I've come across this a few times. It's a wave in the beam. Try reloading a few times to catch it at the right time or rewind to when you activated the beacon and make the beam bigger, that works for me usually
The poster of that comment was able to enter the Steppes beacon using the "magic winds" that float around, but I have so far been unsuccessful in doing so. They seem to form over the lake but they mostly dissipate over the mountain ridge, and those that hover around the edges of the map are too far south. I'm thinking this is an extremely rare occurence.
Yes, please feel free. I'm just going to add the part about talking to the pig instead of killing it.
Sorry, I know how frustrating that can be. My only suggestion is to make sure the beam from the Steppes tower does not overlap the magic clouds left by the Time Serpent. When two beams/magic clouds cross they sometimes cancel each other out. Just concentrate it as directly as possible on the stone circle.
NBAS done!!! No savegame hack or any other trick (don't know how to do that anyway). I'm very pleased for having completed this playthrough (and tired of spending so much time on this game). Screenshot below. I must say I used every trick recently posted by other players to achieve this. So here is the way to do it, though it is not optimized at all. I just tried to do it. So: Spoiler Starting from the cliff, jump from it using fALL, head toward the broken bridge. Cast DOZ, jump, you'll land on the other side (don't know why, but it works). Head toward the Black Elves Camp, and buy at least the following items from Oolooh: Galehorn (to fight the Earth Serpent) and Holy Water (to resurrect Bria). Go to the Moon Serpent location by any way you want, kill it. Jump from the bridge to end in the Snatta Forest. I must say that here, the "Winds of Time" often put the land in the past and I end up in the Marsh, encountering the Goblins and even finding the Borrinskin Boots! Anyway, head to Fenestra's hill, take the Sun Serpent Orb (if the Winds of Time are changing this into a marsh, just wait until it becomes her house again). Head straight south towards the Steppes circle, ensure you arrive at it in the present (again, just watch the Winds of Time). Kill the Time Serpent by casting JIG, and head to the Air Serpent and kill it. Now head to the pole with the Priest, take his medallion, wait for the bird to catch you and fall into the Fire Serpent location. Kill it and go to the south, through the Stranglebush (I freed myself using the Essence of Bark). Now go to the Badduk-Bak Ridge chimney end by travelling through the forest (I slept in the Klattamen village by the way). Cast ZEN, float through the chimney to the plateau, go to Bria's tombstone and resurrect her to get the Green Ring. Go back to the broken bridge to the northwest, travel again to the killed Moon Serpent location, jump into the forest and finally head to one of the two spot letting you access the Steppes beacon (either the Stones circle or the spot north to it). That's a quite long travel so be patient! Now the harder part, you have to be really patient since it can be very frustrating: just look at the map and wait for the wind to come near the tower. Once you see the wind near the tower, quickly travel to it. If you see the tower map, congratulations, you've made it! If not, just rewind to your previous spot and try again. I must say that on my only successful attempt, the winds were not encompassing all the tower, only the southern part of it, but that was enough. Once you've made it, go to the trapdoor, cast ZIP and you'll end to the top of the nearby mountains. Jump down in Lake Ilklala and swim to the northern shore. On your way, kill the Water Serpent if you come into it (and the Sun Serpent on the occasion), if not you can meet him later. When you are on the shore, go to the Earth Serpent spot, kill it and swim back to the southern shore (taking the central island boat if you want, and wandering around the lake to meet the Water Serpent if you did not before). From the southern shore, follow the Xamen Road, you'll encounter the guy that usually told you someone is destroying the land because of the beacons, but he won't speak to you this time. Congratulations, you've succeeded in a No Beacon All Serpents playthrough!!! I will now try to optimize this path to get most items and bonuses, so it could be used as a start in Sorcery 4.
That's the point where I am at, though I got there by a different route. I haven't succeeded yet and it's driving me crazy. Congratulations for making it through!
I was also able to do the NBAS run using the time wind/bubble trick to get into the Steppes Beacon. The real key is you cannot visit Shaddrack, which also means using the DOZ trick to get over the chasm. If you visit Shaddrack, the size and location of the bubbles changes so that they won't pass over the Steppes Beacon. If the route you took involved Shaddrack, it won't work.
Woohoo, I am now a member of the NBAS club as well. *weeps at all the hours I have lost on this game*
Thanks pendell and congrats to IndyJohn and Kaboobie as well. Some "new" things I noticed during my NBAS playthrough (I say new but you may already know that): Spoiler - While I was swimming to reach the northern shore of Lake Ilklala, I saw the Birdman carrying the Spymaster sergeant to the island when you discover it later. The text did not mention the spymaster, but you can easily guess it's him. - I slept near the Earth Serpent location, before actually meeting him, and during the morning, I met an Elvin named Karbeesh or Karheesh or something like that. He said he was going to Mampang to put himself into the service of the Archmage. - Fenestra was less friendly to me than she was on my previous playthrough. I did not get as many text choices as before and she did not give me the Flask of Oil even if I said, as I always do, that I will avenge her father. In particular, letting her give me the Sun Serpent Orb was much harder this time, I had to rewind two or three times. - I managed to kill the Air Serpent on the Steppes without casting FOF. If you already know his weakness, the text will give you an option to look for his body, then to grab the "leaf" passing by. I think I got his weakness from Dintainta, but I'm not completely sure. - Last thing, I did not start this playthrough from the beginning, I used my previous "test" playthrough and rewound it back to the base of the cliff. Before rewinding, I used this playthrough to test the fact that Ca-oth can bless give you a Stamina bonus. However I did not go to him again this time, since I focused only on succeeding in NBAS. But as you can see from the screenshot I posted, the final text mentioned I was blessed by Ca-oth, even if I did not have the +1 Stamina bonus (don't know if it's a bug or not, since Ca-oth seems to be independent from rewinding).
Those are cool new discoveries. For future reference, you don't need to swim the whole lake. Spoiler Don't kill the Air Serpent on the Steppes. After jumping off the mountain just swim to the nearest island and ring the bell; the Ferryman will come! By the time you reach the north shore he will have transformed and you will have possession of the boat. Also, cooked meat will survive swimming, in case you didn't know. I haven't tried meeting the butcher without the beacons, but since there's enough floating magic to meet Ca-oth and enter Kariamma (I did both) you might be able to meet her if the timing is right. If not, ZAP the roach pig and at least you will have two rations (and if you have the boat, no need to swim back south anyway).
Thanks for the tips. I knew that you could call the Air Serpent/Ferryman from any island but I did not bother optimizing my NBAS playthrough. Anyway, I'll use your info to make an optimized one, that could be used as a base for Sorcery 4. In particular, special thanks for the cooked meat trick
Congratulations Balyos! I've made some optimizations to the NBAS run and posted it in the google document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iFhkEHUfEtyuj5YtD7hcguSaUvCMrRgbmvNTkFugMUw/edit It finishes in 6 days and gets all magic items, but only 1 max stamina. I'm fairly certain it's possible to weave a TUF spell in there somewhere but I'll have to try out some more.
Nbas Here's a screenshot from my run, which was 10 days because I was screwing around. Also Y'Bran is my patron -- will be interesting to see if he does anything special in 4. Spoiler Note -- I think if you pray to him as often as possible he sticks around, as he has stayed with me when I do that. Also, I could be wrong but at least in my game trying to cross the horns Spoiler I found that time winds/bubbles were far more likely to encompass the Steppes Tower location at night. I could not get to it in AT during the day because the only rare opportunities were so fleeting.
From my (limited) research I found that Spoiler whether he stays or not is dictated by the number of times you enter or leave a shore. As strange as it sounds, every time you're on a shore of an island or the mainland, Yb'ran has a different dialogue, and after about 4 or 5 of these dialogues he disappears. If you reach the Xamen road before that happens he stays with you. Similarly, if you use a blue crystal to transport to any other part of the map he will stay with you no matter where you go (as long as its not a shore). I'm pretty sure you can walk around in circles in the Forest of Snatta for all eternity without praying to him and he would still stick around, but visit 4 islands and he'll promptly leave.
Interesting. I may rewind and test myself. As a side note, when I reset to prologue to do the NBAS thing, I found I only had one cloud save available from Sorcery 2. Even though I have played it multiple times, only the most recent was there. Seems the saved games may get purged after a while? I hope the wait for Sorcery 4 isn't too long ...
Just making sure you know it's possible to visit Ca-oth and Kariamma without beacons. The time winds are especially strong around the borders of the map. I finished my NBAS run with +3 max stamina (8 days).
Patron Gods for Part 4 Thinking way ahead, it would be interesting to see what effects the different possible patron gods have in Part 4. It would obviously be possible to enter Part 4 with: (1) the various animal spirit guides; (2) Courga; (3) Slangg; and (4) Y'Bran. I am curious if it might be possible to convert to Throff after killing the Earth Serpent, thereby allowing you to keep Throff as a patron god until the end ...
