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