Massive Chalice: the game diary entry three centuries in the making

Title Massive Chalice: the game diary entry three centuries in the making
Author Tom Chick
Posted in Game diaries
When July 21, 2015

It's been 300 years. I started with ten territories, but I'm down to five. One of them has the Standard where my kingdom trains children..

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The reason for no ruptures in the final battle is actually because they are too good. If one exploded next to the chalice it would take damage every single turn, which can render the fight entirely unwinnable.

Actually there are other things to be wary of around the chalice too, the acid from a stray alchemist flask for example and at some stage in the past the chalice mightily offended bees which too will display their displeasure.

Finally pre 1.0 the difficulty levels were Easy/Normal/Hard and while your experience mirrors my own, I have also seen a friend barely make it through the final battle on Normal. Literally reduced to 1 or maybe 2 heroes by the end.

I love the idea that entire families are fighting, both down the tree, and upwards as well. That seems like the sort of idea that expansion packs are born from.

I have no idea how to expand that concept, mind. I just think it should be.

In a previous diary, you mentioned (I think) that you can toss people into the Chalice for some gain. How does that tie into the final battle?

I lost the final fight the first time around after a desperate, grueling struggle, then reloaded to a save just before it and won easily enough. Part of it was due to figuring out the Secret, as well as some other strategy things for this one. Luck probably had something to do with it too though, considering the exact enemy roster is different every time.

The idea is that the remains of your ancestors are emerging from the chalice. At least I think that's the idea. I believe there's a snippet of dialogue to that effect.

Ah, that makes sense about rupture acid damaging the chalice every round, Ranneko. Good call.

And the bees! I think my main interface complaint in a game with an otherwise REALLY smooth interface is that it can be hard to tell the precise location of bee clouds. I've gotten stung by that.

Get it? Stung? I probably didn't even need to say "get it?".

Friendly fire was my worst enemy for much of the game. Friendly bees are even worse though, especially the first couple of times I used them...

This Massive Chalice diary series has become one of my favorite reads. Thanks, Tom, for writing them!

Typo:
"it’s how my first game ended and I realizzation I arrived at"

Just fought the final battle. Only brought one alchemist, who got killed, and this was one of those people I found in the populace who wasn't part of an existing bloodline. It just said something like "This bloodline is ended" and I got no replacement, alas. Without bombs to clear out all the advanced seeds, and a few bad rolls from my hunters, the seeds got my chalice down to TWELVE hit points ... before I finally got 'em all. Pretty exciting ending.

Wow, I didn't know that you get replacement heroes if you have deaths in the final battle. That does make having good houses much more valuable and probably necessary on higher difficulty levels.

I'm just commenting on this now because I finally, FINALLY finished my first Massive Chalice playthrough.

One thing it might be important to mention is that, if you have 3-4 fairly long-lived bloodlines, make sure that each one is represented in your final lineup. The first time I played the ending (on hard), I chose my highest-level players. Two were from the same house, one was from a different house, and two were new heroes the chalice had found with the "Find New Heroes" research option. So I had four houses total, but only two of them were represented in my final lineup.

So when my first heroes started dying, I immediately lost 3 of them with no resurrections. Worse, the two families that were represented were alchemists, so while I had a bunch of alchemists coming back, I didn't have any additional caberjacks or hunters, just two alchemists that got less and less effective as the bad guys piled up and my players' levels went downward. So if House A's highest-level character is Level 7 while Freelancer B is Level 9, take the Level 7. Their attacks won't be quite as good, but the reinforcements can make all the difference.

It's important to note that on Hard, a few of your heroes WILL start dying--at certain points, it may even be a strategically sound idea to have your alchemists "accidentally" kill them, if they have bad accuracy or they've run out of alchemist flasks and have to wait 7 or so turns to refill (Advanced Lapses can drain your feats in addition to your levels). So, again, make sure that you have one person from each relatively long-lived house when you begin the final run. This also suggests that the ideal number of houses to have is 5.

Playing through this masterpiece again on Brütal difficulty

Very cool.

About once a year I take families down thru the generations to fame and glory.

One of my favorites of all time.