Avowed’s main quests are rife with choices that can shape the Living Lands and its people. One such crossroads that will have you scratching your head shows up at the end of the Shadows of the Past quest. You get to pick between destroying the Naku Kubel ruins and severing the Adra crystal here from the effects of the Dreamscourge. Both choices have terrible consequences for multiple regions and we’ve covered them in detail here. Would you destroy the ruins or sever the Adra?
Yatzli leans towards severing the Adra connection.
All choices in Shadows of the Past¶
After your adventure in Ryngrim’s icy domain and the Naku Kubel ruins, you’ll run into Ryngrim and Inquisitor Lödwyn. They will present you with a tough decision. Lödwyn suggests destroying the ruins to destroy the Dreamthralls there. These are beings infected by the Dreamscourge. Meanwhile, Ryngrim prefers severing the Adra connection to halt the Dreamscourge’s advance and preserve the ruins. Read on to understand the weight and consequences of these choices.
Destroying the Ruins¶
While siding with a skeleton powered by wrath doesn’t sound ideal, destroying Naku Kubel grants you the Scion of the Immortal Land ability. This buffs your damage and grants health regeneration for 12 seconds. Destroying the Naku Kubel ruins means you cannot return to it and the Dreamscourge will continue spreading in Thirdborn. While you eventually find a solution to this plague, it’s a difficult cost to quantify in terms of human life.
The archmage and your companion can sever the Adra at a cost.
This choice causes many casualties in Thirdborn.
Severing the Adra¶
The second choice isn’t all that better. By choosing to sever the Adra connection, you will stop the Dreamscourge from infecting new victims in Shatterscarp. Ryngrim and Yatzli consider this a pragmatic choice since it preserves the ruins for exploration. Naturally, this comes with a big catch. Severing off a source of essence needs a massive power source and archmage Ryngrim wipes out a portion of Thirdborn’s souls to achieve this. They’re picked at random and while three dozen casualties shouldn’t be reduced to a statistic, you’ve already seen more Dreamthralls lost to the Dreamscourge. It’s a complex decision either way.
The endings that arise from this decision tend to be bittersweet at best. While the least bad one involves destroying the ruins and fighting for a united Living Lands at the final mission, severing the Adra is just as costly. That covers the repercussions of deciding between destroying the ruins and severing the Adra in Shatterscarp.
Once a steel plant engineer, Antony is an independent journalist who has written for IGN, GamesRadar, Rock Paper Shotgun, VideoGamer, and GamesIndustry.biz over the past five years. You'll find him at… More about Antony Terence
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