Rune Mechanics
Contrary to my expectations, this quest isn't a sequel (prequel?) to the Ariane Double Bill. Instead, we're taking a trip to the Mage Training Arena. Remember that? When that was a cool way to train Magic? No, me neither. Ah well. We begin in the MTA's basement, which is in no way a suspicious location filled with suspicious things.
I don't even know why you brought it up, honestly. Our quest-giver is Apprentice Clerval, who is an idiot.
Seriously, that's his entire character: he's basically if Zemouregal were a human, except Clerval actually seems to know he's an idiot. This makes him tragic, but not really sympathetic. Our hook is that Clerval is fascinated by the Rune Guardians, the magical constructs that maintain the MTA, and he wants to learn how to make one. He wants a friend, because that will give him the confidence he needs to actually study and become a better wizard.
Somehow.
Don't question it, because the quest certainly doesn't. Clerval has it enough together to realize that, to learn the secret of creating Rune Guardians, we have to talk to three of the wizards who revived them: Wizard Dougal, Wizard Edvin, and Wizard Shug. Okay, fair enough.
I start with Wizard Dougal, since he's right next door, and he's an asshole. Luckily he's really easy to antagonize, so I get him to reveal what he contributed to reviving the Rune Guardians: some low-level runes.
Uh huh, so you have level 20 Runecrafting. Good job. Turns out I need 5 Steam runes, 5 Body runes, and 5 Mind runes. Luckily Dougal gives me what I need to craft the Steam runes (an extra talisman, and a Binding necklace), so this isn't exactly "hard". Though I do need to buy a Body talisman from the Grand Exchange, because nuts to farming Guards for drops. Easy enough.
Next up is Wizard Edvin, who's having some trouble with his training course:
Oh this bodes well. Luckily the course is just a maze puzzle, but with an interesting chess motif. It took me a hot second to figure out exactly what all the symbols meant, but I eventually worked out that they referred to the movement patterns of standard chess pieces. From there I got a solution pretty quickly, and Edvin agreed to share his secrets:
Foreshadowing pops a scroll of parchment into its mouth and goes stomping around the desert
The net result of this is Edvin giving me a special tool used to carve body parts for Rune Guardians.
Finally I move on to Wizard Shug, who's having a snooze on the top floor of the building. I didn't take any screenshots of this part, because he wouldn't even give me the time of day until I'd earned 5 points at one of the Arena's minigames. I don't know if there's an optimal method to gaining points, but I opted to do three of the Telekinetic Grab mazes. They weren't very hard, and soon enough I had the points and Shug told me the last bit of information: I need to enchant some emeralds at the workbench next to Apprentice Clerval.
Supplies in hand, I return to Clerval, enchant the emeralds, and hand everything over. One final puzzle, we have to re-wire the animation table. This reminded me of some of the puzzles from Tower of Life, where you had to use pieces to connect nodes at the bottom of the screen to nodes the top. I liked this version of the puzzle better, though, for two reasons:
- It's a click-and-drag interface, which is much more user-friendly than the directional-movement buttons from Tower of Life
- There are two nodes on each end, adding an additional level of complexity
Still, it was only a 3x3 puzzle, so it wasn't all that difficult; for a novice quest, though, it wasn't bad. What annoyed me more was what happened afterwards:
I'm gratified that the game let me lose my temper at this point, because I really needed the catharsis:
Clerval hands me a lump of rune essence and Edvin's tool, and I use the tool on the lump and the Rune Guardian body parts fall out. This is just busy-work, game, why are you making me do this? At long last, we assemble the Rune Guardian, and quest complete.
So, this wasn't a terrible quest. The puzzles were decent, and I didn't mind that it forced me to play the MTA minigames. I'm more concerned about the narrative, because it feels quite pointless. Our character is basically a straight line through this quest: we don't develop in any meaningful way. Clerval is the closest thing to being a protagonist, but he's also a straight line: he starts the quest as a simpering nitwit, and ends the quest as a simpering nitwit. I can't help but compare this quest to one I haven't done on this account yet, but where we also have to help an incompetent goober: Dream Mentor. One key difference, though, is that Cyrisus actually grows and developers as part of that quest, overcoming his goobery. Clerval, not so much.
So, what was the point of this quest? We got a bit of backstory on the Mage Training Arena, which isn't nothing I suppose. Still, I'd be shocked if this quest topped anybody's list of favourites.