The gambling of Oliver

Ok, off again! Now to find the next magic stone to recharge the wand's battery. Following the map marker, I came across this really freaky and evil looking town/castle. there didn't seem to be any way to  reach it, so it's likely something much later.

Betting this place is run by cute puppy people.

But the marker was actually past the cost of that weird location, and it was moving. Turns out that the next power stone is located in some kind of ghost ship. But there was no way for my wyvern to land on it, so i'll have to come back later and try hitting it with my boat.

Now where did i park that ship?

With that a bust, i statted flying to the third marker, and along the way I came across this neat looking Mayan/Aztec tempel/town at the top of a mountain. but once again there was no way to get in, since the bouncer of the place won't even let you get up the first set of stairs.

Yeah, well, I didn't want to come in any ways!

Since I was in the neighbourhood, I decided to check out that undead casino that finally opened up on Tombstone Trail.

It's pretty lively for a crypt

It was the typical video game casino, with prizes that could be won with enough casino points. The two top prizes were familiars, which were really high priced at 99,999 and 25,000 chips. The chips in the casino were not cheap either, with 10 gold per chip and you needed 5 chips for the lowest bet. So the top prize was the equivalent of 1 million gold! it better be good! So i cashed in all the gold i had and started playing!

First off was black jack, which I made the vast majority of my chips on. Standard rules, with a payout of 3 times your bet (4 times in the case of blackjack), with the bonus that you could bet your winnings on the next hand and triple that too. After a while I got into the pattern of making 100 chip bets (the highest you can go) and going until i won at least 3 in a row before cashing out. With this strategy each 3 win streak gave me 27 tries to get another 3 wins, even with the low odds of winning (about 40% chance). Also, the witch that runs the table cheats! Nearly every hand, her covered cared was a 10 or 11 value, so if she showed a 7 it was very safe to assume she had at least 17. At one point she beat my 21 with her own 21 twice in a row!

Doesn't happen often my ass!

After grinding away for about 600 hands, I finally had all the chips i needed for the prizes. Since i was swimming in them, I tried the slot machines for a while too. They were pretty simple and had a starting rate of 10 chips, but that at least gave access to all 3 rows and diagonals. One neat plus was that randomly there would be a chance to win powers ups/downs that could raise or lower the slot speed, the bonus round rate, or even give/take chips. After 306 spins of the max bet of 90 chips, I got the jackpot, which was visually under whelming and mostly just won back what I bet.

  

woo~

The last game I tried was some weird thing that was more a strategy card game called Platoon, with a fixed entry fee of 100 chips. You take 10 cards and put them into 5 groups (can be a group of 1 if you want) and try to have a higher total than the dealer's group, win the majority of the groups and you win the match. The twist is that a king wins the hand automatically (unless facing an ace), an ace lose the hand automatically (unless faced with a king), and a joker swaps the dealer and players hands.

It's a really slow game to play through, so I didn't spend much time on it.

At least she plays fair!

Cashing out my large fortune of chips (wish i could get god back for them), I got the two familiar tokens, now to find what to do with them. The game has so far given no indication where they could be redeemed, and I've been dragging around one of these things since the start of the game because it was a day one bonus. Looking it up on line, it turns out that I have to talk to the sage at the temple of trails. When i got to the temple, it was a lot more crowded than the last time i was there. Apparently they are having a pokemon championship of sorts, but I'm not here for that!

All the NPCs!

First off I cashed in my day one bonus familiar, which was a silly looking red dragon. It has scrawny arms that look like a plucked chicken wing, so I named it Chick Wing (due to limited characters).

Some dragon has been skipping arm day

Then it was time to check out what I won from the casino. The grand prize, Tin Man, was actually a gold robot that reminded me of the Gold Golem from the Dragon Quest games, so I named it Golem. The second prize, Idler, turned out to be this weird dino person with a -_- emoji head and a stick. I named it Wat, because wat?

You two better be worth the 1.25 million gold!

Of course they start at level 1, so I added all three of them to the back of my party so they can slowly gain XP. With that silly distraction out of the way, it's time to find that last stone location! Turns out that it's the very same temple that i spotted at the start of the  January 23 post, So i finally get to go in. The temple has the epic name of "The Vault of Tears: Cursed Crypt of the Cobra King", which i'll be delving into next time!

Looks really cool!