In a Hostile Country: The Saga of Cahmel (Let’s Play Morrowind, Part 43)
If anyone asks, I’m taking part in an experiment to prove that sleep deprivation has no effect on post quality. Except, it’s actually one of those tricksy sociology experiments where it’s really trying to figure out how dumb the subject is.
When we last left our hero, he had just unlocked a crucial resource—the ability to move at speeds that border on the ludicrous. Not only am I the handsomest thing in the game, I am now also the absolute fastest.
To the casual observer, these boots may seem overpowered, since no opponent will pose a genuine threat to me if I can just mince away at the first sign of actual danger. This impression is entirely accurate. When I strap these suckers on, I’m signing a contract with the game saying that it can be as easy as it wants to be as long as I get to gad about like James Dean. It’s kind of like a gentleman’s agreement, except it’s just cheating.
Okay, that’s not totally fair. It doesn’t magically give me the ability to not lose fights, it just gives me the ability to have them on my own terms. Not doing well? There’s just about no power that can stop me from flitting away and hiding under a rock—or alternately, just finding higher ground and throwing used gum at my opponents until they die. Still, while superior speed guarantees I’ll never really lose a fight, it doesn’t mean that I’ll necessarily win them.
Still, the speed thing kind of reminds me of a story from the previous game in the Elder Scrolls series, Daggerfall. I’m going to go ahead and say that I found this game not so good, knowing as I do so that I’m inviting negative comments and earnest assassination attempts. It has to do with where I fall on the size to depth scale.
See, each game in the Elder Scrolls series, of which Morrowind is the third entry, makes the game universe feel a little bit smaller and a little bit denser. Arena gave you access to an entire Tolkein-sized fantasy world, but you only had a brochure’s worth of truly unique locations to drop by. Morrowind gives you one island, but it’s full of life. Daggerfall was the intermediate option—it had hundreds of towns and scads of wilderness in the principalities of High Rock and Hammerfell, but most of it was basically the same. This never really appealed to me. Theoretically, the large landmass would make the game ideal for exploring, but what was the point? The last fifteen towns were mid-sized European-style towns with an inn, a bookstore, some adventurer shops, a few random farm animals roaming the streets, and a bunch of women who were in danger of catching their death from cold. Chances are good that the next one will have all of that with slightly different names.
Anyway, let’s get to the other part of my Daggerfall tangent. Whilst loitering around bored in some town whose name I don’t remember, I decided to just straight-up slash a couple guards up. At that point, I was low enough level that taking on even one guard was suicide. It was entertaining suicide, though, so I went around from guard to guard and started smacking them all as I went, jogging away and pelvic-thrusting at them when they tried to put me under arrest.
I started rocketing around town backwards, watching in amusement as I collected more and more irate guards. I was slightly faster than them, so they never quite managed to catch up with me, leaving me unscathed even as dozens of guards were after me at once. As an experiment, I started waving my sword around in their general direction as I ran—it connected with the guards at the front of the pack. It was only a little damage, but it was nothing they could do anything about, and as I did more and more laps around town it began to add up.
For the next ten minutes, I cheerfully whittled away at this massive mob of angry constables, leaving a trail of evenly-spaced corpses in my wake. Before long, I had killed several dozen of an enemy that was ostensibly more powerful than I was. I made an incredible profit selling their gear, as I recall—I could have started a GuardMart supply shop with the spoils. It was one of my more lucrative ventures in the game. Part of me still wants to punch a few police officers, then run around town backwards swinging a bread knife at them, just to see which happens first: they shoot me, or I back into an open sewer.
Oops. Disregard those last few paragraphs, they’re actually from my top-secret future series, Let’s Play a Game That Needs Special Software to Simulate a Computer Sucky Enough to Run It. I guess we should get back to that other thing.
I speed down the street, a veritable demon on heels. Right now, Gaenor’s waiting in the temple district, thinking that he has the edge because he’s stronger, tougher, luckier, and far better-equipped than I am. The fool. Witness the fury of this fully-operational Cahmel station!
I draw my blade, bob into attack range, swing twice, miss twice, fail to get out of his way fast enough, and get clocked for massive damage. He kills me with his backswing, although I think a canker sore would have finished me off at that point.
Is it just me, or did that play out exactly like it did before I got these boots?
Okay, focus. What did you do wrong there? Besides, you know, the part where you died. Well, for one thing, you got within melee range of him. That’s been associated with him killing you in 100% of situations so far. So, if you could hit him with your short sword without getting within range of his longsword, you’d be in the clear.
I actually break down and swap it out for a longsword, purchased at my friendly local armorer. It’s not even as good as the saber I sold when I started using this thing, but it’s got slightly better range, so hopefully my death will be a little less inevitable this second time.
Nope.
I manage to get a few free shots in while running away, then am forced to step up a little so he’s in range again. He takes the opportunity to perform amateur tonsil surgery on me with his longsword.
Okay, so, conventional tactics are a bust. Let me try something crazy: removing all of my gear and attacking him with a bit of wood, stopping every five minutes to eat a piece of scrib jerky and sing about cliff racers. Alternately: maybe just use more health potions? Okay, see, yeah, there we go. I managed to get in three hits before he killed me this time. Really, I’m going to win this fight eventually. It’s just a matter of reloading and reloading until I get a successful run.
I reload. The game, sensing a tinge of optimism remaining, crashes hard.
I get back in. I die two more times. The game crashes.
I get back in, I die two more times, the game crashes.
I get back in, two more times, game crashes.
Back in, twice more, crash.
Back. Twice. Crash.
You know, I hear that High Rock and Hammerfell are nice this time of year.
Wow, are you ever going to beat him? It’s really funny to read about, but I’m also curious what your next adventure will be. Defeating the Vengeful Beggar is hard to top.
As an aside: have you ever tried to take him out with a bow? Or buy the spells: bound armor bound longsword etc. Get some training in heavy armor. Also a sword with paralysis effects might help. You probably should have killed him when he was poor and weak, just accepting the fine.
By the way, as nobody else is here:
I’m really enjoying the series. I’m a big fan of Morrowind, it’s definitely my most played game ever. Like you I’ve done multiple playthroughs with all kinds of characters. Last time I played a custom race called Gentleman, specialized in hand-to-hand, longsword, unarmored, speechcraft, mercantile. It was a revelation to find out that with a lot of charisma people are actually nice to you. You’re still an outlander of course, but an exception at that.
I love how you didn’t mention oblivion in that comparison; Its just as well.Oblivion kind of defies conventions compared to te other two. Its plenty big, theres a load of life, and yet after youve played it once you need never, ever play it again. Point to morrowind. That aside, seriously Rutskarn go buy some glass armor or something. Heres what you do. Take The Boots of Straight Cougar, haul balls to a glass mine, take it all before running 88 miles an hour and going back to mournhold before you ever left. Get the guy to make you some glass. Its a far sight cheaper, and it lets me make a S-Cry-Ed reference.
I remember the guards in Daggerfall! I used to get into the Dark Brotherhood by going to one of those unimportant, off-to-the-side principalities and running through a town with blade a-swingin’ until my reputation was down to “pond scum,” since it would only be in that country and I was never coming back. I noticed something funny, when I did, too: if there weren’t any guards around when you “accidentally” killed a citizen or failed at picking a lock, then some of the regular NPCs wandering around would transform into guards, a la Agents in the Matrix, while your back was turned.
Man, there were so many bugs and exploits in that game. You could walk into a store, loiter until after closing time, clean off the shelves, and then sell everything back to the proprietor (who would be gone if you broke in after closing, but still there if you went in while it was open and loitered).
There was no point in exploring, though–the terrain was randomly generated, and would be re-generated the next time you passed through, and the odds that you might stumble across one of the covens who would do daedra summoning for you without your needing special extra-high guild rank were abysmally low. Hell, even hitting a dungeon was unlikely.
Telc: I’m pretty sure Gaenor has strong magic resistance and magic reflect along with his supernaturally high luck, so any spells that hit him will either bounce back or fizzle–so hitting him with a paralysis weapon just means Cahmel would be the one frozen.
If reflect works on paralysis, using the latter on Gaenor would be suicide. Attacking him seems to be practically the same though, I don’t know whether it’s more humiliating to fight the best you can and Die, or paralyze yourself and Die.
This is a great series, lots of fun, but I have to disagree with you about Daggerfall (don’t worry – no assassination attempts unless you say something bad about X-Com: UFO Defense). Yeah, Daggerfall was really buggy, but it was wonderful just to wander around the world, finding little dungeons and towns and people everywhere.
OK, there are plenty of ways it could have been improved, but we’re talking about a game released 14 years ago (I think that stone tablets were the popular gaming platform back then). There should have been more diversity, but the major cities at least had different architectures. And idle wandering was still great fun.
(The game that really gave us NO reason to explore was Darklands, since every part of that gameworld was exactly like every other part, right down to the quests. IMHO, that was the big flaw in a game that could have been one of the greats.)
I loved Morrowind, but it was actually a bit disappointing after Daggerfall. Well, at least at first. It might be my favorite now. But Morrowind was released six years after Daggerfall. Six years is a long time in computer games. What could Daggerfall have been in 2002,… or better yet, today?
WCG: Not saying Daggerfall wasn’t great for its time and all, but unlike Morrowind, I don’t really feel it holds up.
rust: Even one piece of that custom mojo is well outside my spending power.
Today it could be oblivion.
But you jsut said you made a mint off those ordinators O__o
And isnt it MAD cheaper if you supply the glass?
The suspense is killing me. Will Cahmel ever think of combining the awesome power of Running Away Really Quickly with the standoff capability of ranged weapons?
To those suggesting ranged weapons: Cahmel has no archery training. Gaenor regenerates health. That means Cahmel won’t be able to hurt him with a bow, and the few times he does, the damage will vanish before the next shot.
To those suggesting glass armor: good idea, but not all that much better than what he has now. And Ghostgate is a cheaper source than smithing, anyways.
To Rustkarn: This is why you don’t use training. If you hadn’t, you’d have enough money by now to just buy a victory. By this point, you’d be looking at 6 figures.
Yes, there are victory methods against this guy. They generally involve an optimized build, an IV of potions, magic items with a certain list of effects, and a horde of disposable HP. Cahmel has none of those. Why ain’t he running?
re Telc: Bound armor is affected by Light Armor skill, actually (it’s weightless after all 😉 ).
Not much better? You sir are daft.
I say you use Guillotine. Use it enough and you should eventually hit, and it’s an instant kill.
Viktor: Actually, nope, I’d only have around 12,000. Not nearly enough to make a difference, even assuming I had the massive amounts of raw materials to buy a custom job.
@Rustcrust. It’s a 25% increase, yes, but that’s not much given the utter pwnage he’s experiencing.
@Rustkarn. You ought to have more. One ordinator is 33,600 GP, and you ought to get a good chunk of that from the right merchants.
Ordinator…oh. Oh, oh crap.
See, yeah, no, I think in my sleep-induced delirium I wrote this misleadingly. I didn’t kill any ordinators, guys. That part with killing the guards was my Daggerfall experience.
Rutskarn needs a nap. And a bazooka.
@Viktor: If you’re seriously asking why Cahmel isn’t running away, then hello! Welcome to this Let’s Play! Our hero today is Cahmel, a sexy piece of ghetto badass who lives hard, fights like a hurricane, and never, EVER runs away from a fight.
Ok, he lives the life of a nudistic beggar and he hits like three wet noodles tied to a breadstick. Whatever. This Cahmel don’t run.
Uh, how about you don’t kill that guy and you use the BoBS to run away and do whatever you need in that area??Entertaining as it is reading your articles, this struggle becomes boring.
Still, not like the Ordinators are hard. They can be taunted into attacking you fairly easily, they have no defenses against Jinkblades or similar paralysis spells, and they are incredibly satisfying to splat. Money should not be an issue.
Any way to debuff him? By which I mean, chip away at his attributes, using spells or items or whatnot, until he might actually be beatable. If it reflects, you should survive, and can get it restored at the nearest temple. If it works, the damage is permanent. And considering the scrolls for it do a total of somewhere between 50 to 150 points of damage, it should punch right through his magic resistance. Lucky or not, he can’t kill you if his strength score is zero. Hell, he won’t even be able to move, with all the equipment he’s carrying.
Oh, and of course, you can always buff yourself. If I remember right, a bottle of Sujamma will raise your strength by 50 points, with the effect stacking for each one you drink. You can also use adrenaline rush, to boost it even further.
Two problems with Plan Debuff.
1.) I have nothing of the sort. I’m as well-stocked as a Golden Corral at 1:00 on a Sunday.
2.) He’s got reflection. If I try to lower his strength, there’s a good chance I’ll end up turning myself into a black Steven Hawking.
Chugging an entire truckload of jusamma isnt a bad idea tho… as ong as you can carry it all, its not that hard to find. Shein or the like for endurance.
1) Scrolls aren’t that expensive, and Sujamma even less so. Even if you lack the funds at the moment, you’d only need a couple hundred septims for the number you need. At your level, that much money is a cakewalk to get.
2) Working on the assumption that you’d rather not just reload until you beat his reflect chance, the strength damage can be negated by the buffs I mentioned, so you’ll still be able to make a run for it.
If you were inclined to invest the time, effort, and capital needed to pull it off, I’d suggest taking advantage of the sorely broken alchemy system to buff yourself up into a faster, stronger, tougher, luckier SOB than Gaenor. But since it starts with training up your alchemy and getting your hands on top-shelf alchemy gear and the ingredients for a couple hundred potions, it’s kind of a haul.
Personally, I’ve always been stealth-archer/archmage, which meant I’ve never had a problem sneak/nuking the crazy beggar.
I just wanted to chime in that Daggerfall was this brilliant massive landmass full of cardboard cutouts.
Morrowind really was the pinnacle of TES series.
Jeff, you are my new best friend.
I’ve never played Morrowind.. so bear with me here..
Any possibility of kiting him into a more dangerous area and getting some marauding beast to off him?
Nope. He’s locked into that area.
Besides, there’s frankly not a lot of enemies tougher than he is. What I’d really end up doing is using him as my own personal wrecking crew.
Wow, it’s too bad you can’t make him chase you into the assassin’s HQ then.
@Jarenth: When you say Cahmel doesn’t run you mean except from bug nests, assassins, random creatures trying to assault him while he’s going from one place to the next, and responsibilities (to guilds or to hired help, take your pick) right?
The bug nest was merely a tactical retreat. So was the assassin’s fortress. In the case of travelling around, it’s less ‘running away’ and more ‘keeping going at the same pace and not stopping for every idiotic piece of wildlife that tries to bite your shins off’. And as for the guid things, well…
Say there are two people, let’s call them Kahmel and Not-mhel, working at some incredibly stupid guild – let’s call that House Hlulaa. This guild often gives its retainers dangerous, illegal, low-paying missions. Now, say one of these people blindly keeps following the orders of this guild, performing dangerous menial task after dangerous menial task merely because ‘the guild tells him to’. The other person, however, being a tough hunk of man, decides he’s had enough of this crap, straight up declines all stupid work, and ends his association with said guild by punching the guild boss square in the jaw.
I ask you, in this situation: who is the one ‘running away’ from their personal responsibility here? The person allowing himself to be used as a doormat or the person taking charge of his own life? I would think the answer obvious.
“Allowing himself to be used as a doormat” has already been done by both, considering what the employer Krasio Curious made them both do. So it’s a little late to rebel, but sunk costs I guess.
The awful glint in his eyes…
(If I had the opportunity to turn into a black Stephen Hawking, I’m not sure I’d refuse it.)
@Viktor – I wasn’t actually thinking of a bow, instead those horrendously overpowered darts that the gang in the sewers has. Of course, they’re arguably more dangerous than Gaenor because of the aforementioned darts. But if Cahmel got his paws on a couple of their weapons, then lack of skill would not stand in the way of the wood elf’s elimination.
Greg: the black dart gang’s eponymous “black darts” would indeed be a great help in this fight… if Cahmel had sunk any lessons into marksmanship. You can’t even consistently hit a cliff racer with a daedric bow and glass arrows with a skill less than 40, so a highly-armored, very agile, and obscenely lucky Gaenor would just show you his favorite Matrix impression when you miss terribly and he comes over to show you his kung fu.
I love this thread.
And then, if all else fails, there’s the cheater’s absolute-dead-last resort.
What you need to do is get trained in conjuration, or a bunch of scrolls, and just use summons till he dies.
Again, we’re talking about a guy that regenerates health. While Telvanni magic items or people who have been using Conj since Seyda Neen are able to swarm him to death, you can’t just pick up Summon Scamp and expect to even dent Gaenor. You need high, consistent damage output, and nothing that Cahmel isn’t already a master of will do that.
Gaenor takes forever to kill even after you have typed tgm in the console.
I think Cahmel might be in over his head on this one…
Use the force Cahmel…. Trust your feelings….
…What? There was totally a post between my last two posts just hours ago…
When ever I played Morrowind I always took spear.
Ah spears…
Lovely lovely reach.
Shortblade and Destruction. Shortblade for hitting him faster than he can respond, Destruction for when I need my space. 3 second Paralyze or 2 second Absorb Health on the blade means the effect never ends. Reach doesn’t matter if they can’t respond.
He not only has reflect to block the paralyze and absorb health, but he also has godly luck. You need godly skill to get consistent hits on the guy.
Joys of Absorb Health include that it cannot be reflected. The Paralyze would be bad, but the good shortblades are common enough(and the weight low enough) that you can carry around mundane ones for situations like this. Plus my AB was generally high enough to hit him regularly through that luck.
Though half the time I was Telvanni, so I had Admonition, Aryon’s Helper, a pet centurion, Gothren’s Cephalapod Helm, and a bunch of other useful magic items and effects.
In fact, I’m gonna start up a new char. Rustkarn, my free time would like a word with you.
Hypothetically, could Cahmel get some reflect/absorb stuff too, so whenever he flings a 20 damage pinprick from one of those many rings found in random crates, it would bounce back off him once it bounced back off the intended target?
According to the wiki, spells only reflect once. I like your thinking though, letting Gaenor taste his own medicine. I guess the only way to do that is the all-powerful alchemy.
Hm… it’s been a while, but I wonder if you can’t kite the crazy beggar into killing a passing ordinator, thus giving you a body full of loot to rob.
Woah! 2 pages of comments now :O
@Jeff It’s possible to do that with mages or archers, but Gaenor is melee. Still doable, but hard. Fun idea, though. Especially since the Hands of Almexia might be tough enough to duke it out with him. Too bad you can’t bring him to Godsreach, I’d love to see him fight Salas Valar.
I’ve been reading the multiple threads here for a while and really enjoying the various Let’s Play you’ve been doing.
This one in particular is actually tempting me to see if I can pick up a copy of Morrowind next time I’m Stateside.
My problem was that I did Daggerfall back in the day, got big, bad-ass and did almost EVERY sidequest (I’m a completionist style of player) — but when going into the final dungeon I hit a bug where I would fall through the world as I zoned in.. over and over and over. And THEN i found out my *4* earlier save files were all corrupt. After trying a number of times and always falling through with the recent save, I furiously uninstalled the game and never went back.
I didn’t pick up another Elder Scrolls game until Oblivion was out for ages and I picked up a GotY Edition from a bargain bin (like about a year ago). I did enjoy that though and it had no where near the instability that infuriated me with Daggerfall. Unfortunately, I have to agree with another poster that going through the game thrice was about the limit with me, and that was mostly to try out different classes and skills and compare them.
Having said that, I’m curious to see how the infamous Cahmel will get through this — but hearing the game crashes so much makes me rethink the purchase of the game. I don’t have nearly as much free time as I used to afterall. 😉
If it reassures you any, my Morrowind crashes have only happened when I have been running some HEAVY mods, or they were related to my graphics card overheating, never the base game.
hey man rutskarn u should try to get fortify attack potion to kill him it works great