Fable 2 - Cracking The Crucible and Other Related Stories

I rock up to the Westcliff Crucible but the guys at the door tell me I’m not famous enough to die in their arena… we shall see about that.

To boost my Renown points I nipped back to Bowerstone Market and down to the dock, where Murgo and the Knothole Island Submarine Guy are, these guys are the two quest givers for the downloadable content areas of See The Future (Murgo) and Knothole Island (three guesses who takes me there.)

The quests in these two areas are pretty different; I will start with the See The Future quest – The Cursed Snowglobe.

So, I’m transported into the snowglobe and everything is black and white, except me, my dog and my weapons. I am instantly confused. I run down the path a little bit and can not believe the sight that awaits me. More colour in the form of three blue shadows sucking the colour out of this one poor guy. Being the fearless hero I am, I rush to his aid and start smacking the shadows with my sword. Doesn’t take too long before they are dead and I am sent on my way through the rest of the mission. I won’t bore you with all the details of the mission, just the key points. All you need to know before I continue is that everything in the world is black and white apart from the Hero, the dog and the coloured shadows that are your enemies. Let’s continue… So I go through a field and I am accosted by about five or six blue shadows… they don’t last long at all. After about five minutes I am no longer accosted by the blue shadows which don’t like being hit with melee attacks and I have to fight my way out of a room with Yellow shadows in it but they are over a crevice that I can’t cross… whatever will I do? That’s right. Shoot them until they stop shooting me. At this point you really start noticing how atmospheric the sparse colour can really make things. The deeper shadows add brighter lights outside can bring so much more to the mission. The brighter lights I am talking about is the Red shadow section which is set out side and you have to go to a the beach and the sun shines right in your eyes, making it very hard to see, that comes after the Yellow shadow section. Will to kill the Red shadows, took me quite a while to figure that one out but by this time I had a level four inferno so I could kill them with a fully charged spell. Ha-ha.

So. You’ve done all the stuff you can do outside, rescued the schoolchildren from the red shadows, that’s the quest over right? Wrong. The school mistress gives you a Red Seal key for the red door you pass on your way to the areas occupied by the red shadows. I would make a fore-shadowing pun here but I don’t think I will.

Into the cave then...

The cave is your standard RPG cave, get to the end of the cave to complete your objective whilst picking off enemies, in this case you are attacked by varying groups of different coloured shadows and at the end you have to kill three Shadow Cultists, who die in one shot. Colour is returned and you go back to the docks and Murgo has a new item in, The Cursed Skull.

After Murgo I nipped off to Knothole Island for a holiday, well to stop all the residents freezing to death for a nice little renown boost. Again this is a pretty straight forward quest and wont get much words dedicated to it for that fact.

You go dig up the key, go to a shrine, kill some enemies and use the key to “save” Knothole.

The main talking point of this Knothole Island quest is the puzzles in the cave, where you have to pull levers in a certain order, be quick to hit the Flit Switch and decipher the code of the Melee flit switches… I figured that last one out after I had been hitting them for about five minutes. But as I said, quite a straight forward affair. BACK TO THE DOCKS!

I can’t remember if I done this before or after the Crucible but it would make sense that it was before, for the renown but so far my favourite quest in the game and one that truly boosted my evil score and my standing in the Temple of Shadow… The Oakfield Massacre. It is what you think it is, does exactly what it says on the tin. Go to Oakfield and kill everyone you can see. No time limit so you can take as long as you want with them for added evil effect. Which I did.

Now I am famous enough for the Crucible, which is an eight round arena against different types of monsters including: beetles, Hobbes, bandits, balverines and more Hobbes. I bloody hate Hobbes. If you can get a perfect time on six of the eight rounds, including the last boss, you get a legendary weapon but by the time I got to the Crucible I had two amazing weapons. The Master Cleaver and the Master Flintlock Pistol. My cleaver could kill balverines in roughly five hits.

The most annoying area of the Crucible is the last area. The troll boss. For a number of reasons, 1: You have to hit his nerve endings which appear as glowing red on his body, doesn’t sound too tricky but when you couple it with reason 2 that this is the most annoying round you will understand what I mean, and reason number 2 is… More… Bloody… HOBBES! Yeah, I know. So they get in your way when you’re trying to concentrate on getting the weapon but are easy to dispatch, you lose time but you get experience… kind of a double edged sword. But as I said, the crucible is quite a straight forward deal. Kill things. The Crucible is an integral point in the story as it leads you to be able to go to the Tattered Spire to rescue Garth, who is the hero if Will.

When I get around to freeing him you guys will be the first to know, so watch this space people.