- Reigns: Her Majesty - The Book Of The Lady Of The Wood Crackle
- Reigns: Her Majesty - The Book Of The Lady Of The Wood Crackers
Never Speak to My Queen or Her Druid Girlfriend Again
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Title: Reigns Trilogy Genre: Adventure, Indie, RPG, Simulation, Casual Developer: Nerial, Synaptic Insight Technology Systems Publisher: Devolver Digital Franchise. Reigns: Her Majesty - The Book of the Lady of the Wood. Reigns: Her Majesty - The Book of the Lady of the Wood Soon IN DEV. Redeem code Reclaim your game GOG Connect Contact us Career opportunities Submit your game Language: language.displayLanguage. Reigns: Her Majesty Comic Book available on Steam. 0 users have this game to trade, and 14 want it.
I came upon a link to Reigns 2 quite by accident over Twitter, on the very day it was released. I’d never heard of it before, not the game to which it’s a sequel. It was a fortuitous discovery for me, because Reigns: Her Majesty is exactly the sort of game I liked. I downloaded it the same day and was enthralled for hours. Though the game has a learning curve I was determined to get ahead of it, especially since it comes with many, many unlockable achievements.
The basic premise of the game is that you play from the point of view of a newlywed royal consort, who is called to act as helpmeet to a bumbling but mostly harmless monarch. Successful ruling requires appeasing many factions with incompatible desires, which appear in the form of four metrics for faith, popularity, power and wealth. Failure is lethal, and even being too successful is its own kind of deadly. I’ve found, for example, that by far the most common mode of death in the game is being crushed by the love of adoring crowds.
Not that death is an ultimate failure, because after your first queen’s death you continue to play her successor in the lineage. As time passes and your queens keep dying you will gradually uncover a deeper and more mysterious conspiracy which connects the queens to each other, and to the equally mysterious figure of the Lady of the Wood. Remarkably, the game is very motivating when it comes to unlocking every possible cause of death your queen can succumb to. This last might be the best way to communicate its distinct, darkly absurd tone of humor.
Reigns 2 is built as a digital card game, with some bells and whistles added. Successfully completing goals adds new cards to your virtual deck, which opens up new possibilities for interactions with characters new or familiar. A long and circuitous route will lead you eventually to what seems, on the face of it, to be the ultimate goal of the game. After your tenth death, you will meet the figure of the All-Mother, an ancient and mysterious goddess whose worship is considered heretical by the modern church. The All-Mother will attempt to convince you to become her champion, spending your various lifetimes hunting for clues on how to achieve this end.
The All-Mother’s quest to become the Eternal Queen is a disruption, signaled dramatically by the deliberate breakdown of the game’s interface. At this point it’s worth warning that the game is not suitable for anyone who’s likely to have a reaction to flickering images. Even players who aren’t likely to have a serious reaction might find the flashing, jumpy images irritating to look at. Following the “main quest” brings a few more opportunities at such disruptions, such as the character of the Witch, who communicates her meta-commentary on the game in a discordantly modern style of slang.
Conversely, if you delay completing the main quest indefinitely, you will have some opportunities to unlock lots of optional goals. These have wildly varying tones, from matchmaking on behalf of your lady-in-waiting to murdering your husband the King and reigning indefinitely as a widow queen. Different styles of play will appeal to different players. If you’re tactical-minded, you might exploit the game’s fluidity by making self-contradictory decisions, the better to balance the metrics and reign as long as possible. If you lean more towards role-playing, your queens’ lives are likely to be notably shorter, but damn if they don’t make an excellent story.
In the not-so-background of the game is a running commentary on the role of women in positions of power. Reigns‘ world draws a little on European history, and a great deal on several decades of epic fantasy tropes. Backstabbing and revenge are both plentiful, if yo’re looking for them. The Queen is valued oftentimes for her looks, and explicitly called upon more than once to provide a male heir. The main thread of the plot leans on the conflict between the modern church, as exemplified by the character of the Cardinal, and the religion of the All-Mother, which is preserved in secret by her loyal Acolyte. A few references to fairy tales sneak in, in the form of a cursed mirror that haunts your Queen until she battles her darker nature.
Reigns 2 provided me many hours of amusement, trying to unlock as many as possible of its tiny, hiding secrets from their dusty little corners. As I was playing the game when it was brand new, my early experiences were a little damaged by some persistent bugs, but not enough to cause me to give up on the game. Given a sufficient interval and some bug fixes, it’s become a very playable game. I still find that some of the elements of the gameplay are poorly balanced, but that generally becomes apparent only if you make for the distant, post-main quest goals. After a thousand years or so, the game can become more tedious than rewarding, even if there are goals yet remaining to be achieved. I do thinks some small tweaks would improve it, in this respect, but on the whole it seems a small enough complaint for a game that provides hours of fun for a very reasonable price.
Crossposted to Dreamwidth.
Endings Guide
General Setup for Each Ending
1. Die 3 times and get the Blank Spellbook.
2. Recruit the Acolyte during the coronation ball and give her the book, she will turn it into the Red Spellbook, used for talking to any animal.
3. Use the book to talk to the cat, Rex, she will tell you that you will need to speak to a fox in order to meet the Lady of the Wood.
4. Ask the hunter for living foxes when he offers dead ones. If he asks to build a zoo, allow him, you can find any animal (apart from the doe, but including the fox) in there as well. If he asks to slay a rare beast, allow him, this will give you the Chicken Bone which you also need.
6. Recruit the Doctor who resides in the tower, who will give you the Strange Clock at some point, you can trigger this by showing the Red Spellbook to her. Give the Strange Clock to the Merchant to turn it into the Destiny Clock used for changing your sign in the maze. You can go to the maze when the king asks if you want to go, or force it by showing the Destiny Clock to an animal.
5. Now, make sure you are in an age of Cancer. The Acolyte can tell you what your sign is, or, if you already have the Destiny Clock (mentioned in step 6), you can change your sign in the maze. You should encounter the fox eventually, use the Red Spellbook on him, he will take you to the Lady of the Wood.
6. The white doe (Lady of the Wood) will tell you that you need to win a duel with yourself, since this is a great act of reflection. For this to be possible you’ll need to have the Mechanic offer to repair your owl, which will unlock the dueling room. Also you need the Magic Mirror from the same Mechanic. For the pistol, when the explorer asks to find a new world, allow him to and tell him to travel to the north. He will bring a Barbarian Prisoner, who will give you a Dueling Pistol.
6. Use the pistol on the mirror. Shoot when the Owl reads:
Hidden in the garden maze is one great, sacred crown: “Follow the sun, dear child,” she says…
The all-mother will appear and upgrade your Red Spellbook into a Celestial Spellbook.
Ending 1
7. Go to the maze and summon the eclipse by following the sun and then using the Destiny Clock on the moon monument you’ll find. Use the Celestial Spellbook on the all-mother (the book now has a crown on it).
Ending 2
7. Go to the maze and summon the eclipse by following the sun and then using the Destiny Clock on the moon monument you’ll find, then use any random item on the all-mother.
Ending 3 (“True Ending”)
7. First you’ll need the Saint’s Bone, you get this by showing the Cardinal the Chicken Bone when he wants to test your sainthood. (when Church is totally full, normally this causes your death. You can use either bone on him later to save yourself from this death.)
8. Now you’ll need a boat to cross the river. To do this your sign must be Sagittarius, when it is, you should get the option to buy a boat, use it to cross the river and meet the Pirate. Duel her with your pistol and shoot when the Owl reads:
O, all these labors and yet no glory to the name.
Recruit her, now she’ll randomly show up as well, without the need of the boat.
9. Recruit the Witch by attending witch trials when asked to, the cardinal will have you ask the witch questions which make it seem like she is a witch, but tell the cardinal she isn’t. You will then recruit the Witch.
10. Go to the maze and use the Destiny Clock on your own sign, the Witch will show up and turn it into a Destiny Card.
11. Summon the eclipse by following the sun in the maze untill you find the moon monument, use the Destiny Clock (or card) on it.
12. Meet the Witch during the eclipse, give her the Saint’s Bone and she’ll give you the Sacred Tablet. If you die during the eclipse before you meet her, the all-mother will ask for her crown, which can lead you to either of the other endings, for this one, refuse and keep creating eclipses and try to find the Witch during them.
13. At some point (mostly between 1500-1700) the Witch will ask if you want to bury a time capsule, do this, later you’ll get Your Results, which replaces the Royal Perfume.
14. Now, you’ll need to give birth to a boy, after having a son, the Pirate may ask who will follow up the King when he dies, answer “Me.”. She will conclude you might need a real gun instead of a ceremional one if you want to do so, and offers to trade yours for the Lethal Gun. Accept this trade.
15. Use the Lethal Gun to kill the King. While being a widow, meet the Witch and she’ll turn your gun into a Gun Emoji.
16. Die during an eclipse, and offer the all-mother your items in this particular order:
1. Emoji Gun
2. Sacred Tablet
Reigns: Her Majesty - The Book Of The Lady Of The Wood Crackle
3. Destiny Card
4. Your Results
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5. Gun Emoji
Reigns: Her Majesty - The Book Of The Lady Of The Wood Crackers