Thea: The Awakening, Morena 1

I started a new game with Morena in Thea: The Awakening. I intended to complete the game fast and unlock Morena's first four bonuses as well as the gods Svarog and Perun.

This article was written based on build 0.1021.0 where thankfully the black background bug had been fixed.

The bonuses of Morena.

'Gatherers' was still my favorite Village Focus at the start, so I went with that. With a new goddess, I would not have any bonus assets or advantages other than the skill point bonus so I decided not to be too ambitious with the difficulty. Based on past experience, the score multiplier should be around 100% for a decent chance of unlocking the first four of Morena's bonuses. With that in mind, I chose the settings shown in the following screenshot:

The custom difficulty settings.

It should be noted that in addition to an increase in score multiplier, a larger world also meant more hexes to scout, an activity that also contributed to the final score. I set Reshuffle to None since I did not expect to use them, and also to avoid any unknown bugs associated with reshuffling.

At the start of the game, I took a look around my village.

The resources around my starting village.

There were seven types of food and there were Herbs within easy reach. The blank hexes might become resource gathering points for rarer resources once those resources are unlocked with research. In addition, there were two ruins to the south (not highlighted with icons in the screenshot) that could be explored for early resources.

I checked the starting resources:

I had not expected much of the starting resources.

With the little resources available at the start, the priority was first to secure food and fuel. Then I would need to come up with some method of obtaining research.

As I organized my village, I had the Harvest Moon festival where Morena bestowed a blessing (+3 Intelligence and +3 Folklore!) on one of the villagers.

Morena had chosen to give intelligence and knowledge to a Warrior of all people.

I unlocked Elf Wood hoping to recruit Elves. However, the resource point spawned far from the village. On the other hand, Dark Wood spawned quite close. I wonder if Dark Wood was more likely to spawn close to the village, especially since it appeared at multiple spots in the world.

With the Dark Wood, I constructed a Watchtower to attract Goblins. That was a starting strategy that I had been using since the Watchtower also allowed me to keep an eye out for danger. The research generated from the construction helped too.

Building a Dark Wood Watchtower became an early part of my strategy.

Morena dropped by to assign her task. I had the feeling that she was not serious about work.

Morena gave her assignment, sort of.

Later, a Goblin was attracted to my village. He was a Goblin Shaman with both Magic and Medic. He would be a help in keeping my expedition members alive.

A Goblin Shaman joined the village.

I had managed to gather enough children for The Cropping Event. Hoping for a Vily, I chose the spirit walk option.

The Cropping gave me a Craftswoman.

The event refunded one child, perhaps for giving such an ordinary Craftswoman instead of a person of wisdom. Still, the Craftswoman had some decent attributes (look at her carry weight limitation):

The Craftswoman that I received from The Cropping.

I had an annoying event where the village water was poisoned. Six villagers were poisoned as a result. From past experience in previous games, I knew that there was no real hurry to heal the villagers. That was good since my expedition at that time was a distance from the village. And they had failed to convince the water spirit to fix the villagers.

The only solution left was a trip to the herbalist's for a cure. I gathered the poisoned villagers into a new expedition and sent them to the Herbalist Hut. I hoped that nothing bad would happen in the village while a good number of people were away.

The poisoned villagers prepared for a trip.

Unfortunately, the poisoned villagers got involved in a fight that left one of them seriously (though not critically) injured. Thus, I needed healing from both poison and wounds from the herbalist. The herbalist wanted food, wood and a favor. It turned out that the favor for both her services was difficult - I had to convince 'some stupid Syrin' to give feathers.

Who knew Syrins were great at speeches!?

Those 'stupid Syrin' were anything but 'stupid'. I had failed at the first attempt. I gathered reinforcements from the main expedition and sent a whole group of fourteen people to talk the Syrins into generosity. The herbalist then cured my villagers of poison, healed their wounds and gave them a temporary boost to health.

Can you spot the missing plural form?

Later, a Liho tormented me. Events such as these were often opportunities. They could strengthen the participants, provide resources or give temporary bonuses - if successfully handled. At the very least, they would spice up the game or provide a short-term goal.

What if the apparent spelling mistake is not a spelling mistake?

I started Morena's Divine Quest. I learned some interesting facts about the goddess. She appeared to be deeper than the nonchalant deity she first appeared to be.

Does Mankind need a definite article?

The next step of the quest was to convince Morena of my worth. That led to a battle of words.

Vaclava dealt a verbal blow to Morena.

After successfully convincing Morena, she pointed me to the last stage of her quest. The target of the quest was not alone. She had two other random baddie groups in the same hex.

Where did the two groups of escorts come from?

Fortunately, the groups went their separate ways before the start of my next turn. I noticed that an Undead Ruins had sprung up at that time - I had come from that direction and it had not been there.

Undead Ruins had appeared.

After completing a relatively easy challenge with the target of my quest, the story continued.

Wait, what?

The ritual to restore Morena's power was a little weird. First the avatar of Death asked me to make an effigy of Morena. Then she herself made it for me!? Those instructions were confusing.

What was interesting was that I had the choice of making Morena more powerful, similar to what I had in my last game with Horos.

At the end of the quest, a Liho joined my expedition.

There is an extra space in this wall of text.

Just for funnies, I assumed that the Liho was the one that troubled my village a while back. Perhaps it liked the place and was looking for an excuse to join.

The Liho that joined.

The Liho had plenty of strong attributes. It had Magic of 7 and Stealth of 8. And it appeared to be a smooth talker too. The Animal Kinship attribute actually came from the Reed Flute. For some strange reason, the Liho kept the Polearm attribute even after I replaced the spear with an axe. If it was not a bug, perhaps it was a natural attribute of the Liho.

On the next turn, I found a gathering spot for Silver near the village.

Silver was found in the mountains near the village!

I had enough villagers by then to create a small group to mine the Silver.

Silver was a lot of work to mine.

As it turned out, it was a lot of work to mine Silver. I could put everyone into mining Silver but that was inefficient, considering that only the first gatherer had his/her full Gathering attribute added. I might as well gather some Vegetables and Herbs at the same time.

My village was poisoned a second time!

Poisoned again!

That time, I had managed to convince the water spirit to heal my villagers. Unlike a previous game with Veles, for some reason, none of my expedition members was cursed. I had been prepared to rush to Dziody to have a curse removed.

Later, my village was poisoned a third time, and even a fourth time. Would they ever learn? Anyway, the water spirit had not cursed anyone the third time but she had on the fourth. On the fourth time, I had met the water spirit with my secondary expedition. It was possible that some attribute, perhaps Attractiveness, might have prevented the curse.

I built a barracks with Dark Wood and Gold, hoping to attract Goblins and Dwarves. No Dwarf came although I had a Goblin Warrior join much later.

Buildings built with Gold might attract Dwarves.

I had a child grow up and as a rare twist to the event, I was given two choices for the child - Medic and Hunter.

The child could become a Medic or Hunter.

Since I had at least three Hunters and only one Medic, I chose the Medic.

When my villagers had progressed enough, I decided to complete the main quest. Having chosen a Normal-sized world, the locations for the quest spawned far from each other. That increased travel time especially with the land filled with dangerous wandering baddies.

While I was pursuing the quest, I came across another spelling mistake.

There is a spelling mistake in this wall of text.

Since I was tired of having the Elf join the party late, I decided to choose a different ending and see who I would recruit. An Orc Matriarch joined the party.

At the end, an Orc Matriarch joined.

The game presented me with the final score. I think 509 hexes were the most I had ever scouted in a game, thanks to quest (both main and side) locations being far away despite a World Size of Normal.

The labels were still missing in the summary.

I easily scored the 500 points necessary to unlock Morena's first four bonuses. I chose to end the game since I had achieved my objectives.

The bonuses of Morena.

Morena's bonuses would give additional Advancement Points at the start, which would allow early access to research. In addition, villagers would gain a lot of bonus attribute points. Having a whole party with bonuses to Medic would make it a lot easier to keep villagers alive after suffering critical wounds in a fight. The '1 Research Point each turn' bonus did not seem like a huge boon but it would be helpful in a long game.

In addition to unlocking Morena's bonuses, I had unlocked Svarog and Perun.

Thea: The Awakening, Contents