1-12 – ESP
Tuesday, February 13th, 2007– Commentary –
J.D.: I must start this one by saying that nearly all the runes in this comic are legible, if you know the language.
Craig: What do the runes on this page say?
J.D.: Ranger’s cesti read “Fingolfin.” The inscription on the sword is “Ringilis, sword of frost.”
Craig: That is awesome. Ranger is quite decked out in artifacts.
J.D.: But they do him precious little good against Pukarith the Terrible. Who, by the way, is based on an actual cat that we owned.
Craig: The name is well earned. The real Pukarith was a vicious, blood-thirsty little demon who had a taste for human flesh.
J.D.: Especially mine.
Craig: I decided to rename the Tarrasque because at the time I thought it was copyrighted. But as it turns out, the Tarrasque is a legendary creature with quite a history. Still, I’m happy with the Cat’s new name.
J.D.: A nice thing about changing it is that we now have the freedom to do whatever we wish with the Cat as a character, which is a libery we might not have had if we had kept the Tarrasque as-is.
Craig: I’m the guy that does the legwork in looking up all the game text to make sure it’s correct. I like to make Mythband’s game text match that of Angband as closely as possible. It was fun to go into wizard mode and generate Ringil so that I could get it description perfect — I’ve never actually found Ringil in the real game. One day I will!
J.D.: I’m more likely to find Ringil than you are, as I tend to play high-elf rangers and get them to level 50.
Craig: What’s your point?
J.D.: That takes forever. High-elf rangers have I think a 200% experience penalty because they’re so —
Craig: — twinky?
J.D.: Powerful. So it takes a very long time and a lot of dungeon levels to get them there. Therefore I see more artifacts than you do, therefore I will probably see Ringil first. 😛
Craig: Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’ll go through several deep-diving characters while you patiently clear out level after level. You have a much higher tolerance for boredom than I do.
J.D.: And a much longer life expectancy for my characters.
February 13th, 2007 at 2:07 am
I just gotta say that it’s great you guys are restarting from the beginning. It’s like watching a movie in the theater, liking it, then getting the DVD and watching with the makers commentary over top. It’s awesome.
February 13th, 2007 at 3:15 am
‘— twinky?’
Lol. I second was Stevil says, the commentary is turning out to be continuously interesting and entertaining, almost as much so as the comic itself!
Which begs the question, when you eventually start doing new comics, will the commentary continue? I, for one, hope so.
February 13th, 2007 at 5:51 am
lol this one is one of my favourites 🙂 The poor superb Ranger meets a real monster rather than some jackal or another player’s character just for this once… I can almost feel sorry for Leon.
btw isn’t the “real” Ringil (+22,+25)? Why make the Mythband version less powerful? (I’m speaking as someone who’s fought with a (+16,+20) Ringil, not having worried about disenchantment… 😉 )
February 13th, 2007 at 6:43 am
What’s ESP?
February 13th, 2007 at 11:15 am
You know what else he’s missing that’s even more important than ESP? Escapes. Anyone deep engough to meet the Tarrasque that isn’t carrying several teleport level and *destruction* scrolls at all times deserves to die a horrible death. It’s like Leon never stopped save scumming and learned how to actually play the game properly. Oh yeah. Right. He never did.
February 13th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Actually, his cesti read “Fingol’s cisti”… I’m assuming you meant “cesti” 🙂 And the blade reads “Ringilis Blade of Frist”… hmmm… some of those vowelly diacriticals can be tricky to keep straight. I suppose it also depends on whether you’re using the Sindarin or Quenya mode. I’ve always been a Sindarin girl, myself.
I’d also like to say BIG KUDOS to keeping the comic running, I enjoy all your comments, I will always be a die-hard Rogue-like game fan, and I’m just down the road from where you went to college… I’m in Carlisle!
February 13th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Extra-sensory perception; the same as telepathy in Angband terms. A name for the ability to magically sense that there’s a great big cat around the corner (rather than, say, by smelling it, or looking at it with a periscope…)
February 13th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
It’s funny you mention that, Becka. Just before I read your post, I reread what I had said in the commentary and I realized I had misspoken concerning the rune-work on Ringilis.
I believe you are entirely correct about the cesti and you are right that Ringilis says “blade” and not “sword.” Unfortunately, “o”s and “u”s when written that small and covered in cold vapor do tend to look like “i”s.
If I remember correctly, I was using a Quenya mode modified for use in the English language because in English, unlike in elven, most words end in consonants.
February 13th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Ojomax: Yeah, the real Ringil is (+22, +25). I wasn’t trying to make a wimpy Ringilis, so I’m guessing I read it wrong when I put in the game text.
Of course, it would be just like Leon to let Ringilis get whacked by a bunch of disenchantment breathers without noticing. He’s not the most cautious player.
February 14th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
I recently found this and I like where it’s going. Keep it up!
Layne
February 17th, 2007 at 6:32 am
I think this strip is the most memorable out of all Penance. The combination of panel 2 with Leon in his uber kit gear to him turning around and “Riiight. ESP.” with the Cat literally breathing down on him.
I actually had not gone deep enough in Angband (NPP is my preference) to see the Cat the first time I read this strip, but when I recently reached level 50 and was hanging out around 4000′ something and saw the Tarrasque, read his description, the first thing that popped into my head was this strip and, “Oh shoot… RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!” just based on the reputation that it had earned from this strip.
February 20th, 2007 at 2:58 am
Yeah! Classic Penance!
Leon is indeed a lousy player for allowing Ringilis to be disenchanted and for leaving his Scrolls of Teleportation at home.
Can’t wait to see how (if) he manages to beat the game without scumming and without artifacts. I’m guessing that Lucky will have to bail him out a lot. Question: even though Leon has to win artifactless, can Lucky find and use any? It seems like that would render the game pretty simple.