Well, actually, there is such an option to save the old man, but it requires mastery of the 3rd Art. If you have that, you can offer the old woman a true wish to save her husband. It is how I helped them.
Man, how do people get these masteries? So far I haven’t managed to get a single one.
Same here. And when I try asking Qutub to let me master an art, all the choices are grayed out except for replenishing my akasha…
@LOR @Shoelip You should focus for the first two tasks(from capturing Adon to bringing Namaah to Solomon), raising the appropriate vices for your favorite powers. It takes a few tries to get the right combo of choices but the rest of the parts are relatively smooth since you have the powers you want. I would suggest aiming for two masteries max, although I’ve heard people say they’ve been able to get up to four, which I think is actually quite doable. Keep in mind these states have to be at a certain level to unlock. For Qutub, it’s a bit lower but you unlock masteries automatically once they hit like…85? I think.
Thanks for the info Gadriel, I had forgotten in that playthrough I hadn’t advanced it that far yet.
Shoelip, Lor, there’s no big secret to gaining masteries. Choose your two favorite arts, continue to use those powers or demonstrate the sins they represent until you’ve mastered them, including how you try to deal with the sorcerer and your history.
For example, I love the power of Edict, so the MC is always the Proud One in my playthroughs.
When you’ve mastered an art, you can maintain it to make it as strong as possible, or since you won’t lose mastery if it falls focus on mastering other arts.
If you do this then when you go to the pillars he should give you your choice of mastering an art, I even had a playthrough in which he gave me the choice of three arts.
To be fair though, I've had playthroughs in which he's only offered to replenish my akasha too. I generally restart then.
I go for pride/possession/edict and then fortune secondarily, then wishing and charm, because those are the arts I like.
Although according to Tenryu I’m playing it wrong.
Using the same technique, I’ve mastered pride/flight/wind/charm, or pride/shapeshifting/wind just to see how it affects the playthrough.
Djinni powers are personality powers, possession is an application of pride, fortune is cheating because you're too lazy to do things the hard way, the matter control of wishing comes from greed, etc, as well as practice makes perfect.
And yes, Sarsmos is right, other than the art you cheat at you have to wait til you hit 85 to master an art.This game is kind of disturbing to me with the whole fact that god exists in this world and all. I mean… if God is perfect then how can anything he created be flawed? In order for the world to make any sense at all, you have to not think about it at all.
Which I find almost painful to do.
Shoelip, if god supposedly gave us free will, we can choose to do the right thing or not.
The difference would make no difference if we didn’t have the choice.
And mistakes, even moral ones, are learning opportunities, our chance to do better, or learn to be better.One of the many million dollar questions concerning God in Abrahamic religions…I’m agnostic but it is a fictional game so suspension of disbelief is pretty key in immersing yourself in the world. God is apparently perfect, but he gifted man with free will, and consequently, the capacity to make decisions that others can see as wrong or flawed. Others actually might see God as flawed, for who really knows if he’s perfect or not. But, barring the game, I think going of into debates about religion is slightly off topic so…I’ll just stop talking now.
Wasnt a update supposed to be out today?
Regarding the level required to reach a mastery, I remember that it is 80. Once you get past 80, even if by only 1 point, you will attain the mastery. For Qutub, I believe that you need to be at 70 at least to ask him for mastery of an art.
Oops, when I said that according to Tenryu I’m playing it wrong, it’s supposed to end with a raspberry, to indicate I’m being facetious.
Now I have this image in my head of the MC using wishing to produce fireworks. If we doused Samodai in gunpowder would his own power blow him sky high? Heh heh heh.
That sounds like fun even if you don’t hate Samodai :-))
@stsword Well, then, that just makes him the world’s most evil psychotic dictator… “Do what I tell you despite it being self contradictory, or you’ll suffer unimaginable agony FOREVER when you die.”
@stsword Originally, I planned for flying to improve in terms of speed and maneuverability, but it made things too complicated coding-wise so I dropped it. I was wondering about the ‘playing it wrong’ comment until I read the second post. Please play the game as you like. I do limit actions, but I hope the illusion of free choice is high in this game. 
@Shoelip, @LOR Qutub allows you to master an Art at a lower level of a stat (70). Otherwise, the stat level is set at 80 for the time-being. I had it at 85 originally, but it seems to be too high for players to master multiple Arts at a steady pace (say one Art per story Part). @Sarsmos and @stsword are quite correct with their advice. @Gadriel has the levels right.
There’s quite a few deliberate anachronisms in the game. Iron-forging certainly wasn’t around during the Solomonic times, yet I refer to it. Other hidden references abound as well.
This is a game that is heavily based on religion, so thinking about religion will probably occur. Please do note, I just use the various religions as story background and plot hooks, and no one should read too much into whether it is a comment on various religions (it’s not). But yes, the bible is full of contradictions. I remember being told it was not meant to be taken literally…
With regards to the update, I’ve written the last quest. I’m very pleased with the concept and writing, but the execution feels too linear, without enough choices. I’ll be taking an extra day to polish it.
Look forward to the next chapter, tenryu.
As for anachronisms, never really thought about it being an issue. Either I just went with the idea that with djinni and magic running rampant, it would increase the tech level.
Anyone a roleplayer? Someone wrote a series of books about how a society with Dnd style magic would actually work logically. I haven't read it but the result probably doesn't look too medieval.
That or like when watching Merlin I went with the “just go with it” mentality. When you have a dragon locked in the basement it’s not the time to gripe about tomatoes being anachronistic…
THE LAST QUEST??? Nonononononono this game can’t end so early…
Well we’ll just have to convince tenryu to write a sequel or two…
or three or four…
or twenty or *coughforevercough* …
@Shoelip, is the “suffering unimaginable agony FOREVER when you die” part of this world? I don’t remember hell being mentioned in my playthroughs (though admittedly I haven’t played through in a while). You’ll make your headache worse if you import baggage from real-world monotheistic traditions that aren’t necessarily present in this fictional one.
And as Sarsmos says, nothing in the game requires you (the reader) to think of its God as perfect, whatever the main character may think.
Why a flawed world? Seems to me that this gameworld’s God might have made it for quite a few reasons. Maybe he thinks a flawed world that becomes perfect is more beautiful than a world that was created perfect. Maybe he doesn’t agree that conflict and suffering are flaws. Maybe he considers a “perfect world” to be a contradiction in terms – a world where it’s impossible for things to go wrong would be a world of soulless slaves, and so he prefers to create djinn and humans with the capacity to choose evil (in a world with active djinn, even so-called “natural evils” like quakes and storms could ultimately be attributed to malevolent djinn).
You may conclude that the God of the gameworld is not perfect by any definition you’d find plausible. But I don’t see why that should be a troubling or painful conclusion, any more than it would be when you’re reading a gameworld with D&D-style pantheon.