Fun things that happened in Kerkerkruip

I hope I’m not boring everyone else with my Kerkerkruip talk… here’s a thread where people can post cool things that happened in Kerkerkruip.

I just had a game with the Overmind in the Temple of Nomos, and I found an executioner’s axe and a rod of the master builder. This turns out to be a very sweet combination. I collapsed all the tunnels around the Temple of Nomos so the Overmind couldn’t call any allies. Then I killed him with only a Level 1 power (scales). Then I started calling other creatures into the Temple of Nomos and whacking them one by one with the executioner’s axe.

I remember Victor saying he didn’t really use any of the Temple abilities besides the Temple of Aite’s, but I’ve found praying to Nomos to be pretty successful. There’s always stuff you can do, even when you’re maximally concentrated, like readying the best weapon for the next blow, or wearing/removing the tormenting necklace, or feeding blood magic items…

It was going really well until I failed to check the blood price on the axe against my health. Whoops!

That is a very sweet combination! Do you think it is okay for blood magic to kill of the inattentive player? Kerkerkruip normally doesn’t do that, but this seems to me one of the few situations in which killing the player for stupidity is defensible and even fun. Would you agree?

Kerkerkruip 9 is almost feature complete, so I’m testing it out a bit. I just had a very fun game, which incidentally happened to incorporate a lot of new stuff. So let me tell you about it.

The first monster I met was the angel of compassion. This is a level 2 monster that is the opposite of the demon of rage: whereas the demon starts out pretty weak and becomes more powerful every time someone dies, the angel starts out very strong and becomes weaker every time someone dies. (But the angel gives you better powers when killed while it is stronger, so weakening it is not always the best strategy.) The way it works is this: angels have “angelic radiance,” which gives them a +1 bonus to attack and a +1 bonus to defence for every level of radiance. The angel of compassion starts out with 4 radiance, and loses one level every time someone dies.

Also, Kerkerkruip 9 has a new religion system, where you sacrifice powers to the gods in order to get certain bonuses. One of the gods is Sul, and the first bonus she gives – which you can get by sacrificing a level 1 power – is protection from curses and immunity to angelic radiance. When you start worshipping Sul, angelic radiance just doesn’t apply to you any more.

So, in this game, I found both the angel of compassion and the Temple of Sul almost immediately. I killed off a level 1 enemy, sacrificed the power, and then handily defeated the still very strong angel of compassion. Armed with its strong power (I had 3 levels of radiance myself, in addition to the rest of the power), I easily disposed of the minotaur, and then blood ape and (after sacrificing the power of the ape) the Reaper.

By that time I had found the staff of insanity. This is a new epic weapon that is very bad: low damage, lowers your attack and defence, lowers your faculties … really very bad. But it has one huge advantage: as soon as you hit someone with it, they go insane. Previously, you could only make people insane using the power of the tentacle, but now you can also do it with this epic staff. Insane people tend to take random actions, wait instead of act, attack themselves, attack their allies, and so on. (On the negative side, they sometimes get an insane burst of strength and deal +10 damage, but that’s just to keep things interesting.)

Now, the next enemy I had to face was Israfel. Israfel is a level 4 sexless angel who can split into two being: the male Isra and the female Fell. These can also reunite. The united being Israfel can heal itself, while the split beings Isra and Fell are very good at attacking: Isra mostly concentrates, and then Fell attacks you, benefiting from Isra’s concentration as well as her own. Truly a nuisance.

However, there I was, with immunity to angelic radiance (all these beings were angels and depend on their radiance for some of their strength) and the staff of insanity. I quickly made Israfel insane, and then his component beings as well. At that point they started to attack each other, which was very satisfying. When both were almost dead, I retreated. I went to the Temple of Sul, sacrificed the power of the minotaur and the power of the Reaper – getting more bonuses from Sul, including a level of angelic radiance – and returned to Isra and Fell. My plan was to quickly kill them using scrolls of death, of which I had two, so that they would not be able to reunite and heal.

That was not a smart plan. Sul doesn’t like necromancy. She burnt up the scroll as I was reading it and punished me with 10 damage. Fortunately, I survived. And even more fortunately, given that I had no powers left and was rather weak, Fell first killed Isra and then herself! So there I was, with a level 4 power under my belt, lots of piety with Sul, and the staff of insanity. Time to seek out Malygris.

The power of Israfel has two components, one of which is “link”. That allows you to link to someone and benefit from their concentration, just like Fell and Isra benefit from each other’s concentration. Linking to Malygris is great fun. Normally, seeing someone’s concentration rise is a reason to panic; but once you link up with them, it is a cause of glee. Hitting someone because they themselves are concentrated – I love it. Using Malygris’s own concentration, I easily made him insane.

And when Malygris is insane, well … if you have never gotten the special victory that is only possible when Malygris goes mad, I’d prefer not to spoil it for you!

Wow, that sounds awesome!

Yes, I think it was fine to kill myself with blood magic. It was less of a cruel surprise than driving myself insane with tentacles (I didn’t realize the limit is your base mind score, not your adjusted mind score).

I was looking at the achievements recently and wondered again how you get the “romantic ending.” No spoilers please, but vague hints are fine! :slight_smile:

If you defeat Malygris while leaving any sentient monster alive (no swarm of daggers, etc), you get a romance ending tailored to your beautiful future with that monster.

Well, not really. But now I want to contribute that.

(waits for cries of outrage from the swarm-of-daggers shippers)

My guess is that you get all the way to Malygris without attacking anything, then you kiss him. But it’s only a guess.

Don’t forget, we want weird and wonderful dream ideas!

Maybe it should be. I’ll change it.

Hm… I will only say that getting it is somewhat easier in Kerkerkruip 9. But saying anything more would be a spoiler, I’m afraid. :slight_smile:

I have no doubt that the cynically marketing-oriented dr. Gijsbers has been designing Kerkerkruip with exactly this possibility in mind. Just look at the roster of enemies: it caters to every taste. You like teen girls? There is the innocent and inexperienced Miranda. You prefer MILF action? Bodmall is waiting for you, presumably already “dressed” as pagan priestesses usually are. Are you more into men, and things that grow larger and harder when more blood is pumped into them? Guess what Gijsbers was doing behind his computer when the idea for the blood ape “came” to him. And for those with more kinky tastes, well, do I even need to mention the chain golem? The author’s BDSM obsession is only too obvious.

Nor is the swarm of daggers an exception. Daggers have two sides: one sharp and one blunt. What is the sharp side for? Killing. What is the blunt side for? Precisely. There are a lot of them, and they never get tired. Somehow, dr. Gijsbers managed to combine his erotic machine fetish with a gang bang fantasy, to the applause of perverts worldwide.

That you want to contribute to his project doesn’t surprise me, mr. Ashwell.

While I of course appreciate Herman’s attempt to analyse my game, I must respectfully disagree with his conclusions. The erotic subtext of the game is there, naturally, but it only serves as the background against which the game’s true theme – sublimation – can play out. Freud defined sublimation as the process in which socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are consciously transformed into socially acceptable actions or behaviour. In Kerkerkruip, the sexual impulse is continually sublimated and transformed into the propensity for physical violence. Thus, playing Kerkerkruip is good for your kids.

You are inscrutable, sir(s). Let me just say I love the idea of Azrafel. I was riffing on that idea a while back in my old ambient/noise band. Here’s one of the tracks that came out of it:

soundcloud.com/mike-ciul/1-07-w … agellum-vs

Take careful note of the creature on the right of the cover art, which was based on an image of a hermaphrodite angel I found in Jung’s “Man and his Symbols.”

If you don’t mind spoilers, you can find lots of interesting stuff at Github: github.com/i7/kerkerkruip/issues/25

My idea for Israfel was originally inspired by Evangelion, though the final specific details are Victors. (Though they may not be the final final details you’ll see when version 9 is released.)

The link isn’t working for me? Though I managed to find the track by going to soundcloud.com/mike-ciul/

That’s interesting: when I designed Israfel, based on Dannii’s original idea, I used some of the ideas I gleaned from Jung’s “Psychology and Alchemy”!

That’s weird. I wonder if you have to be logged in to use it.

Hm. I’m on another machine now, and it’s working fine. Weird.

Now I’m going to try doing different things to Malygris to see what happens. I totally want to try enslaving him.

I just had a game where I managed to drive him insane:

[spoiler]I was a little surprised when nothing unusual happened right away. But then this happened:

So I tried waiting, and he just kept attacking me. He even got an insane burst of strength. I thought maybe I needed to attack him and he would stop me or something, but that just ended the game normally.

So was I on the right track before that?[/spoiler]

I’m definitely trying this again when I get the chance.

Yes, you were on the right track. You need a bit of patience and a bit of luck to pull it off, of course.

Ha! I did it!

[spoiler]This time Malygris kept teleporting away. Very annoying, but not quite as bad…! I don’t know if “talk to Malygris” helps, but that was entertaining…

So, did Mr. Schudspeer help you with that ending?[/spoiler]

Mr. Schudspeer strongly disapproves of the romantic ending, I’m afraid.

Hey! I managed to enslave Malygris!

It wasn’t as exciting as driving him insane, though.

I’ve been having good luck skipping over the Level 3 monster. Ment helps a lot. This time I killed Bodmall before killing the mindslug, and I managed to leave both Fafhrd and Mouser alive and only slightly injured. Then I enslaved the blood ape and went on to Malygris. I thought he would teleport away and ruin the fun, but he never did. He killed off all of my companions, but the last mind boost from the blood ape’s soul was enough for me to win him over…

I just had a very fruitful game… you know you’ve stumbled across something rare when you get a bunch of weird runtime problems…

And then I got the Royal Fruit achievement!