Playing on Easy Mode it's possible to complete all quests of the game (main AND side quests) and find all areas with 126 fights or less (yes I counted ). At Easy level, even if that number seems high, most of the fight are quite quickly over, provided that the party is built well enough. If one chooses to not succeed in or do all sidequests (e.g. Riley's quest can be failed right at the first fight with no game over) the number drops even lower...but with the expense of not getting to read some of the story. On the other hand, sometimes (deliberately) failing in a quest will give you something different to read (eg, try failing at either fight in Vaelis' quest). Anyways, I thought I'd post available "shortcuts" or non-violent options for completing the quests here...while still getting to read most of the story. Maybe someone somewhere will find this useful, lol. Act 2 requires more fights than any of the other chapters and also has the least options to avoid them. Quest choices in spoilers.



Note that while avoiding fighting might still work on Normal difficulty as well, I don't recommend this level of fight-avoidance on Hard or NM level. For faster fights in general the key is to invest into aggressive traits and points and have both heavy single enemy attacks and row attacks available. Imo, druid + hunter is the easiest twin combo to play (healing + heavy hits when needed), but that's just my opinion.





Act 1

+When going East of Ninim, give all your money to the bandits (shop first, but you need to have some money for them to let you go --- they let me pass on easy level with just 4gold, lol, but 0 will make them attack)



Available quest shortcuts:

Secret Formula (enter the cave the first time at frozen woods):

Show Spoiler

Show up and demand the scroll from the bandits, choose 'dark magic items' => completed with 0 fights

Animal Problem

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Refuse the quest first when you meet the farmer to get a ring. Negotiate with ratmen =>completed with 0 fights

Polar Bear Hunting

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Don't fight the bears. You'll have to fight bandits and spiders before the polar bear, but you can skip both of the 2 bear fights.

Quest caution!!!

Bandits stealing pelts

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You must fight to complete this quest. If you choose to negotiate and then fight, you'll have to fight the bandits without the bleeding effect you get from the bomb if you ambush them. If you negotiate and choose to take the money, you'll get some cash without fighting, but you'll fail the quest. You'll get a better payoff by ambushing the bandits and stealing some pelts.

Haha interesting. I'm thinking to steal this an post on Steam forums too

Act 2



+Avoid the Lugal area when you don't have to go there due to a quest. It's the only area you can't just walk back out but will have to fight all the mercs first.

+Apart from the Invitations quest, you always risk a fight when you exit a Dingirra family area. Save and reload if you really want to avoid these.

+The Master of the Pits will be after your money on two days: On the day you go adventuring with Krimm the first time and on the last day you get off to buy weapons just before the Liberty Challenge. Blow all your money (or almost all) before entering the arena on those two days to get the related achievement.

+After returning back to the arena on your first Dingirra adv. day with Krimm, you'll face a quest with 0 to many arena slave fights before a Boss. You can try your luck or use saving and reloading. I managed to clear this out with only two slave fights by just reloading a save when I saw the two guys in the cell (they always attack and have no info for you)

+ On Riley's Quest there are 7 guard fights and 1 Boss. You'll get a level-up after 3 fights. There's no shortcut here except trying the stunts (and reloading after failed stunts if you really don't want to fight). You can always lose a fight, but you'll then fail the quest.



Available quest shortcuts:

Memories

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Paying Ardin's tab will cost you 500g. This is an easy fight, so I would say just fight, and save your money for the later confrontation

Paying the Viking off will cost you 1000g. => -1500g and 3 fights => quest complete

Family slave day --- Kiduu-quest

Other family quests might be shorter than this, but I like the Kiduu-reward the most. ( Family-quest rewards are listed in here: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=3476 )You can cut some corners in the dungeon, but you'll lose some exploring fun this way...anyway "short" route:

Show Spoiler

1 Lugal fight (entering Iron Hall)

Choose the arrow to the sarcophagus room (the other route is much longer)

-check the other door

-check the coffin

1 Boss fight

Free Robinia

After freeing Robinia you'll have 4 consequent Lugal/Dingirra guard fights following the green arrows outside. If you get Robinia killed in the fights, the quest fails, but you can move on in the story.

Steam Tunnels

These tunnels can be cleared by just using the steam-path shortcuts twice and then fighting the Boss (easy), but you'll miss a bit of dialogue. Best for immersion would be to

Show Spoiler

Fight the lizardmen twice and then take the available 2nd shortcut to the boss.

You can also take the first shortcut, then fight one group of lizards to see the dialogue about the lizards and then take more shortcuts to the boss, but there's a bit of an immersion break with the arrows talking about lizards when you haven't even met them...

Quest Caution!!

Ant Queen

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This quest is optional, but if you choose not to do it, you'll lose part of the story, consumable reward, All quests done Achievement and all the later ratmen shops + related achievement!

Act 3



+Autolevel everyone to 14 at the start of this Act, it should make the first quest, Merrow's Men, which is one of the longest quests in this chapter easier to complete.

+There's a secret area in this Act that you'll need for the Explorer-achievement. To find it:

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After completing the storyline quests Merrow's Men and A trip in the forest (aka Jariel's quest), try to board the ship. Then, complete one quest from Merrow (Empire's Plans), one quest from Aenais (Lost Brother) and one quest from the tavern (Pride of Lukoss) --the order you do these quests in doesn't matter. After these and before taking any additional quests, visit the ship repeatedly until the new location to sail to is announced. There are no quests in the area, it's just for grinding. You can visit it and come back without fighting anything.

Available shortcuts

Lost Brother

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Circle Mansion

Free Gonzalo => completed with 0 fights

(or you could just check one room before freeing Gonzalo and have 1 fight)

Empire's Plans

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Choose: Job for Chalassa

2 soldier waves and quest done

There are more interactions and dialogue with the other, longer option, though.

Pride of Lukoss

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Don't explore the cave!!! (lots of long fights)

1 Boss fight if you call out to the crew => this is optional but if you want to see Krimm get angry at Riley again.....



Shortest route: Just board the damn ship

Search in this order:

Captain's quarters =>wraith fight

The crew quarters => zombie fight

The cargo hold (you'll have to open it to finish the quest) => Boss fight

Lost Parents

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Options 'Use slaves as distraction' and 'Try sneaking in' both have the same number of fights:

3 guard fights

+1 can't use magic guard fight

However, in 'sneaking', Chalassa will occasionally kill one of the guards, so I recommend choosing that.

War or Peace

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You don't have to fight captain Starrad if you choose Jariel or Krimm's option

Jariel's option => 1 demon fight + 1 boss fight and done

Nutty Nutt's Treasure

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turn to west

turn and look through telescope

go to East*)

=>=> Kraken Boss fight again and quest done

*)Saving this for last and doing the other 3 directions first will give you 2 boss fights and 1 fight with lotta crabs before the Kraken

Act 4

+ Autolevel to 21

+ Make sure you have at least 5000 worth gold and items to sell if you don't want to do random fights to gather enough money to pay the toll later.

+ Collecting flowers and rhino horns is optional => 0 fights



Centaurs!

Show Spoiler

Help Him

Ask her why => completed with 0 fights and you can shop! Remember the upcoming toll, though

Minotaur Canyon

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Avoid

Left path => completed with 0 fights

Note: Ambushing the minotaur and killing him would give you an item to choose (armour or strong potion). There are a couple of funny lines upon choosing the decoy for the ambush that you'll miss if you choose to avoid this guy.

Poor Hulius

Show Spoiler

Approach the Gnolls

Pay for Hulius' life

Want him to be a slave => pay 100g and done

(Afterwards, ask for a reward to get a little something )

****

Final note:

Excessive and fast reloading of saves to get better random events may induce a not-so-common RenPy-crash. Annoying, but not fatal, because you were loading something you had a save for, anyway.

Not all quests have shortcuts, obviously. Sometimes you just have to fight. Number of fights I did on this trial to complete all quests (Save Chalassa and Vaelis' quest in Act 3) for each Act: 20 + 54 + 40 + 12. Achievements:

Tainted Love, All About Money, Save Chalassa, The Worst Pirates, Treasure Hunter, Adventurer, Explorer, It's Ratman!

Throwing in a few extra random grind fights without Shea & Althea and excluding them from a few storyline fights would've also earned the This Is Our Story!- achievement.



Please notify me if I typed anything horribly wrong.

Haha interesting. I'm thinking to steal this an post on Steam forums too

Lol, steal away.

For comparison purposes, completing Loren with extension and acquiring the following list of achievements ("pacifist-options" used whenever possible, eg in Karen's and Loren's personal quests, didn't fight Krul, etc)

Free Karen, Vanquished, Formidable, Champion of Orcs Arena, Bad Company, King Slayer, It's Personal, Let's Party, Undeceivable, Animalist, one char romanced/alone, reach 50 points x 3

... took around 101 fights. Go back and forth with few paths, add 2-5 fights and achievements Van Helsing & Diamond Hunter could be added. I got lucky with the Everburn fights and had to fight only twice. No reputation quests done and all random fights skipped. LtAP of course has no separate 'all quests'-done achievement nor does SotW have a cheat-button, so direct comparisons are a bit difficult, but I thought I'd log that anyway.

Interesting, so are you saying that trying to play both games using the least fights possible, with Loren you got around 101 and with SOTW 126?

Then probably wasn't really the number of battles (even if the average player doesn't exactly know all the shortcuts you used) but something else. To be honest, sometimes everything seems just a bit random

Yeah, I played both games on Easy with lowest possible number of fights I could think of while acquiring as many achievements/quests done as possible. (playing on easy will of course exclude all hard-mode related stuff/bosses)



ETA: I guess one thing that makes Loren's fights look so much less is that the personal quests that you have to specifically look out for, take about 22 fights, so people can skip a lot of those if they are not interested in a specific character, whereas in SotW the personal quests are integrated into the storyline so people will fight to win? Pure speculation here, though.

It might also be the overall difficulty - for someone like you or me, used to RPG, Loren's hard difficulty could be considered "normal", while SOTW easy difficulty for Loren's players might be "hard"

I play most games on normal and have played more difficult games, and I didn't find SotW difficult at all, in fact I died more in Loren because one fame thing made everyone way more powerful than me.



SotW was more long and a bit more repetitive than Loren which had more variety to build up characters during level up, shorter combats, less resource management, and the gameplay variety between was larger as compared to just mostly fighting. I actually love fighting RPGs, but I had to think of fights more often, even when not fighting, such as potions and a whole lot more variety of equipment, which felt impossible to keep up with. Lorens combat was great because it was quick, sometimes deadly, but it made the story more fun and worthwhile for me, SotW had a great story but the busywork of the combat made it less fun, and more of a "oh, no attacked again, do I use more SP to get the fight over quickly or conserve my energy and slog through?" For Loren I enjoyed Grinding, for SotW the combat was easier than Loren once I figured the correct build, but very boring and long, that the required fights were less fun than grinding.



I liked Loren's combat more to how dynamic it was. And while I truly loved SotW, and it had a great story and the events worked with that, also very different from most stories in the Fantasy genre I get these days, I didn't find the combat fun. But that may be that I always preferred turned base games to be quick, but real time games can have more variety and avoid getting repetitive.

Yeah, long battles will be completely out of discussion for all future RPGs, that's sure. I'm even planning one without any healing potions or spells right now (Queen Of Thieves) to make sure they can't be long

Good also if people think that Loren had more skills variety on level up... each char had two classes, of which the first was always one of the three (Warrior, Thief, Mage) and then a custom for each one. But each class had only 5 unique skills, with 3 levels variations. Compared to the 12 skills of each class in SOTW, there are HALF the skills in Loren (unique) each class. So less work for me, better! (considering also the bigger cast of Loren 2 and so on).

I guess for me the difference was that Loren they were few but the leveling up and future variety was intact. Getting to level 25 would give me about 13 skills.



In Season of the Wolf, 13 skills (which admittedly requires a higher level) would buy the whole tree and 1 in the universal tree, which really had limited scope in how it may help a particular character. In Loren, 13 skills means deciding what you want at the highest level and they built off each other, so 4 max skills out of 10, and 1 extra. But there is less choice involved.It felt weird getting the best abilities right out the bat, so with each level you are getting a lower priority choice, rather than building it up. I can get all my spellcasters to cast all the elements within a few levels at their highest strength, while with Loren, at level 25 if you only spend only 1 in buff trees, you barely have that, so weirdly enough, there was way more practice and variety in how you level them up. Do I want Draco to be excellant in Fire before he can cast Air? Myrth is the healer or damage dealer? It offered more when leveling up.



But glad to hear about short combat, I just hope the non healing one doesn't use resource management, it will be a nightmare! (but at least a fun nightmare! ) I really enjoyed both games, but SotW is more combat oriented so I may be biased that I like combat but lean more toward dialogue and story as where I get enjoyment from a game. To me I play games like the Story is the prize, and the Combat makes it feel like I earned it, I often get bored with games that are portrayed that the combat is the reward in itself, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

But glad to hear about short combat, I just hope the non healing one doesn't use resource management, it will be a nightmare! (but at least a fun nightmare! ) I really enjoyed both games, but SotW is more combat oriented so I may be biased that I like combat but lean more toward dialogue and story as where I get enjoyment from a game. To me I play games like the Story is the prize, and the Combat makes it feel like I earned it, I often get bored with games that are portrayed that the combat is the reward in itself, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Yes is clear the kind of players you are, and I know others thinks differently (like fabulaparva in this forum and others).

Is OK to have different opinions and tastes. Though your kind of player seems to be the majority of potential future buyers (comparing Loren vs SOTW) so obviously I'm more interested (or forced to be interested!) in



Another thing, and I answer about the question about the other game... the fact is that beside the amount of battles, I also spent an INCREDIBLE amount of time to balance the battles/AI in SOTW, with the only result of making them longer and (for most people) boring. In this other RPG (Queen Of Thieves) I'll have max 3 party members, so this will already reduce the time (I think 6 people party is too big to be honest) and also make the battle shorter will be easier to balance them, so I won't even need to spend (waste) so much time again with the battles

It'd be interesting to compare the average number of fights. My take is that the SotW "optional" fights were more in-your-face and perhaps people clicked on those red arrows far more than they needed to (I certainly did). Also, the length and repetitiveness of the random fights (even in terms of what mobs you got and in which setup) didn't help.



The balanced AI might not be so bad if healing was nerfed or limited all around. In general, I liked it when they took smarter decisions (though it was frustrating that they cheat and are almost never affected by running out of SP, which also prolonged fight length). Or if you do have healing, make it like a once-per-fight thing (for players and enemies).

I did both, first I clicked on everything I possibly could, then I played a game where I avoided as many fights as possible. I'll be honest, I had more fun the second time, but that was because I was breaking the game all the time.



Nah, I have no real big issues with lots of fights the first time I play a game, but if I then want to see additional romances, etc. I really want to get there, not get bogged down by fighting. I'm all for New Game+ or something, anything, that will make second, third, fourth games faster to get through.

It'd be interesting to compare the average number of fights. My take is that the SotW "optional" fights were more in-your-face and perhaps people clicked on those red arrows far more than they needed to (I certainly did). Also, the length and repetitiveness of the random fights (even in terms of what mobs you got and in which setup) didn't help.

That's what I think too... when you see such inviting red arrows... you can't resist clicking them!

The balanced AI might not be so bad if healing was nerfed or limited all around. In general, I liked it when they took smarter decisions (though it was frustrating that they cheat and are almost never affected by running out of SP, which also prolonged fight length). Or if you do have healing, make it like a once-per-fight thing (for players and enemies).

Yes maybe instead of just limiting "healing" another valid solution is to limit SP. That's what I'm doing on QoT as well. I think a problem of SOTW (and maybe also of Loren) is that the skills weren't "impressive". I want a skill that when used makes a big difference from the normal attacks. I also want players to be able to use 2-3 skills each fight for each character max. So they need to think where / when to use them, and not just use strategies to refill SP and spam skills to overthrow the enemies (is a valid tactic in the current system).



I think that if are too long/frequent most battle systems are in the long run boring. For example I love the King's Bounty series, I've played a lot, but now I have a save in the recent Vikings DLC and... after 2-3 fights they all become very similar. And I'm talking about one of the best tactical RPGs/strategy games ever made (not just in my opinion)

I think that if are too long/frequent most battle systems are in the long run boring. For example I love the King's Bounty series, I've played a lot, but now I have a save in the recent Vikings DLC and... after 2-3 fights they all become very similar. And I'm talking about one of the best tactical RPGs/strategy games ever made (not just in my opinion)

Indeed. I feel similarly toward SotW. I like the fights but just fighting seems to have a repetitive effect. I really like the idea of 2 or 3 skills. In that case I don't think healing has to be gotten rid of entirely if it cost more SP than most, healing by one character seems more special rather than a spam, the only problem with this method is regular attacks are boring, and do less damage, and might be even more repetitive if that is the only recourse.

Well in QoT I use combo attacks, so it's a bit different For Loren 2 the coder has found a very good system, that we're still testing now but seems quite promising. But no matter how is done, either by limiting SP or some other means the battles should be shorter, except maybe for the big boss battles

Fight avoiding sounds wrong They should just be uber fast instead.



Back on console rpgs, you would normally enjoy at least 1000+ combats. But hey usually end in 1-2 rounds, 3-4 at most. Boss battles can be 10-15 min siestas like in Loren.



I personally enjoyed SoTW difficulty. I struggled hugely in chapter 1-2 when no one had skills or equipment to survive properly.



For minion battles, I think Loren had the right difficulty, check the Reputation battles for the minion strength levels. 4 skill hits will dispatch them. Using aoe speeds up the process at cost of SP, which is what battles before bosses are meant to do.



I enjoy tactical rpgs to be just that, grind and tactics. And the romance is a damn good reward for it. If I wanted less tactical combat for an rpg, I'd get a Visual Novel



I wonder how many people would be annoyed if Loren 2 had too much combat and not enough romance



What?



Cheers