Overview
This Guide focuses on the camping part of the game. It describes which talents are needen on which action and has some informations about healing, hunting and alchemy. It will not discuss RPG in general or the Dark-Eye Pen&Paper rules in detail. All informations are tested while playing version 1.34. A (?) inside the text marks that I am not totaly shure about this fact or the information is missing. If something sounds rather strange, please keep in mind that english is not my mother thoung. :-)If you are totaly unfamiliar to Blade of Destiny you probably read the beginner Guide from tiger.uppercut first.
Party
While choosing your party members you should think about some general purposes needen in the game. Give one character high values in the needen talents,spells and basic values while creation. Raise them on every Level up as much as possible. Probably make two characters specialists in one purpose, exspecially two doctors. Characters could become specialists in more then one purpose. A wise wizard could be in example a doctor too. But don’t make your only hunter also your only herb collector, because then you can only perform one of those actions once in camp.
The thieve: Open doors and chests.
Dexterity, Pick Locks, Pick Pockets
The hunter: Stock supplies.
Range Weapon, Survival, Orientation, Perception, Animal Lore, Track
The herb collector: Gather herbs.
A druid gets a +5 bonus for plant lore with the 2nd obsidian dagger ritual. So if you play one, make him the herb collector.
Plant Lore, Survival
The wise wizard: Brew potions and identify magic items
Cleverness, Alchemy, Read, Arcane Lore, Breath of Magic, Analytica
The doctor: Healing by skills
Treat Wounds, Treat Diseas
The character with the leftmost picture is your party leader which will be checked for talents sometimes in place of the whole party. Depending of where your party is, the leader should have high skills in certain talents.
City view – Shops:
Perception, Fast Talk, Streetwise
Traveling view: (use your hunter here)
Perception, Orientation, Survival, Sneak
Dungeon view:
Perception, Instinct, Dexterity
Camping
You can set up a camp while in towns, on travels and even inside of dungeons. The ingame time stops while in camp. So it’s the best place to study your character boards and do things as repair a wepon with a whetstone or heal a druid with its obsidian dagger. Those actions in the inventory doesn’t take time.
Use your other actions wisely, every character can perform only one action while in camp.
Assign watch:
Three slots of watch time have to be filled up with up to three characters. While on sleep combined skillchecks are performed for these characters. They will become harder if a character is assigned to more then one watch. If one of them fail the character falls asleep, leads to a whole sleeping party finds themself in a battle.
The combined check consists 3 times Willpower, 4 times Perception, Hide, Sneak and Survival on the Traveling Map and in a Dungeon, but Streetwise instead of Survival if the camp was set up in a City.
Stock supplies: (2h)
This action is only avaible in camps on the Traveling Map. The skillcheck for the search of water is a combined check on Survival, Orientation, Perception and Survival again. If it suckseeds, your party lowers their thirst and their waterskins will be filled up to 3 rations.
The skillcheck for hunting is a combined check on Survival, Animal Lore and Track. It will become much harder if the character has no range weapon and amounition equipted. If it suckseeds, the party lowers their hunger and probably some supply packs can be stored to the inventorys.
Gather Herbs: (1-5h)
This action is only avaible in camps on the Traveling Map. A combined skillcheck of two times Plant Lore and Survival is performed. Make shure the character has seven empty slots in the inventory if you start to gather, otherwise herbs will probably be found and withdraw because of no space to store them.
Get the magical herb pouch:
At the very beginning of the game, if you first step outside the Tempel of Travia in Thorwal, go to the Port and help the stranded wizard. He will give you the pouch on arrival at the School of Farsight. Cast a Breath of Magic to find out it’s magical, but don’t spend 10 Ducates at the School for an analys spell now because you will need your money for other things at the moment.
Once “Breath of Magic” and “Analyze” are performed sucessfuly on the herb pouch you can stow an unlimited amount of all 18 kinds of herbs in one inventory slot.
Use Talents
Only two characters can use a talent once in camp.
-Treat Wounds (0.25-1h)
Do bandage to a characters wounds. Every Character can be treatet only one time in 8 hours. If the skillcheck suckseeds a random amount of Vitality is restored.
If the treating character has a whirlwind or a fourleafed oneberry in its inventory this herb will be used as a tool and give a +2 bonus on the skillcheck. Also the amount of restored Vitality will be raised by 1d6 for the oneberry or 1d6+4 for the whirlwind.
If the skillcheck fails critical (meaning at least 2 of 3 d20 actually roll 20) the treatet character will get infected with Traumatic Fever.
Things work a bit different if the character is allready dying, means his Vitality is zero or below. This treatment will only take a quater of a hour. The skillcheck will get a malus of two point for every point that the treatet characters Vitality is below zero. It raises Vitality up to 1 and changing the characters state to unconsicious on sucksess. Otherwise you have to cast a Balm on him or bring him to a healer realy urgent, because the character looses 1 point vitality every quater of a hour untill it reached the negativ value of his actuall Constitution and he will be finaly dead. Only a miracle at a temple could rescue the character now.
-Treat Poison
Not implemented yet.(?)
-Treat Diseas (2-5h)
Every Character can be treatet only one time in 8 hours. First a simple skillcheck on Treat Diseas is performed, if it sucseeds the diseas will become knowen and the needen herbs are listed. If the performing character got them in the inventory a second skillcheck with a malus of the difficulty factor can be performed. If it’s also suckseeding, the diseas is cured and the treating character get five experience points.
The Anti-Sickness-Potion is avaibel at Herbalist’s Stalls on markets, sometimes.
-Alchemy (8.5-120h)
The character needs an Alchemy set. Also a recipe has to be readen before and it’s incredients are needen. Check that the character has still a free slot in the inventory. The skillcheck on the alchemy talent get a malus depending on the potions difficulty. If you brew in an Inn you get a +1 bonus if you do it in a Single Room or a +2 bonus in a Suite. Take care about water and food for the party, they consume it while brewing.
The recipes and where to find most of them:
(stay with your mouse pointer here and use the mousewheel to scrool)
(need some text here to make steam accept nesting a table into a spoiler)
Use Magic:
Only two characters can use magic once in camp.
-Cast Spell
Should be self explaining. Most notabel here is the Calm body spell that increases the restoration of Vitality and Astral Energy while sleeping a lot.
-Meditate (2h)
Convert Vitality to Astral Energy, one by one. The character don’t need a Thonnys Flower in his inventory to do so, unlike as it is written in the description of the Thonnys Flower.
-Staff Enchantment – Dagger Ritual (2h)
Add a spell permanently to a magical characters weapon. This can be done only once a day and needs some Astral Energy no matter if it fails or suckseeds. The skillcheck of Arcane Lore gets a malus depending on the Level of the spell and a +1 bonus in the Single Room or a +2 bonus in the Suite of an Inn.
If you want to enchant a second weapon, the character has to hand over his allready enchantet one to another party member meanwhile.
Campfire Chitchat
Campfire Chitchat doesn’t take ingame time, don’t count as a character action. Sometimes it’s even usefull. So use it.
Sleep: (2-24h)
The sleeping time is set to one houre before the next sunset if you choose this action, but you can change it.
If they are not in an Inn, your party will probably find themself in a battle at the end of the night. If it’s result is dissatisfing, you can load the savegame named camp, which will be saved automaticly everytime you chose sleep.
While sleeping your characters restore Constitution, Vitality and Astral Energy if they are not diseased. As longer they sleep, as more they restore.