to see where I was going and what dangers were around. However...

It was still dark and I had arrived!?

It turned out that there was a variant of the just-one-more-turn trap known as the just-one-more-step trap. Before I knew it, I had arrived at the quest location in the middle of the night with zero visibility.

I was very fortunate not to have stumbled into any Dragons.

During my journey back, I had met with Dwarven Bandits. In my previous game with Lada, I had been given the option to recruit a Dwarven Bandit from this event. I was given no such option with Veles.

The Dwarves did not want to join a god who was not a beauty.

A Dragon had been spotted near the village. I needed to hurry. Fortunately, the final quest location was close.

A Dragon was spotted near the village!

The final battle of words was easy again. And look who was late to the party, again:

Did she not learn anything about tardiness from the last game?

I had enough points to unlock the first four of Veles's bonuses so I chose to end the game. Before I had to deal with Zmeys and Dragons.

One wonders how does Veles turn the pages of that large book of his.

Here are the bonuses I had unlocked:

The bonuses of Veles.

Veles's bonus are for the intellectual challenges, with a poisonous bonus in direct fights. The extra common resources would be good if some critical resource did not spawn close to the village, resources such as String and Leather that were not close to the village in the last game as shown in the screenshot earlier in this article.

Having everyone able to do a little Magic is a welcome bonus. It will help unlock options dependent on Magic during events. One only has to unlock the fifth bonus of Veles for that.

Thea: The Awakening, Contents

Thea: The Awakening, Lada 1

I have been playing Thea: The Awakening. It is a game where the player guides a village to thrive under post-apocalyptic circumstances, fantasy-style, under the guidance of a god or goddess. Expeditions are sent out from the village to explore the land and gather resources to construct buildings, craft equipment and cook food.

Replaying the game over and over will improve the bonuses given by individual gods or goddesses. I wonder how soon it will be before, after completing each game, I get bored of restarting over and over from almost scratch. That was the reason I stopped playing Crusaders of the Lost Idols - I got bored of doing the same thing each time I restarted. On the other hand, Thea: The Awakening is a much more complicated game and restarts may have different challenges, especially with a god or goddess with more bonuses unlocked.

Of note is the fact that fights and challenges in the game take the form of a card game. Each card represents a character and is played either to directly confront the opposition or to provide a supportive effect.

At the moment, the game is an Early Access game with annoying bugs (nothing game-breaking, though) and spelling mistakes. The screenshots and the story below were written based on build 0.1003.0 of the game. There is a newer build at the time of writing.

The screenshots below were taken from my second game. That time, I had decided to go with Lada, which I had unlocked after the first game, along with the Gameplay Options of Gatherers-Small-Normal. Lada is the Goddess of Hope, Beauty, Love and Joy. She is the youngest goddess, born at the start of the Darkness. I would call her the Teenage Goddess, but considering that she is a century old, the title is not so appropriate.

The bonuses of Lada.

The screenshot above was taken after I had completed this game with Lada. When I first started this game, I had only the first bonus from Lada, which gave four extra children at the start. Four children may not seem like much. However, when added to the two children I would normally start with, they met the 6-children requirement for an event called The Cropping. All I had to do was to keep them alive until the event showed up.

Oh look, a spelling mistake.

The Cropping randomly gives a new villager, potentially a very good one, at the maximum cost of six children. I got a Vily.

Scored a Vily.

The Vily is good in combat and excels in Stealth. But her true value is that she is a magical creature with the Magic attribute. Magic is rare in the game and is a requirement to unlock additional options when dealing with events. During encounters with wandering magical creatures, Magic allows the possibility to magically nuke the baddies and claim maximum loot.

What is not shown in the starting bonuses is that having Lada as the goddess unlocks certain options in certain events. I recruited a Dwarven Bandit from one such event thanks to her - the guy had been smitten by Lada's beauty. The Dwarven Bandit is a good fighter with Stealth, and he came with a very good weapon of endgame quality. I needed such weapons to handle dragons later.

The screenshot below had been taken a long time after I had recruited the Dwarven Bandit. While the dwarf can dish out enough damage to bring down a dragon in two hits, he does not have the defense to take a hit from a dragon.

A dwarf armed with the aptly named Dragon's Bane.

Early in the game, I was lucky and unlocked a source of Ancient Wood right next to my village. A later build of the game made finding rare resources like this close by less likely to happen, though.

Ancient Wood gathering site next to the village!

Before finding the Ancient Wood, I had unlocked a source of Dark Wood close to the village. That was good since I required Dark Wood. Buildings constructed with large amounts of Dark Wood attracts goblins.

A Watchtower built with Dark Wood attracts goblins.

The screenshot below is of one of the goblins that joined my village as a result. The goblin had leveled a bit since then.

The Goblin Skirmisher I had.

I needed strong fighters because later in the game, there would be dragons. I challenged one of them to a fight with my party. A dragon would be easy if it were not for the meat-shields that often accompany them.

The dragon is the fourth card from the left.

I was fortunate to have won that fight without injuries, considering that no one in my expedition could survive a direct attack from the dragon without protection. As shown in the screenshot below, the loot I received was disappointing since I got no Dragon Skin or Dragon Bones. I did earn a good amount of XP and research, though.

Another spelling mistake.

Fresh from victory against a tough opponent, my expedition continued their exploration and found:

Two Zmeys and another Dragon were just too much to handle!

I decided to get away before it gets dark since the baddies are a lot more aggressive at night. I had been lucky in the fight with the Dragon earlier. However, if the next fight resulted in serious injuries, my expedition would need to camp for at least a couple of turns to tend to the wounded. It would be disastrous if my party was attacked during that time.

On my way out, I checked the Divine Quest that I had initially come to this corner of the map for:

There is another spelling mistake hidden in this wall of text.

I had to convince the goddess Lada that I was worthy for the quest.

Maya attacked the goddess with words!

The challenge had been easy. Also, it had been a Social Challenge and thus, there was no risk of real injury (unless scripted by the event). I was given some loot and sent onto the last step of the quest.

Loot received from the goddess Lada.

I had The Cropping event again. Perhaps this event happens at regular intervals. It is something to observe in the future. Anyway, I chose the spirit-walking option again to see who else I would recruit. I received a Witch:

One of the children became a Witch.

A Witch is still classed as a Craftman but with attributes more suited for intellectual challenges, and perhaps magic, rather than crafting. I did not try her abilities much since I was getting more and more villagers to manage. I wonder if it is because I am better at playing this game the second time around, or it is a hidden bonus of the goddess Lada to attract people.

More and more goblins joined my village too, attracted by the Dark Wood I used to construct my buildings. I had few human Warriors, so I subcontracted defense to goblins.

I attracted a Goblin Boss that time.

The game was getting a little difficult to handle with around thirty villagers to manage. Perhaps if I spent more time, I could sort everything out and craft lots of equipment for everyone. However, my main expedition was moving slowly through snowy terrain and was running out of food variety. The expedition still had basic food but without variety, the expedition members would lose the bonuses that a variety of food would give.

Since the endgame boss happened to be within the area, I decided to go straight for the ending:

What a polite boss!

The boss was very polite, explaining the situation and the possible results clearly. He was even nice enough to offer the expedition a chance to come back later. I had been through this in a previous game so I knew what would happen. Thus, I started a debate.

After a fight won by words, and a ritual, look who finally showed up:

Someone was very late to the party!

Immediately after the event, I was presented with the summary of my progress, along with an option to either continue or end the game.

The score summary screen.

The score summary screen had a couple of missing descriptions. Either they had not been added, or someone added extra quotation marks in the code.

The requirement for the next level was a whopping 447 points! Considering that the major point-giving categories had already been scored, it would take a lot of work to earn those points. Thus, I decided to end the game. I had then unlocked the first four bonuses of Lada as shown in the screenshot at the top of this article. The bonuses given by Lada give more starting assets, which should be used to gather more long-term advantages as soon as possible. Lada will be good for a speed run, especially in higher difficulties (available from build 0.1007.0 and later) where difficulty increases as more turns pass.

I had played this game over three days. After the game, I discovered that I had unlocked Zorya.

My build of Thea: The Awakening has been updated. I think I shall try Veles next and see how he will influence events in the game.

Thea: The Awakening, Contents