What happens is that the Chirex imprisons you, and an anonymous benefactor (whose affiliation is revealed much later) springs you from the jail. You then join the Whendward band, but you have much higher morale, lower anarchy, much fewer followers, and zero children.
It works well if you want a low-anarchy playthrough, in fact it’s the smart thing to do in that case. But if you want to beat the Archon’s army, I’m not sure you can do it without the extra rebels you get by stopping the Harrowing.
Normally I don’t let Elery to get Harrowed bc so far she is my favorite character. I really hope she’ll be a romance option later and available for female characters.
Anyway I guess I’ll just give it a try myself bc I’m not really sure we are on the same page here.
Sorry, what I meant to say was that the story is structurally the same from Act 2 on (minus Elery). But the actual gameplay is very different. It’s apples and oranges, managing and feeding a large band with a bunch of useless kids, vs. managing a tiny band without losing what few people you have.
The kids have their uses I agree with you I just wonder you tryed it with a Combat aristocrat. Your secret reasons makes it necessery for the MC to be a helot?
I’m not sure I understand. The way I see it, 2COM MC playthroughs involve heavy raiding, because you take fewer casualties on raids, so marginal benefit vs. marginal cost is better. Heavy raiding means you need more rebels, and you don’t care about anarchy. Both those advantages are lost when you don’t stop the Harrowing, and presumably seek to play low Anarchy.
@HughMyronBrough: 2COM, first, does not necessarily require more raiding. And second, if you do decide to raid with a 2COM, you can stay under the 20 Anarchy threshold much more easily if you lose the Harrowing.
(Also, Elery is less important if you yourself are a badass fighter.)
Not sure about that either tbh most of the times I tend to choose the easier way and let my deputy make the “minor” decisions. If I do that then Elery is available at the time when I have to convince Bleys to give me the week when I should attack the Architelone.
Actually I normally care more about how others see me (socialism) than about mules. But I’m now planning to not do that in my next playthrough bc I want to fight the Phalangites and the only deputis available are Zvad (who would suggest hiding in the woods) and Breden (who would suggest infiltrating the Rims).
