Thea: The Awakening, Morena 2, Part 1

I played my first game of Thea: The Awakening after the game was released (previous games were from the Early Access versions). The screenshots and the experience below are from version 1.6.1201.

I decided to go with Morena again to take advantage of the her bonus to Medic for her followers. That should help keep her people alive after fights. I planned to play a long game after my last attempt met a land-blackening bug.

As it turned out, the Release version had the bonuses given by the gods and goddesses changed.

Morena with her new bonuses.

Morena's bonus to Medic had been reduced. The original +3 Medic to all villagers would have been powerful. The bonus to Animal Kinship had been increased though, which was good since that skill was common, for Humans, only among in those classed as Hunters. Folklore would be handy in Intelligence, Hex and Social challenges while Tactics had some use in Fight and in Tactical challenges.

Not only had the bonuses been changed, the XP needed to unlock the bonuses had been increased. I had unlocked the first four of Morena's bonuses in the Early Access version while in the Release version, I had only the first three bonuses. From the details on the screenshot and previous experience, I calculated that I would need 250 XP to unlock the first three bonuses, while the first four would require a total of 1000 XP, a score too high to be achieved in a speed run with a new god or goddess.

The custom difficulty settings.

I chose the same difficulty settings as the game with Horos. I set the World Size to Huge so I would have plenty of space to explore. I decided not to get too ambitious with the difficulty. The only challenge that I set for myself was the lower number of starting villagers. If I understand the rumors correctly, this setting would also lower the chances of recruiting villagers. The +1 to Medic was going to be helpful to reduce the chances of losing a villager after a fight.

I had decided to skip the tutorial so I could get straight to the game. However, the tutorial looked a little different.

That was a different starting quest.

Seeing that the starting quest had changed, I changed my mind and played the tutorial to see what was different. New to this version was a voice-over that read out the tutorial. The voice-over had not been applied to the many other Events in the game, though.

The tutorial got in the way of my inspection of the village.

As I checked my village's resources, I noted that the interface had been improved a lot. Buttons had been added to improve navigation for information and to issue orders.

There were 5 bars of Steels and a small amount of String in the village. Useful, but I would need to look for more.

For this screen, click on the deity at the top right in the main screen.

A new improvement that I had not tried in the Early Access version (I think it was there then) was the deity's screen that had a reminder of the god or goddess's ability. The victory conditions were also listed here. Aside from the Quest Victory, what was new was the Advancement Victory.

For the Advancement Victory, 50 Villagers appeared to be a long requirement to meet. I aimed to achieve the other three instead. The defeat-30-opponents goal required only a minimum of 4-skull difficulty. I had mixed feelings about that. 4-skull difficulty challenges would make it a reasonable challenge but it would give me less incentive to seek out 5-skull difficulty challenges.

Back in the village, one of my children grew up and I decided I needed another Gatherer. Interestingly, the Event screen printed instructions on dismantling the new Gatherer.

Fortunately, the game did not allow a person to be 'dismantled'.

New to the Event screen was the ability to view the villagers taking part in the event with the 'View My Group' button. This would allow the player to assess the group's abilities for certain challenges. By filtering skills necessary for a present challenge, a player would have a better grasp of his/her chances of success.

I decided to go with my usual Goblin Rush strategy and unlocked Dark Wood with research.

Unlocking Dark Wood will spawn gathering points for the resource.

As I had hoped, one gathering point for Dark Wood appeared close to the village. I could gather Fish and String at the same time too.

Dark Wood was found close to the village.

Later, the old thorn in my side was back. The village well was poisoned. Again.

We should start posting a guard at the well.

Not willing to deal with a fickle water spirit (especially without enough Attractiveness), I took a few of the poisoned villagers and went looking for herbs instead. Interestingly, the herbs healed all except one person whom I had left in the village - in my previous experience, only three out of six villagers were healed. My theory was that the herbs would heal all poisoned characters in the party, plus another three not present.

I tried to test my theory the second time my village was poisoned but I failed the Intelligence challenge. Only two out of six poisoned villagers were cured. A trip to the Herbalist Hut was necessary. Fortunately, I had Morena's bonus to help me with the Tactical challenge the herbalist demanded I solve.

Meanwhile, I went hunting for Undead. The Undead dropped some okay equipment and precious (at this point of the game) Monster Bones.

What if that was not a spelling mistake?

I collected enough Dark Wood for a Watchtower. It appeared that the Release version would award less Research Points for the construction. This would make it harder to accumulate Research.

Building a Watchtower with Dark Wood.

I tried playing the game without loading a Save, partly to see if I could meet the extra difficulty and partly because I was too lazy to wait for the game to load. However, I lost too many villagers. Having no children left in the village and few villagers alive, I decided to load the game when I lost two villagers within a few turns.

This person was only seriously wounded! The critically wounded one survived!

I was glad that I had not set the difficulty settings higher at the start of the game. The difficulty for many challenges had been raised to reasonable levels (in the Early Access, many of the random challenges were boringly easy). In a way, the Released version felt like a different game from the Early Access version and I was having fun discovering new material.

New to the game was the ability to poison wild beasts by initiating a Sickness challenge. In the Early Access version, Sickness challenges were very rare. With this new development, Medic and Herbalism would be more useful.

However, was it safe to eat poisoned meat?

That might or might not be a spelling mistake depending on whether the preceding word is a noun or a verb.

In other good news, one of my villagers gained a point in the rare Magic attribute when she leveled.

A villager learned Magic.

My village had been previously robbed of some precious resources, including the Steel I had started the game with and a few bars of Gold that I had managed to gather from Events. When I felt that my expedition was strong enough, I sent them to confront the bandits to demand my stuff back.

As it turned out, they did not have my loot anymore. They did, however, promise to leave and let us have whatever loot they had. As it turned out, all they had left was a Fat Rat.

All they had was a Fat Rat!?

It was fortunate that each of my party members had the bonus to Animal Kinship given by Morena. That allowed me to tame the Fat Rat.

The attributes of the Fat Rat.

The Fat Rat was classed as a Beast and had good Health so it could tank some damage. However, it cannot equip anything other than jewellery. Beasts were generally good for providing extra carrying capacity to the party since they were not weighed down by equipment. I had considered renaming this creature as 'Pack Rat'.

Amusingly, the Fat Rat also gained Morena's blessings. I had a rat capable of attending to wounds (maybe its saliva disinfects cuts) and thinking tactically. Overall, I think the Fat Rat was a suitable compensation for the resources I had lost. The cost was expensive but I could regain those resources later.

On the way back, my expedition spotted a group of goblins. Rated at three skulls, they were dangerous since the village was unprepared for a direct assault by a party this strong. Since my expedition was out of movement points, I had to delay the confrontation. Considering that my party was bad at Sneak and Tactical challenges at 3-skull difficulty, I would later deal with the goblins through a battle with words.

A Goblin Scouting Party was spotted.

A group of nomads wandered close to my village with an opportunity to trade. I agreed to trade a weapon. They chose a low-level weapon and gave some very good resources including Dragon Skin that they had claimed was a trophy from their hunt! What had these people been fighting!?

No one should want to mess with people capable of acquiring Dragon Skins!

A random Event gave three of my villagers the Blessing of Magic, which temporarily gave +3 Magic. All three of those villagers were in the expedition, including the Fat Rat. Maybe I should rename the rat as 'Magic Rat'.

The temporary boost to Magic was most helpful since I had the opportunity to attempt a 2-skull Hex challenge in another Event.

All three of my Magic-blessed characters were in the tactical group during the first round of the Hex challenge.

I completed the Hex challenge and as a reward, one of my expedition members gained a permanent +3 to Magic.

Branka, who was revived by the Load Game ritual, was blessed with Magic.

With the positive turn of events, I looked forward to what other adventures my people would face. However, this story would be continued in the next article. I was playing the game slower this time since there was more to learn and the challenges required serious consideration. Plus, I had intended this game to be a long one.

Thea: The Awakening, Morena 2, Part 2
Thea: The Awakening, Morena 2, Part 3
Thea: The Awakening, Morena 2, Final Part

Thea: The Awakening, Contents