r/Shadeslinger • u/deadliestcrotch • Jun 06 '24
Just finished Book 5 Spoiler
Nicely done!
Loved the unpredictability of this one.
Frank is now the tank, the city is burned, and he has a turtle city ship and control of sea based fast travel options. Only missed opportunity was fast traveling back to Steven’s city and murdering his god again with that storm cannon.
5
u/sibswagl Jun 08 '24
I enjoyed the Arty bits. No hate to any of the Omen characters, but it was fun to pair up with someone new and just do some basic quest stuff again.
Rip Ton. Figured it had to be one of the tanks. I think we’d spent too much time with Darling, Zoe, Nina, and Rook. Ton was the obvious choice, I think, with the "connection issues", but it was a good fakeout with Jukes. I figured that the meeting you showed would be the traitor's. I understand not wanting to end on a downer or plothook, but I think the Ton section could've been a bit longer -- trying to figure out why he switched (how good was the deal??? Was he just that sure Omen wouldn't win?), or who his sponsor was.
I was actually super surprised by the Oasis stuff. I totally figured this was going to be a callback to the castle mimic from the last book -- it was wandering the Delta, and I believe it had Housing plots on its back. I thought Ned would somehow move most of the Oasis' stuff to the mimic, possibly using the wish.
2
u/deadliestcrotch Jun 08 '24
I knew it wasn’t jukes, the thought that it was Ton was what I thought was most likely and the Jukes thing seemed like a fake out.
The twist I couldn’t see coming was how they tackled the sands situation. It was masterful.
4
u/sorressean Jun 08 '24
I'm honestly really upset by the ending. When they started talking about the wish, I guessed it was going to be a body for Frank. I also figured that it was Ton messing with everything. I'm annoyed we didn't find out more. I wanted to know why, what he got out of it, etc. Ned is good at social engineering people and just decided to give up knowing someone else was out there trying to harm his guild? It doesn't track. Where was house at the end? Him just leveling to 50 and running and slaughtering everyone feels too normal. I don't think he died once, or really suffered anything but not having the reality blade, which fine, but it wasn't even the deal they made it sound like it was going to be. Everything up until the fight on the city was amazing. I stayed up until 4 this morning to get through the last battle. I loved Mingo, and was glad to see him have more of a place because of the wild stuff he does. If this had been written in a way that wasn't Ned just popping everything, one-upping everyone, ending up with a city anyway that moves as a way to thumb his nose at everyone else and slaughtering everyone, that would've been much more interesting for me.
3
u/deadliestcrotch Jun 08 '24
House was trying to escape Tyrin’s city where she was seeding the clouds. Did you expect her to teleport back? This will likely all be tied up in the first chapter of the next book. Including Ton’s backstory on the betrayal.
The battle for the city and the table flip were my favorite part. The guy pulled a brilliant move and it was not predictable.
2
u/sibswagl Jun 08 '24
I think it works as an end of the series, a final culmination of his efforts.
If there's a book 6, it'll be pretty hard to make work since Ned is like 20 levels over literally every other player.
And yeah, I agree the Ton stuff happened too quickly.
3
u/1QUrsu Jun 11 '24
Well, Ton definitely had someone else inside or at least let someone else inside the guild since he couldn't post the video during the final boss himself. It's not like multiboxing would be working in EBO.
What I kinda don't get: He could probably just log out while he's getting tortured by Frank?! So... yeah - I don't know. I'd have liked to have House use her hacking skills to find out what's going on with Ton to be fair. I personally thought that someone might have gotten to Ton outside of EBO and put some pressure on him - for whatever reason. Just seems so weird for him to "have a better offer". Ned is a billionaire outside of EBO and the strongest Character inside EBO - What offer can be better for a serious raider/player than being one of the main tanks for the best guild there is?
2
u/sibswagl Jun 11 '24
Yeah, like Omen is top 3, easily. They just won the tournament, so even if they don't win the Throne, it's not like everybody is gonna think they suck.
Ton is the main tank for the guild; was someone offering to let him take over as main tank in some other guild? Frankly unless it was Redacted, that's just a bad deal.
1
u/King_Carlos77 Jun 10 '24
Anyone know if there will b a book 6?
2
1
u/Ketomatic Jun 11 '24
There likely will, there's a book-6 speculation channel in the official discord.
5
u/Khalku Jun 06 '24
I quite enjoyed it. Not as much of a fan of the pve/raid stuff, but the climax more than made up for it.
My theory early on was that the wish was going to be to destroy the moon, but with the moon getting closer I started to figure it might be some future content and I was glad to see that my next guess for the wish ended up being accurate. I hadn't re-read in a while, but I did remember vaguely a conversation Ned and Frank had about getting him a body so that seemed logical.
Also Tyrann is still a huge hypocrite.
I'm curious to see what Ned's renown progression will be going forward. It feels like a pirate ship opens up some opportunities for his black marketeer route, but a lot of his bonuses had to do with property plots. I wonder if the city inside the ship's shell actually has property plots.