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