A long time ago someone mentioned that the choker that Kaylin wears is very similar to her Magician bands like she wears on her arms- I had to struggle not to say it right away back then! XD Her necklace is a magicians band, specifically a quick swap Magicians Band, it holds her set of PVP armor allowing for her to quick swap what she’s wearing with her PvP gear and back. However, there are restrictions. I’m sure some of you are aware that even though video games let you swap items rather quickly, usually it isn’t allowed as much in combat. Same goes here. Kaylin tried to point it out before in a more subtle way, but the sword strike on the door at the beginning? That started combat, first strike, and that locked her out of being able to change her gear. He also did something else more obvious, but that won’t be as apparent as to why until the next couple of pages!
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It’s next to impossible to read what’s beings whispered in panel 3. And yes, I know it’s supposed to be a whisper, but still. Trying to “zoom in” makes the words get way too pixelated because of the resolution of the image…
Here’s what I managed to piece together:
All knights(?), come to my aid(?). Your king fell (something) the (something) of power. These monsters will (something)
Let me (something) our (something) together!
I propably misread a few words… Let me know if anyone is able to read anything more…
Check The Aussie Bloke’s message under yours, they nailed it if you haven’t seen it XD – jeez- you people… I’m both happy, and a little disappointed y’all managed to read it at 3Point font and scaled down by more than 70%-
Yeah… When I commented there was no comment yet and whatever system Akismet uses to proccess the comments took hours to approve mine. Here’s a little test: this comment is being typed at 11:38 in my local time, utc -3. Let’s see what it will how up as…
Oh, wow… Now it decides to do it instantly… -_-
Once a comment is approved, manually or by the automatic process, future posts by the same user are generally not held back unless they contain something on a spam filter list like unusual links or particular phrases. I try to get comments that require manual approval checked as soon as I can but I usually sleep sometime after I post an update. And I try to sleep for at least 5 hours. ^_^
“All knights come to my aid! Your king will share the reward of power these monsters will grant us! Let us avenge our comrades together!”
Wasn’t easy to read, but I got there!
XD Jeez you nailed it. Guess I should have gone with Font Size 2… Or squiggly lines- Well! Congrats! You get a bit more insight as to what she’s doing and how she’s undermining part of his original plan, as for how it helps- that’s coming up soon.
Well, fonts are specifically designed to be readable! I, for one, am grateful you used actually sensible text instead of squiggly lines.
#notallfonts 😀
We do not talk about Comic Sans 😀
Oh, please don’t! XD
I dunno, by putting actual text, we get a teasing hint as to the context of the message. Who are these knights? Is this a code-phrase? If not a code-phrase, why send a message that would be likely to come from the NPC king?
It is called a Mocking Bird…
Among other things, it gets all the conspirators in one place so they can be stopped en masse rather than worrying about any of them escaping and restarting an operation elsewhere. At least, for all the ones that allow their greed to override their worry that this might be a trap, but frankly, anybody who’s been involved with this sort of operation for long probably falls into that category.
The really fun part is that most of her statement isn’t even really false… the knights will all be sharing in the (karmic) rewards of what they have done, they are being ‘granted’ power by the monsters (in the form of attacks), and Kaylin and Nyna are avenging their comrades…
I have to say: nice pair of eyes ya got there, buddy. 😀
I had to zoom in a LOT XD
2 respawns left? as usual more questions than answers
in strongest-of-talithar-20 it was more or less said that kaylin could earn earn favors for knowledge she taught the gods
and those favors are in the form of revives
I think the “obvious thing” is on page 08 where on the centre panel in a blue flash he appears to kill/vaporise/sacrifice a couple of beings presumably for combat power or his own respawn.
Uhh- Page 8, the blue flash in the mid panel- should pretty clearly show Nyna – is killing NPCs in the castle on their way to the kind. Also, killing people doesn’t grant respawns.
Interesting to see that the knowledge Kaylin provided the gods so far has earned her 3 revives (of which she used one here). Of course she won’t be telling her enemy this, let him think she can revive as much as needed to kill him.
She actually only got 2 revives from Elli. Kaala already owed her a favor, which Kaala immediately turned in to give her more attempts if she needed them (because this is the best time to put an end to the slaughter of her people). That will be explained at a later time but I have no issue mentioning it here XD – it just makes sense.
Eyy she’s back!
Nice one with the choker, and I had already expected Kaylin had a dedicated PVP gear set. This is a much nicer way to store it, though.
My guess to what Kaylin is doing with that message is to lure the guards/knights that the king ordered away for this fight, presumably with two reasons.
First is that it makes it easier to deal with them in one place rather than track them down individually.
Second is that the Kaylin’s pvp build is clearly designed to gain an advantage in a when outnumbered, possibly gaining buffs from it or having skills that benefit from it such as redirecting enemy attacks or have health/stat drain type effects that favor having a target rich environment to apply on multiple targets at once.
That gave me an idea (also re-reading of the chapter). Kaylin specifically mentioned she has a skill that “counters guys like [King Talithar]”. My guess is Kaylin has a skill or passive that grants her either defense (evasion) or offence (striking power/armor penetration) bonus depending on how many hostile targets are within specific radius of her. Which, given Sage often mentioned DnD rules as inspiration for the comic’s world rules, is not unreasonable. I distinctly recall there being some like those.
been waiting for that Neaklet to Come of Use 😀
dont see many of that type of equipment in games i visit any more
– would love to get my hands on both those knives
still hitting both your comics every day (since before A.i started) for updates. your art style is very enjoyable
cheers mate
Lot of interesting content in this page!
Glad I read the comments before zooming in TOO close on that tiny font, saved me some eyestrain 😀 Seriously, do not underestimate peoples’ desire to understand ‘hidden’ stuff like that! If it is readable AT ALL, people will pick it apart for that hidden meaning. Another comic developed a whole phoneme based written language for speech not meant to be clearly understood, and their community figured it out then went back to translate all the previous pages 😀
It’s interesting to see that Kaylin is at 2 respawns remaining; that’s more than I would have guessed Ellisia would have given her credit for. I had expected one from Ellisia for the immediate lore answer and one from Kaala (maybe later), which would have left one respawn remaining… I’m curious where the third comes from… maybe Lyrestra? Either way if gods’ favors are the new Adventurer currency, it’ll be a good reason for Kaylin to get to know the Dark Elf Goddess! Also wonder what Callum’s respawn counter looks like…
With the text translation my thoughts largely match uaeoaeoeoi and Orlet – both gathering all the targets who know about XP, and somehow the presence of others will turn the tide in her favor. I’d also had the idea that the king’s skills auto-target – good when he fights alone, but bad if he has allies nearby because it’d risk picking them over Kaylin. That could be what Kaylin meant when she said he “Fights like a Gorgon” – that Gorgons fight alone with skills that trade controllability for greater power.
I’m a little curious about the idea of gear somehow getting ‘locked’ the moment combat starts though… I fully get that she had a PvP setup that she didnt bring for the first fight, but artificial limits like that feel odd given how much the rest of the world is realtime or has changed. Granted it’s all game world logic so anything goes, but it totally makes me want to go back over her past combats to see if she pulled out any new gear during any of them 😀 Except the bathhouse where she’d taken off her arm bands and didnt have inventory access… though she DID keep her choker on even then.
She’s retrieved items, and such while in combat, but never swapped equipment. She’s “turned off” her weapons before- basically putting them into storage- and retrieved them, but not swapped armor pieces. Weapon swapping is possible with limitations while in combat, but the quick loadout on her necklace storage has to replace everything and thus can only be activated prior to actually engaging in combat. The obvious reasons for this are, items that grant bonus HP by a percentage could be toggled on and off over and over causing you to heal rapidly thanks to rounding errors, and the more simulated “while the video game lets you put on armor and such with the click of a button, in the actual game world you should be considered to be taking the time to take off and put on these new outfits. In which case, you obviously can’t change it in combat.
The items adding hitpoints/health actually reminded me of a mechanic in EVE Online where when adding modules (items) that increased your (ship’s) armor and hull hitpoints, you’d get the increase added immediately in terms of filled-in hitpoints, essentially healing you for that amount. With some creative use of those items you could definitely prolong the battles or nudge them in your favour. But the most hilarious side-effect of these modules was that when removing the said items, they’d also remove the extra hitpoints they granted, thus possibly putting you into negative hitpoints (and immediate explosion it was negative hull).
Eventually the devs have removed the ability to swap modules while in combat.
I also strongly remember at least one other game that did not allow you to swap gearsets while in combat (but you could do that while out of combat, or in a safe area), but I can’t put my finger on it right now…
I remember Skyrim did it, though in checking if my knowledge of that is correct I found some people saying that it was a feature that was able to be toggled either via options or a toggle in the command prompt at some point and its current status I am not sure about. I hope its obvious I am specifically talking about armor equipment and not weapons as it might take time to swap weapons or held items it’s not a difficult thing to do. D&D is always my best example of this for game reasons, as in D&D- you can change equipment in combat, it just unfortunately takes time… a lot of time… usually enough to get everyone killed XD. Even with someone else helping, it takes 5 minutes to put on Heavy Armor, which would be 50 rounds of combat, and most combat lasts 3-5 rounds, really big ones rarely take more than 15. It also takes time to take it off too… XD
I think only games that have like a combat mode can enforce the armor swapping though because if it can’t tell you are in combat it is hard to say when you can and cant swap.
Monster Hunter of course doesn’t let you swap in combat, for a while you couldn’t even change stuff at camp XD (obviously something that changed recently in Monster Hunter World).