I had been thinking that since there was a dialogue option I didn't see, maybe my own game-ending experience was on me. After all, years ago, I didn't know how to give "all the right answers" to the Baldur's Gate dialogues, and some of those, even when you give good, diplomatic, role-played answers, lead to bad consequences, if the answers you gave didn't fit the dialogue tree puzzle the developers made that lead to the "good" outcome. (I'm thinking specifically of Marl in Feldpost's Inn, and the Flaming Fist officers south of Beregost, but there are a lot of other cases.)
There is definitely a peaceful option. I never got the witch to attack and only learned that it can end in a fight after reading about it, so it's not as difficult as you make it to be.
On a side note, wisps (and a lot of other enemies) are very easy with the stinking cloud spell, because they have weak fortitude saves and you can protect your own party with the delay poison spell. It was one of the buffs I've always had on my party, it's so useful.
In general, I've found disabling spells to be far more powerful in PK than in BG, where you only get greater malison to deal with enemy saving throws. In PK, you can really up the spell dc with spell focuses and heighten, so unless you play on hard or unfair difficulty, the enemies will have problems resisting the effects. It's the same situation as in BG, where a properly built mage can make the game much easier for the rest of the party, even with the limited resting & time limits.
I mostly agree with that, but there some spells in BG that if you get them off, you win. For the first several levels, sleep will win a huge amount of fights and chaos will take you through a good chunk of BG2. Insect swarm's a fight winner, too. I don't feel like Pathfinder has any spells that make so many encounters a cake walk. Cloud kill's probably the closest, but even then there's a lot of fights where it doesn't do much or anything at all. The metamagic options in Pathfinder do give you some ways to make magic more effective against higher save enemies, especially heighten spell.
Yes, but I don't find I get so many of those cast spell, you win scenarios in Pathfinder. Like sleep spell was good for a huge amount of situations, sure not good on a vampiric wolf or sirine, but it could take down a whole wolf pack or huge group of bandits. In BG2 chaos and insect swarm just end so many fights, it's not even funny. Now, I know you can't just use that on Fiirkraag, but they still shut down so many enemies. I find all too often in kingmaker, especially on challenging, they make their saves, so I have to either spam the same spell repeatedly, or lean on spells that still have impact even if they make their save. Ray of enfeeblement, boneshatter and cloudkill are all good ones that still do something even if they save. Several siroccos stacked on each other is probably the closest thing I can think of to being a you win spell, but I've still had things go wrong even when I get a couple up during the fight with the lantern king, but then again that fight is super cheesy.
I haven't taken a full mage through Varnhold's lot, so can't comment on that.
I've got to say, I didn't find the cyclops dungeon that difficult, you mainly just need enough rations and castings of restoration to get through it, and there are rations to be found in that dungeon. The only thing that's difficult in the fight with Vordakai is that he finger of deaths your weakest party member, so generally winds up nuking Octavia or Linzi, but ya those alchemist's bombs are kind of over powered at times, especially since there's a bomb that'll work on anything.
But for a fair comparison, you can't just win the fight with the dragon in the mountains (I forget his name) in P:K with just sirrocco and stinking cloud and bombs. You could just dump a pile of traps at Firkraag's feat and instantly win the fight. I always liked using that spell that gives spell resistance 20% or 40% (a priest spell I forget the name of, and can't recall the exact numbers since it's been awhile), then hit him with lower resistance until he's got no spell resistance left, throw in a greater Mailison, and you can smack him around with any spells you want. Maybe it's just that everyone hasn't worked out the finest details in the game, yet, but I haven't had as easy of a time with that dragon as Firkraag.
Maybe I just get unlucky, but I don't tend to get everyone with AOEs in P:K, like in the BG games. This is even using heightened spells and taking the spell penetration feats. Plus a lot of spell equivalents from BG to P:K now do friendly fire like sleep and confusion, so you can't just throw them down anywhere. I also found there were so many more fights in the BG games (especially the first one) where you could just drop a fireball and kill everything. I've certainly had some enemies escape from a sirocco on challenging. It definitely helps, and pins down a lot of them, but if they're tough a few can slip through.
Finally I'm off to the Stag Lord's Fort. I head Northeast first and deal with a pack of thylacines and loot a corpse first, then head west and fight a mob of zombies. We get take some dings, but nothing worth putting much effort into the fight for.
I get to a break in the wall and can either go over it or break through it. I'm going to try and go over. I want to make this roll, so Linzi uses her inspire competence song and she makes it.
I bump into one of the stag lord's henchmen and convince him to turn himself in with the lawful option, and my main character hits level 5 and I take power attack and cleave for my feats and get bulls strength for free and pick effortless armor.
Going through the camp, the goal is to kill all the bandits and henchment without them alerting the Stag Lord to my presence. So I head east into the camp and charge the first group and take them down.
I keep moving East and do the same charge at the gate guards. They die in horrible poverty.
I go East some more and another group of 3 bandits, I catch their alchemist by themself and rush her. The barbarian comes around and really messes up Harrim before I can do anything and starts going after Demona. I get up a mirror image and shocking grasp him, and he goes down. The last one makes a run for it to warn the stag lord, but I hit him with scorching ray from Octavia and Jaethal does a boneshaker and goes down.
I heal up and go east a bit more and fight some wolves. Move some boxes and open some chests. At this point, I decide I'll play it on the safe side and walk back out to the world map and rest.
So after healing up, I head back in and pick up. There's a huge mob up ahead, so it's all buffs up and charge in again taking out the roaming guard first, then I shocking grasp the mage and chunk him. I need to be careful to damage everyone, so I can kill whoever's left fast, so my main moves to attack the furthest archer. I make sure the last one alive is the one that got hit by their own mage's color spray. So far so good, no alarms tripped. Jaethal hits level 5 and I take skill focus perception and effortless armor on her.
I go east and come to an owl bear pen. I want to make my roll to tame it so Linzi uses inspire competence again. She fails to tame it but Octavia at least is able to mangle the lock so it can't get out and hits level 5, so I can take her first level of arcane trickster. I take precise strike for her feat and burning arc and glitterdust for her spells.
I keep going east and there's another huge mob, most of our buffs are still good, but a fresh bless will help. We charge the first guy and cut our way through the rest, using a color spray to catch some of them. The last one tries to run again, but I catch him with a boneshaker and he drops.
The last of the henchmen are ahead to the East, a mage and a barbarian. I rush the mage and drop a glitter dust on them. Even though I'm lawful evil, I decide to gut the mage when he asks to join me. I finish the barbarian with a shocking grasp. Amiri levels up to level 5
We're a little low on spells, so I decide to rest before killing the stag lord. I just decide to burn my rations rather than walk all the way out.
Now it's time to fight the Stag Lord. With his henchmen all dead, the fight should easier. I didn't manage to poison the wine back at the ford, so he won't be sickened, but it shouldn't be too bad. I aproach up the stairs with my main and Amiri and Jaethal in the lead to attack the Stag Lord, Linzi and Octavia in the middle and Harrim to hold the stairs to make sure nobody can get up them. The Stag Lord drops from Linzi's hideous laughter and shocking grasp him. We proceed to beat on them. I use a glitterdust on the mob Harrim is holdin at the steps and he banes them. With the Stag Lord down, I switch Amiri and Jaethal to ranged and Demon rushes to join Harrim in holding the stairs. The remaining bandits go down pretty easily and we loot the corpses. Amiri gets the Stag Lord's helmet and Linzi his armor, Harrim hits level 5.
Inside we find the old druid (the stag lord's father) in a cell. He goes hostile as soon as we open the cell, so we murder him. I finish looting the place and am done with the fort. I still have 52 days on the timer to complete the chapter. Definitely not my fastest run, but I played on the safe side since it's no reload.
I'm going to call it a night here, because it's Friday night, and I've been drinking and don't want to get sloppy on a no reload run. I'm also getting a respect for how much of a pain in the ass it is to screenshot, documenting and format all these posts, so more power to @BelgarathMTH for doing them.
I didn't have much trouble finding the lair in my first playthrough, but in all fairness, Nok-Nok (and sneak attack in general) is stupidly overpowered in pathfinder. I've generally been shying away from him lately because of that. I just don't find the game interesting enough if he's around. If it's your first run, I highly encourage you to abuse the hell out of Nok-Nok, he's even written by Chris Avellone. But, lately as a personal thing, I've been trying to avoid the over abuse of sneak attack, sort of like how I avoid abusing traps in BG runs unless I'm actually playing a rogue myself. I'll let Octavia use it (obviously) since it's not as out of hand, but it does get insane with Nok-Nok. Sorry, but it's just a personal thing, I just feel like the way the game's setup he's stupid powerful compared to everyone else. It's probably also the reason why I don't like playing characters that rely on their pets. I mean who's the hero here, you or the animal? I don't like feeling like this dumb little goblin is the real hero of the campaign.
@DrHappyAngry
Well, if your hero is a vivisectionist with bite attacks, they'll be even more overpowered than Nok-Nok. But I can't hate on the little guy, his questline was one of the better ones and really touching.
Oh ya, he had a great story, and if anyone hasn't had a run with him, I'd encourage them to take him along. The problem for me is Nok Nok is big hero and I'm just a little hero.
So now I'm going to wrap up some loose ends before I move on to chapter 2. Next stop, Glade in the wilderness that we skipped by earlier, since I was a bit under leveled for. We kill our way through some wolves outside a cave, and a few more inside the cave before we hit the main chamber. I know the way this encounter works, I'll get attacked from behind as the alpha wolf, Silent, and some more wolves enter after some of her offspring die. So I cast all my buffs to get ready, and charge the first wolf with Linzi singing. Once the wolves are all engaged, I move Linzi and Octavia around on the right so they'll be safe. Harrim drops a prayer spell when the second wave of wolves enter. A few of them get a hold of Jaethal and trip her up. I drop a grease and manage to get one of the wolves down. Silent slips on the grease eventually and we finish her off. As we move on to the last wolf, it trips then most of us trip as the AI moves to close before I can redirect them. We kill the last wolf and loot the cave for a +1 scythe for Jaethal.
Next stop is ratnook hill. I've got Harrim at level 5 so this shouldn't be tough at all. I make my way up disabling the traps. Before I go into the cave, I have Harrim cast Resist fire, communal, in addition to all the other buffs we roll with. I open up with a stone call to flush out the rats. I go for a shocking grasp on one, while Linzi hits another with hideous laughter. I take some damage but Harrim keeps me in the fight. We can mostly shrug off the alchemist's bombs with resistance to fire. In the end Jaethal and Harrim boneshaker the wererats, and we're victorioius. We get some magical kukris and leather armor. No use right now, but that bombardier's vest will be handy when I pick up another character next chapter.
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The last spot we haven't been to is the trail in the hills, so we head there next. We put up our buffs, and a mature leopard charges at us. These things have a crazy amount of attacks. I shocking grasp it while Amiri tanks the thing, Jaethal and Harrim shake it's bones and Octavia hit it with scorching ray. We finish it off handily. There's +1 shortbow for octavia, not that she really ever shoots her bow.
Along the way back to Oleg's I hit up Nettle's crossing to get my reward from Davik. He drop dead and leaves a +1 spear and 1800xp.
Time to head back to Oleg's and finish off this chapter. I dump the loot off first, and then let Oleg know the Stag Lord's done with.
Back in Restov it's a celebration for my ascendency to baron. I convince Esvanki Keeg to build a shrine in my capitol. I take up Ioseph on his deal for supplies. I decide I'll take Shandra from the Surtovas as my envoy, and I'm a baron now.
Kesten takes me on a tour of my barony's capitol, where the stag lord's fort was. Now it's time to start whipping this place into shape. I'm going to play the kingdom management as a populist. Since this is a no reload run, I'm going to go for choices to try and keep my kingdom's state at serene, just because it makes the rolls a bit easier.
I name the kingdom Demonia. I pick Octavia for regent, Shandra for councilor, Regongar as general and Harrim as high priest. I set Regongar to pillage the temple of elk for much needed build points, Harrim does Ezvanki's offer to get that free shrine. I've got an event for mysterious weed, so I set Shandra on it.
In my capitol, itself, I start off with a long house, barracks, shop, piers, smity wooden wall, bulletin board and stocks. The bulletin boards and stocks will make kingdom management easier, since they provide bonuses to solving events in the region. Bulletin boards require lawful, and stocks require evil.
Now Octavia and I claim the outskirts.
2 weeks later. Shandra asks who to hold a celebration for, I'm a populist, so I go for the common folk. Let them think I give a crap about them. Harrim asks to go to some Dwarven ruins.
In my capitol I build that free shrine. I found the new city of tradeguard in the outskirts, right next to Oleg's. I kick off tradeguard with a longhouse, bulletin board, stocks, wooden wall, barracks, shop, shrine and smithy. Shandra's still tied up with that mysterious weed event, so I head out to Oleg's to recruit Bokken, stopping by the storyteller and merchants in the town square. Nyrrissa stops me in the town square promising to reward me. I've got a decent sized war chest now, so blow most of my cash on a ring of plentiful hunts for Amiri, Trap Springer's gloves for Octavia and a bag of holding so we can carry more crap. We head back up to Oleg's to get Bokken to be the court Alchemist, and he accepts. Once back out of Oleg's I build his shop in tradeguard. I'm down to just 4BP. Early on, I can risk going this low on BP, but after this I need to make sure to keep a decent sized bank of build points around, in case events cause me to go into debt and threaten the kingdom's stability.
@DrHappyAngry , You go! Bravo! Thank you so much for proving that a no-reload can be done, or at least trying to. You've gotten much farther than I ever did!
I'm so happy that you've taken up this thread after I failed utterly and got discouraged. I hope you go all the way to the end! But if you don't, I hope you will either continue as a minimal reload, or go back and get on the horse again. This game desperately needs a no-reload community, in my opinion. Well, maybe not desperately, as most P:KM players I've seen so far are infinite (I hate to say it because it is an insult term - "save-scumming") reloaders.
I really have no respect for any game (or, dare I say, any players) any more that some online hero doesn't show me can be no-reloaded, or at least minimal reloaded. I've been hopelessly corrupted for all time by the Baldur's Gate no-reload community from the old Bioware boards, who have now migrated here. If it can't be no-reloaded, it's not worth playing!
I am not proud to say that I've been influenced irrevocably into that mindset. But here it is, and here I am not wanting to play any game I can't at least minimal reload while roleplaying my chosen character.
I'm not quite as far as you got, I only just started chapter 2, and haven't started fighting the trolls, yet.
I suspect part of it's just that all the ins and outs of the BG games have been found over the last 20 years, and this game's still pretty new. Once it's been dissected as well as the BG games have, we'll probably see a lot more hardcore no reload runs. I think I've got a decent enough knowledge of the game that I can make it through a no reload.
Since my councilor is tied up and I have nothing I can do with the kingdom right now, I'll take this opportunity to explore. I head over to Overgrown pool. We meet some loggers, I intimidate them into listening to their rightful baron. The fey still wants me to bring her some feathers, so I'll do it. I have to go where I can get them eventually, anyways. There's a couple of wolves to the south and some loot, but nothing else here.
I skip by the Ford and the lone house. I know there are story events in those areas coming up shortly, so no need to drop by there, yet. I keep moving to the bandit camp. These bandits claim to be loyal subjects. I pick the lawful evil option, and hire them on, but make sure they understand I get the taxes they collect. I loot ther stuff and get a +1 mace for Harrim.
I probably should head back home now, since the timer on the curse at bald hill top is coming up. I head back and rest up. There's some new merchants around, too. I pick up some scrolls for octavia to learn fireball and haste from, some healing and wounding potions, and another set of boots of elven kind. I talk to the tiefling Kaessi, and she wants me to meet her at sorrowflow. I'll come back to that later.
I love the little touches your alignment has on your kingdom. I'm lawful evil so I have a set of gallows in the square.
Now we've got troll trouble and the actual start of chapter 2. Octavia hits level 6, and gets her second arcane trickster level. I just had her pick up haste and fireball from scrolls, so pick slow and stinking cloud. I head out to the ford across the skunk river. Over to the east there's some kobolds to kill. I find a crowbar in the chests at the camp.
I head up towards the center, and there's some gnomes under attack by kobolds. After we kill the first group, we bump into an old "friend" Tartuk. We fight. Linzi glitterdusts the archers to make them less effective, and we kill our way through the kobolds.
We need to help the gnomes save the cart from going over. I really want to make these checks here. Linzi already had cast heroism on Demona, but now she casts it on Amiri and uses inspire competence. Octavia casts cat's grace on Amiri, and I have her take off her armor for now. I set a crowbar under the wheels and tie a rope to the cart, first. Amiri hops over and manages to calm down the ponies, making both the mobility and nature checks (that's why I took her armor off), the boots and ring I bought her were worth it. After looking at each of options to get the cart out, I go with athletics, since it's the easiest out of the rolls to make, and we get the cart free.
Jubilost is thankful for the help and I recruit him into the party, replacing Linzi. Jubilost gets the bombardier's vest and headband of intellect we found back at ratnook hill. To the north to the left and right of the path are some more wolves and minor loot, so we finish off the area and head back to the capitol for some rest and to set Jubilost as the treasurer and start on that deal with Ioseph. Demona hits level 6 and I take enduring blade for my arcana and the web spell.
After resting. The eight legged plague has begun. I put Octavia on the event and head over to bald hilltop. Obviously we're dealing with spiders, here, so I have Harrim cast delay poison, communal on everyone and we buff up before heading into the fray. Most of the spiders go down fast, but a doom spider stealth attacks and a dryad pop in for the finale. I use slow to make them less dangerous. Demona and Harrim get stuck with the nymphs hold person spells, but Jubilost's bombs and Octavia's sneak attacks from scorching ray and snowball take them down. Back to the capitol for some rest before we start to go after the trolls.
On our way over the lone house, we get ambushed by trolls. We kill the trolls and save the traveling merchant. He tells us about a Hodag lair, which sparks Amiri's interest. I intimidate him into operating exclusively in my barony.
We head over to the lone house. I go north from the starting point and come across a large group of bandits. They're probably the toughest thing on this map, at this point, so I cast my buffs, including haste and charge the leader. Octavia drops a fireball, Jubilost starts chucking bombs at their alchemist, and we finish them off and Jaethal hits level 6, I take outflank and cure moderate wounds.
I pick up the loot and move east disabling the traps as I go, then start working my way south and find Wain. I decide the traps would be doing the world a favor if they got him, and leave him to his fate. I head south towards the road and follow it east. There's a couple bandits in the road, so we kill them. Then bump into another group of three and kill them, as well. Amiri hits level 6 and she takes weapon specialization great axe. I follow the path north, disabling more traps, loot some stuff to the east of the house then talk to Bartholomew. He's got a small bag of holding for sale, so I grab that up, then talk to him about the trolls. He's interested that they're immune to fire, so we go off with him to kill one. He realizes the brand is why they're immune to fire and asks me to meet him in his house, so we head there.
In the house, we find a chest behind a hidden door with a pair of bracers of archery and a cloak of resistance. There's a troll being held captive that asks me to c kill it. I have no qualms about Bartholomew running his experiments, so let him continue his experimentation on the troll. Octavia's not happy about about it, but I tell her to stfu. I finish looting his house and hit the road.
The next stop is the ruined watchtower. Following the path south, we find a dog. We follow it to Ekun. I let him join, but send him back to the capitol and wait in ambush for the trolls. We take them out without so much as a scratch. I love mirror image. We hit a dead end with an armor amulet, so head back to the main road, then go east again. We kill some bandits and Harrim levels up. There's another wolf pack that we defeat, and then we climb down a cliff. We loot a camp and continue east killing more wolves. We bump into a group of travellers who had a prank played on them by the fae, and were stuck up on a cliff. I ask how much they'll give me to help them, of course. Then make them pay in advance, and give me more gold on top of it. Then I catch them with an outstretched cloak. I maybe evil, but I honor my agreements. We get a dwarven cog wheel from them, it'll be needed later.
I head West, back towards the main road and spy a group of trolls with a kobold thundercaller. Octavia chucks a fireball and we charge. Jubilost throws bombs at the thundercaller first, splatting him. We finish off the trolls and have a well earned rest, but get ambushed by a mob of spdiders. Harrim casts communal delay poison and we kill them all.
We keep going west and bump into a wolf pack. There's a narrow gap between us I can use as a bottlekneck to keep them from all getting to me at once. I approach, but as soon as the fight starts, I pull back just past the bottlekneck before engaging the wolves. They go down pretty easy and we find another dwarven cog wheel.
Continuing on, there's another wolf pack, this one's much tougher than the last, but there's another bottlekneck we can take advantage of. Octavia chucks a fireball and we position ourselves at the bottlekneck. Harrim drops a prayer, and we proceed to kill them one at a time. I grab the minor loot off the corpses and head back to the main road.
I spot some bandits attempting an ambush, so we kill them. Southwest there's another group of bandits, so I fight them, too.
At the base of the ruins, I throw up a delay poison and climb the steps and wind up in the middle of a spider swarm. Octavia uses slow on them and they die pretty easy.
In the tower, we find a chest. Demona makes her athletics check to bring it down, but Jaethal fails her perception check to find a key, fortunately Octavia picks the lock. Now we've got a sweet great axe that does 1d6 acid damage that goes to Amiri, as well as a breast plate +2 for Jaethal.
Up the path there's a statue of Torag. I try to put the cogs into the mechanism, but they won't go, so Harrim figures it out. There's a nice belt of physical perfection, some +1 plate mail and some cash.
I kill a troll and it's hounds, a wolf pack fighting a troll hound and work my way to the western exit. On the way out, I bump into 3 idiots who think they're going to dig up treasure under a tree. I take the lawful evil options and let them dig it up so I can take whatever they find, which as it turns out is nothing.
We head down the kobold trail, which is a book event. I have Octavia cross the river, she easily makes the mobility check. When we come across a shrine I leave it alone.
I keep going south to the kobold camp. There's not that many options dialog wise that fit lawful evil, so I wind up with the chaotic evil path and murder the buggers. Man Octavia hates me.
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We pass by the swamp witch's hut and go to the monster lair. It's a wyvern so I put up delay poison with my other buffs. After the fight Octavia levels up.
@DrHappyAngry I’m greatly enjoying your no-reload run so far! I’ll give it a shot sometime.
Your images aren’t showing up for me with the safari browser in iOS. I just get a “filename.jpg” placeholder when I open the spoiler. Could just be my issue but I wanted to point it out.
Oh sorry about that. I had to change a bad drive in my server over the weekend, and for some reason nginx on the proxy virtual machine wasn't running after I brought everything back up, so it showed on my internal network, but not outside. Thanks for mentioning it, it should be working again.
We enter the swamp witch's hut area. I cast my buffs including delay poison and start heading south. Just to the west of the path there's a pack of wargs, they're not much trouble. We follow the path south some more and come to a branch to the east. We go by some mud leaf plants and I decide to leave them alone for now. The difficulty on them is higher than I feel like I should be attempting right now, and I plan on revisiting this area later, anyways. Further up the path, we bump into some fey, a dryad and a satyr. It's Tiressia, the cousin of the dryad we met at the ford earlier. We need to get some feathers off her. I agree to kill the scythe tree for a price. I keep the following the path east and find a clearing. I have Octavia chuck a fireball into the clearing, revealing a ferocious warg. More wargs come out, followed by a werewolf. I throw up a prayer, chuck bombs, Octavia uses slow and sneak attack spells and we cut through them. There's some minor loot, plus a ring of protection +2 in the clearing.
We head back to the main path and keep following it south, and there's another branch to the east again, so we follow it and spy a couple of Hodag like treants. These suckers are tough. My buffs are still good, so we charge in. Octavia slows them and jubilost chucks bombs. I use shocking grasp on the first one. Octavia crits the second one with a scorching ray and it explodes
Continuing along the path, we bump into a couple will o wisps and use communal electricity resistance. They can't do much to use with it up, so we kill them.
Moving along, we bump into some boars and kill them. We stumble up on the witch's hut. I ring the bell. She's a little annoyed at our presence, but not hostile. She wants me to get mushrooms from the mud bowl, so we'll do that one later.
A little the south I kill the Tatzlworms and then go East. There's a well, but I'm not going to risk opening it, yet, since it's a no reload run. I keep going east and kill another wolf pack. I have Octavia fireball them, to get their attention. I use some of the bushes to bottlekneck them, so only a couple can get at me at once. Jebus, for a game called pathfinder, the pathfinding is terrible.
It's time for a well earned rest before we go further. The next day we keep moving east. I talk to a specter and just leave him be. I keep going eastward, and there's some spooky fog, so I make sure to put up delay poison. Here's the scythe tree. It's a tree, and trees hate being cut and set on fire, let's do that. It took about 3 scorching rays, a couple of bombs and the rest of us just beating on it, but it goes down.
Moving north from the scythe tree we find a plant called dizzy head, so we pick it up. We bump into some giant slugs, which means we want communal resist acid for them. We kill the first one pretty fast, but they manage to get a couple of big hits on Amiri. Funnily enough, my Magus' weapon was still charged with a shocking grasp that I didn't get to use when I killed the scythe tree. The second one manages to do massive damage to me, and gets a crit on Harrim while he's moving around trying to heal people. Things were looking dicey for a moment, but I got a series of hits, starting a crit on a shocking grasp from my main for 69 damage and a hit from Amiri and a snowball sneak attack from Octavia, we take the thing down. I search the rest of the area around them for some minor loot and more dizzy head. I show the dizzy head to the witch and she tasks me with finding some herbs. Were pretty beat up, so we rest.
I head back south of the witch's hut and cross the water with a mobility check. There's some more wisps, so we use protection electricity. I hit them with a glitter dust so they can't go invisible. There's a dead body there, clearly magical. Screw this, I loot the corpse. They tell me they'll find me. Oh noes!
I head back to the main path and go on the path west I passed by earlier. I kill some more tatzlworms and Jubilost finally hits level 6 and I grab the crucial infusion discovery. Now he can cast shield on Amiri and Jaethal. I say hi to the ghoul on the path and keep moving. There's a swampy area with some gloomberries and more giant slugs, so it's acid resistance time. I use haste and chuck a fireball at them before rushing and slowing them. We actually cut through the 3 of them much more easier than the 2 we bumped into earlier.
I head back to get my reward from the dryad and satyr for killing the scythe tree and leave the area. I'll come back later.
Next stop the Hodag Lair for Amiri's quest. It's nothing too bad, I just make sure to buff up and have delay poison on everyone. It doesn't even scratch us.
On the way back to the capitol, we get an event with a kobold conducting a ritual on some trolls. I creep up and read their body language to figure out what's going on, and manage to push a troll into the fire. I still have 2 trolls and a kobold flame shaman to deal with now, and no buffs up. I toss up a mirror image on Demona before she heads in, and slow the trolls, while jubilost bombs the shaman and the rest attack the trolls. The flame shaman had a cloak of resistance +2, which Demona puts on.
Back home, the spider invasion has been completely dealt with, I get some cash for that and check up on things in my kingdom. My deal with Ioseph is done and I get 500BP, but now all buildings cost 25% more. That's part of the reason why I built so much right off the bat in my first couple of towns. These BP will come in real handy in a bit, though, so I think it was totally worth it. We can fix the deal later on, anyway. I dump off the loot with the storyteller and the merchants. I Finally have enough to buy Amiri that adamantine heavy armor +1. I also try to redistribute the loot, so everyone has some OK gear, even the party members I don't use.
Back on the road I head over to the Verdant chambers, but get an unavoidable event on the road. I put all my buffs up and head in. Remember that corpse I defiled in the swamp witch's hut area? well the fey found me and send a few waves of monsters at me. First frogs, then tatzlworms, and finally a poisonous shambling mound.
I get to the verdant chambers, rest and dismiss the rest of my party, since I have to go see the nymph alone. I cast my buffs and head in. Of course it's a trap and the nymph has a bunch of monsters. I just chug a potion of invisibility and move to the wall. With the help of a bull's strength spell, I manage to climb up after a couple tries. I follow the path the red cap walks, and climb down a tree and kill a couple of wolves. There's a corpse with a couple more potions of invisibility, and part 3 of transmutations of the body, I'll need that for a sidequest later.
I get the hell out of the verdant chambers and Demona hits level 7 and takes cleaving finish for a feat, snowball, haste and vampiric touch. She can also wear medium armor and cast spells. So I think instead of wasting the couple days to summon up my party, I'm going to do something really risky and try to walk back home on my own. I've got potions of invisibility if I get attacked on the road. I make my way back with a stop by the overgrown pool, and hand in those feathers from the nymph's cousin. My main was falling behind Octavia quite a bit, so thought I'd soak up some more XP. I make it back to the capitol, all by myself, without getting attacked.
A snooty noble from Pitax is there. I tell him if he doesn't screw off I'll have him executed. A mother is missing her child and wants me to find him. I tell her I don't have time, but I'll do the quest anyways, since I need the xp. Bokken gives me an acerbic ring, Jubilost'll love that. Bokken also wants to talk to me back at Oleg's. I'll head there later. I make sure all my events are being handled, dump any loot and hit the road with my party again.
I head back into the swamp to find the kid and hit an event while walking. That nobole from Pitax is being attacked by trolls. We kill the trolls and let Stefano go, but warn him we'll probably be enemies the next time we meet.
I go by the troll clearing, and wait, and wait and wait. I eventually get some supplies. I rest and head north to the lizardfolk village. Outside I talk to an old lizardfold shaman, and he informs me the missing child is here. I head towards the gate and intimidate them into taking me to their leader. I take the evil route and threaten him and his tribe, so he says if the great ancestor will go with me, then I can take him. Octavia uses cat's grace, a potion of heroism and ranged legerdemain (since you get an unlimited number of attemptes) to pick the lock in the lizard chiefs hut. The spirit just hands the child over to me because it feeds on fear, and my threatening the lizard folk fed it plenty.
I finish looting the camp and exit through the gate and start heading east. I kill some monitor lizards, and circle around the camp walls, picking up some minor loot along the way. When I get to the western edge of the map, there's a venom hodag hiding and it attacks me. We kill it without too much trouble and find a cloak of stealth hidden near it.
so we leave the lizardfolk village and make our way east and stumble across empty skull rock, so I decide we should explore it. There's a stupid amount of troll hounds living here, most of them in front of their of lair. Through a series of just unlucky rolls Demona loses all her mirror images and gets knocked down and knocked out when trying to get to her feet, but we manage to finish off the trollhounds on the outside and head into the first cave. There's a few more trollhounds to kill, and Jaethal levels up. We find a keen elven curved blade and bracers of armor +4, which means Octavia doesn't need to bother with mage armor anymore. I cast haste and enter the second cave, there's a mob of five ferocious troll hounds, so Octavia casts slow and jubilost chucks his acid bombs. They go down without too much trouble and all we find in the cave is a cloak of resistance +1.
I cross the river and come to the wolf lair, so we explore it. It's not too big of a deal, but the more wolves will enter from every direction during the fight and 3 alpha wolfs spawn out of the caves afte killing all the wolves. The caves are not explorable and there isn't much else here, save for a handful more wolves in the southwest, so we hit the road again.
Off to the mud bowl to pick some mushrooms for the witch. When we enter the area some of the party are nauseated. I wait for the effect to end on Harrim and throw up delay poison. Then cast my buffs and get ready for a fight. I hit it with a slow and beat on it and bomb it. Demona finishes him with a crit on a frigid touch for a grand total of 47 damage. I pick up a bunch of those black rattle caps and some minor loot and head back home to the capitol.
Kesten informs me Bartholomew's in trouble with trolls, so I rest, dump my loot and get ready to head there. So the area's swarming with trolls. One of the worst groups is in the northwest of the map, same spot where the bandits and the stoned rock troll were at. Harrim hits level 7. We find some spiders fighting trolls in the middle of the map. After killing all the trolls on the map, we head into the mage's house and buff up with a hase spell. With this fight you have to act fast, as well as be ready to heal the mage if you want to save him. Unfortunately it doesn't happen. He dies before he can get any buffs up and before I can even take any action after taking a 64 point critical hit. Damn, I wanted him as an advisor. I guess I'll have to settle for Valerie being my diplomat, later. Oh well, at least he had a headband of intellect +4, which goes to Octavia, and a cloak of resistance +2 that I give to Harrim.
I head back to the swamp witch's hut to finish the area off before I go to end the trolls. First I'm going to try and harves that mud leaf I left earlier. I use owl's wisdom and Jaethal casts heroism on Amiri. Damn, she only harvests 2, so I can't complete the quest. I head back to the witch's hut to at least turn in the mushrooms from the mud bowl. She'll at least trade with me now, so I pick up some potions for future battles. I head down to the well and buff up with resist/protection from electricity communal before opening the well. At least Harrim makes his will check opening it. There's a bunch of ancient will o wisps inside. I have octavia use glitter dust on a couple of them. Jubilosts bombs work great on these things, too. It's not much of a fight, they're hard to hit, but can't hurt me with the buff up. I pick up the coins and head back to the specter. I put the coins on the alter to get rid of the annoying specter. I head back to the ghoul and tell him what I did, and he goes hostile. He's no big deal, though. I tell the witch about what I've done, she asks who I think that's at fault here (none of the answers really matter), then head back to the fey in the northeast. I tell them Elga's moved back and they want me to take a letter to her, so I take it to the swamp witch and leave the area.
I finally head over to the old Dwarven fortress. Harrim and Jubilost both wanted to come here, so I can settle up their quests. Jubilost pays me 1800 gold for bringing him here. We bump into a polite troll, but I don't tolerate them in my kingdom, so I attack. He's not too tough and we bring him down. We kill our way through some kobolds, a troll with some hounds and more kobolds making our way to the northwest. We take a key off one of the kobolds and go up the hill and over the wall, so we can launch a surprise attack on these fools. Octavia hits level 8 from disabling a trap, I bump her intelligence and take obsidian flow and shout. I get ready with a haste and charge the trolls and hounds. When the boss troll hound comes out, I drop a slow on him. I explode the greater trollhound with a shocking grasp crit for 63 damage! The rest of the trolls aren't a big deal. Harrim caught bloodfire fever from the troll hound, but just uses treat affliction to fix it. He's also depressing about the state of the place. I head east walking on the ramparts. There's a kobold and a troll further on. After we dispatch them, another branded troll tries to come from behind, but he's no match. I pick up some loot on the ramparts, and there's a sweet piece of armor on the southwest corner with a trap in front of it. Octavia handles it and my main has a really sweet mithril breast plate +2, the heart of valor. I head up the entrance to the fort and rest. We get ambushed by kobolds twice while hunting, which turns out to be a blessing, Jubilost finally hits level 7. He already knows haste and cure serious wounds from scrolls, so I take heroism.
I cast my buffs and head inside and are greeted by Hargulka, the troll. I manage to intimidate the other trolls and kill the 2 that stay to fight. I move southwest and through a door. There's a couple of young rock trolls in there. No mercy for any of the monsters. After I kill them their daddy Kargadd enters. He's a tough troll, the one that killed Ekun's family. He's not too big of a deal, since he's all by himself. We bomb, snowball sneak attack and hack away and dies. He had a nice belt with a +2 to strength and con that Amiri equips. Searching the rooms nearby, I find a dying dwarf and leave him to his fate. I murder a kobold painter and find a hidden room with some loot. There's a couple of kobolds in the way as I keep following the path and bump into some more trolls that I kill. There's a weird dial in this room. I know the solution to the puzzle and really don't want to role play going downstairs and back up here to open it, so I just set it to the fish looking symbol. Behind the locked door, I find one of the best long bows in the game, the devourer of metal. To bad I don't have anyone really using long bow. I head back to the entrance and go northeast from there and kill some troll hounds. I make my way past the traps, trolls and trollhounds. Even the named troll at the northeast is a pushover. There's another dial to the northeast and I set it to the S symbol. Once I've cleared the floor I had back out to rest before I tackl the rest of this place.
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I head back in and take the northeast stairs to get to the lower levels. I kill the kobolds and trollhounds and go northeast and find a dwarven rune that Harrim shows some interest in. I keep following the path northwest and find a hidden room with a mimic in it. They're no big deal and we loot the room and continue west. After more traps and trolls we come to a lair with kobold shaman and a bunch of spiders. Octavia uses a fireball and we bottlekneck them in the narrow hall and loot the room. The only way to go now is southwest. I follow a branch south and enter a room with some kobolds trying to teach, and the trolls and kobolds go hostile, so we murder them. This is the room those 2 dials open, and the solution is right next to the sun and moon. I loot the chest for a couple grand and armor only a paladin can use, but will fetch a nice price back at town. I go back the way I came and keep following the hallway southwest and then south for some more more loot. Demona hits level 8 and takes a point of strength and stinking cloud. I head back to the door across the hall from the room with the sun and moon statues and kill some more trolls. We bump into a large group of arguing kobolds and trolls and take them out. They have a whipe that Octavia takes a shine to, but I keep it for myself. I keep following the path the only way I can still explore past some more traps and trolls.
I rest in the main room before the big boss fight. It's every buff I've got. I talk to Tartuk and Hargulka, but a fight is inevetible. I open with a prayer and slow spells, Amiri tanks Hargulka and Demona goes for a shocking grasp while Jubilost bombos him. Harrim has to keep healing Amiri while she chugs potions, but she still goes down right before Hargulka. Tartuk is nothing without him and we show him no mercy. They've got some awesome gear, headband of charisma +4 for Demona, a belt with +4 to strength and con for Amiri, ring of luck +1 for Demona, Mallet of Woe (+3 heavy mace with freedom of movement) for Harrim, another ring of protection +2 that goes to Amiri. I loot the rest of the place, and Harrim takes interest in the forge, then smashes it for his amusement. We finish looting the place and leave.
The remaining kobolds outside look to me in fear, so I murder them, there really should have been a lawful evil option here. After I finish them off I leave and that's the end of that chapter.
So tonight I'm doing things proper with a horn of mead.
I head back to the capitol to celebrate our victory over the trolls. I finally have some time to devote to managing my kingdom. I'm not going to get too into that, since I'd expect it doesn't make for exciting reading, so I'm just going to give a vauge outline of what I'm doing for the minor stuff. Oleg doesn't want to pay his taxes, so I send guards with him to take what's mine. I claim the souther narlmarches which costs a whopping 400bp. Glad I took the deal with Ioseph. Hmm for some reason it thinks I was at negative bp and my kingdom hit worried, not sure when that happened, since I've maintained positive bp the whole time. I should be able to get it back up shortly. I build narlkeep and just put a longhouse, piers, stocks and bulletin board there, I'll build more later. Dragn also drops by asking me to build him a shop, so I do it. BTW, I built narlkeep as close to my capitol as possible, it's just a 4 hour walk away. You'll see why I did this later.
We get a letter from Fredero Sinnet, wanting to take Valerie away. I take the letter to her and we go see him at Oleg's. I can finish Bokken's quest for books while I'm at it. I swap out Octavia for Val, since Octavia's so far ahead on xp and set off for Oleg's. I buy the second volume of Transmutations and bodily poisons off Bokken, then give him all 3 volumes to finish the quest. I talk to Fredero, and Val winds up in a duel with him. I've never used Val the whole game, she only just hit level 3 from giving Bokken the books, so she has absolutely no chance to win this duel. If you've used Val and she's well equipped and level 8 with a level in stalwart defender, the duel isn't bad if you buff her up properly, though. Anyways, she loses the duel and Fredero leaves. Val now has a scar across her face from the duel. Back to the capitol to swap my party out and head over to narlkeep.
Dragn wants me to find the pieces of his daddy's armor. I also meet Shanih'a, who wants to tell her story to a scholar, so I have her tell it to Jubilost (linzi could work here too). Now she wants a shop, too, so I build her one and head back to the capitol. I spend some time raning up my advisors, right now I want to prioritize the councilor and the treasurer. At level 4 loyalty I can annex the kamelands, and level 3 economy I can fix that deal with Ioseph so I don't have to pay 25% extra on building costs.
Jaethal comes to me in a fury, claiming a Enneo the merchant knows something about her death, so we go investigate it. I also get a letter from Svetlana asking us to check up on Bokken, back at Oleg's. We head out to old sycamore first. We find a dead boar, and Amiri makes her check to figure out it was near water when killed and we get the location of a camp on the the map and hits level 8, taking her first stalwart defender level. Since I'm high enough level now, I rest at the camp surrounded by corpses in old sycamore and get ambushed by Viscount smoulderburn. At my level he's not too bad. We get a diamond and Jaethal hits level 8, another point of wisdom and searing light. I head over to the camp at the Thorn Riverbank. I disable the traps in the area and as soon as I approach the elves, they attack. I nail them with slow and cut them down. Jaethal animates one of them back as undead, and I let her keep her little pet.
At Oleg's we talk to Bokken, who's immersed in his research, and agree to try his potion on a dog that attacks us. We kill it and let him know how it went. He wants us to try it on something closer to a human, and knows of a wererat encampment nearby. While I'm here, I buy Dragn's lawbringer cuirass of Oleg. I head over the wererat camp. We cut them through them like butter and force the last survivor to drink Bokken's potion, it dies anyways. I head back to Oleg's and rest and tell Bokken what happened. He decides we need another subject and tries it himself and goes nuts and attacks. After a sound beating I make him beg for his life and leave him to it. This will pay off big time in the late game.
Back to the capitol. shaynih'a wants to talk to me back at Narlkeep, so I head there. This is why I built it so close to my capitol. Her quest is a generic delivery quest, take her message back to a merchant in my capitol and then let her know how it went. I do it and get back to my kingdom. Maegar Varn wants a trade agreement, one of the few trade agreements that's really worth the investment of BP, and Linzi wants to see me at the tavern.
So I've polished off that bottle of mead, and that means it's time to call it a night.
On the way to the swamp Witch's hut, we bump into some trolls who attack us for murdering all the trolls in Trobold. You'd think they might realize this isn't a good idea, so I have to slaughter them. At the swamp witch's hut we approach the waylaid wagon with the press. The bandits think it's an alchemical transmutation machine, causing Jubilost to face palm. I intimidate the bandits into leaving and take my press. While I'm here, and high enough level I take care of some Venomous Hodag's in a hidden area. I drop a glitterdust to expose them. There's minor loot in the clearing.
Back to managing the kingdom and levelling up my advisors. Shaynih'a wants me to talk to her in Narlkeep again, so I head there. She wants me to take a spearhead to the storyteller to have him examine it. I head back to the capitol, give it to the storyteller, who wasn't a great a hero, but pretty cowardly. I let her know the truth and get back to managing my kingdom. I annex the Kamelands into my barony, having this area in my territory will make it easier to explore, since I can still keep an eye on my kingdom and manage it while I'm out there. Jubilost has written an essay on my barony and I tell him it's trash.
I build a new town, The Shambling Steps, just across the bridge over the Gudrin river. I keep the towns with fetch quests as close to my capitol as I can to minimize the walking back and forth. I'm getting low on BP, but am flush with gold, so buy some. I remember I forgot to talk to Val, Ekun and Jaethal about their quests, and wrap them up.
I head over to Shambling steps. Varrask, an Orcish smith has pawned his tools, so I buy them back so he'll enter my service. Jubilost finally hits level 8 and takes fast bombs. An elven smith named Nazrielle wants me to build her a shop too, so I build both Varrask and Nazrielle's shops there.
After some more kingdom management a man named Remus has been spreading false prophecies. He's the old man we met on the road way back at the beginning of chapter 1. I put him to death, so I can get on with managing my kingdom, but Nazrielle's apprentice tells me the blade she was making for me has gone missing, so I head out to see Nazrielle. I've got to search the bridge for her missing assistant, so head over there. I find the apprentice fighting a wolf pack, and kill the wolves. I intimidate him into dropping the sword and take it. I might as well explore the area while I'm here. There's some wolves, tatzleworms and bears in the Northern portion of the map that I make short work of. There's a Hodag pack that we kill our way through. I come to a cave on the easter edge of the map. I know the Cragg Linnhorn's in there. I probably could take it, but it's risky at my level, so I'll come back to it when I revisit the area later. I cross the bridge and kill some bandits and explore the southern portion. There's a nest of owl bears in the southwest. I head back to Nazrielle and get rid of the cursed sword.
I think I'll head up to sorroflow, finally. Along the way, we're ambushed by cultists, with one turning into an owl bear. At sorrowflow we meet up with Kalikke and her sweet teeth. She makes me dismiss my companions and we head into the ruins together. We kill some spitting frogs and climb up the cliff without even using a rope. I explore the cave, and it's full of centipedes. I'm so glad I've got mirror image. Back outside I kill some gargoyles, and Demona hits level 9, which gives me +2 to strength from my bloodline, and I pick dimension strike dispel magic. At the cliff Kalikke changes into her sister again, and she realizes the cat's out of the bag. We decide to attack the big gargoyle and it goes down easily. she absorbs the disk and can change between sister's at will now. I head back to the capitol, and Octavia hits level 9 in a random encounter.
Back at the capitol Tristian has news about the cult, so I go meet him in the main square to talk to the cultist and get the location of their meeting. I head over there and listen to Remus, who I put to death give a speech. The high priest comes out and identifies me to them, and they go hostile so I murder them. Tristian is not happy that I want to destroy the cult and all it's members.
Back home, I put Jubilost on the project to fix the deal with Ioseph and keep ranking up. Willas Gunderson drops by asking me to go investigate Candlemere and the party he sent there that went missing. Varrask the orc smith in shambling steps wants to see me too. I head over to shambling steps, and Varrask wants me to get him metal from the Technic league camp. I head over to candlemere next and make sure Harrim's got lots of resist/protection from energy communal spells memorized. This is whisp territory. As long as I keep my protections up, they're not much of a threat. I follow the path and bump into more wisps. There's a diary on a dead body in the northwest. I go back to the brush covered area and try to use athletics to push through. outside the tower I find an ancestral dwarven shield I give to Harrim. I rest, and get attacked by wisps, Harrim goes down before I can get any protections up, and things look dicey there for a moment, but we chug potions and thunder through it. Jubilost's bombs are such an ass saver in this area. I find the crazy mage Rismel and convince him he's not a chosen one by presenting him with evidence of the deaths of his comrades and we fight Duke Dazzleflare. I leave the mage here, since he's a free gate keeper to keep an eye on the portal.
I head back up north to the Technic league encampment. There's just a few bandits here, and I grab Varrask's ore. I head back to the capitol to turn in Gunderson's quest and rest, and bluff Gunderson into thinking I blame him, and he compensates me with 3000 gold. I head over to shambling steps to turn in the Inubrix to Varrask. Varrask wants me to kill the person that killed his family. They're at a location I'll have to visit later, anyways, so I put that task off, for now. I'm going to explore the loop around the southern Kamelands, so head east from shambling steps to a cave. The cave's full of spiders and other creepy crawlies that are easy to kill with delay poison up. I stop by Dragonleaf gulch, there's just a poisonous fly trap and some minor loot here. Next stop Bald Stones. There's a nightmare on this map, so it's all the fire resistant buffs we have. It goes down pretty easy, since it can't hurt us.
I head on up north a bit to Lonely Barrow. There's some bandits that have made this place their home, and I intimidate them into leaving. I head further into the tomb and find a sarcophagus, and we make all the skill checks to examine and open it. When we do, we're attacked by skeletons. The door we came in has shut, and we need to explore other branches that have opened up to find triggers to open other doors and eventually get out. I fight through some skeletons to get to a couple of the switches in the southwest area and find a hidden room with minor loot. Having hit those 2 switches, a door opens up and we can go northwest now. I make my way past the traps and skeletons and go east. There's a pair of golems here, so I use a haste spell before attacking them. Jubilost bombs them and we beat them down, since they have super high magic resistance. I go back to the hallway since this is a dead end, and pass by some stairs, there's no reason to go down there at this point in the game, so I keep following the hallway. I come to a large chamber with a lonely warrior in it. This is basically the boss fight for the dungeon so I buff with Haste and protection from arrows, communal and rush the warrior. More skeletons enter from every angle, so I have to keep Octavia and Jubilost moving around while the rest of the party engages and kills the skeletons. We finish them off and Amiri hits level 9. Most of the loot's fairly minor, but we come across Second Execution, an undead bane great axe that'll come in super handy later.
I've still got 10 days until the attack at bald hilltop will start, so I head over Lake Silverstep. I go South and climb down the hill into a bunch of Tatzlworms, Jaethal hits level 9. I kill them and head West and talk to a nymph. She drowned some travellers, so I kill her. In the village, they apparently think a silver dragon has blessed them and is making all the fish jump on land. I spot that the merchant Brevis' wares are more like bandit's loot, and he bribes me. He also expresses some concern about Ivarr, the hunter and voice of the silver dragon. I head north from the village. I pick up a fish on the beach by some tatzlworms and come to a cave. There's some bandits in the cave, so I kill them. Harrim hits level 9 and can cast the awesome spell Boneshatter. Before I open that sarcophagus the bandits had, i put up a remove fear and Amiri equips that axe we found in the tomb. An undead cyclops pops out of the tomb, it's not that tough, and it goes down. We also found a scimitar called slicer that goes to Demona, it's +2 scimitar with runic mage blade, so if it's charged with a touch attack spell it acts as +2 better than normal. I kill my way through wolves, boars and a nymph with a couple hydras as I continue North. I notice some scratch marks near pile of fish bones, and put the fish I found on the beach on the pile, an ancient wyvern shows up, so I have to kill it. I talk to Ivarr, and inform him I'm numero uno around here, he doesn't agree, so I have to murder this fool. Turns out he's a werewolf. I kill him and explore more to the East. There's a nymph with some frogs and another wolf pack to kill. I head back to the village, and inform Aysel that his silver dragon wasn't real and it was the undead cyclops causing the fish to jump. He asks where they can get another cyclops. I then inform him Ivarr was a werewolf, and is dead. I also tell Brevis. This sets me up to be able to annex silverstep in the near future.
I stop by the ancient mine, there's another ancient wyvern here. We kill it of course. I head back to Shambling steps to see what Nazrielle wanted. she blames her apprentice for sabotaging her work, so I head to the capitol to have a word with him. He screwed with my stuff, so I kill him. I inform Nazrielle and now she can finally start being useful. Jubilost hits level 9.
We're still about a week off before the next attack on bald hilltop, so I head out west to explore a bit. I head over to the dappled quagmire. It's nothing too bad for my level here, some shambling mounds and a hydra. Octavia hits level 10. I stop by the baneful bog. I put up my buffs and get ready for a fight with some bad ass lizardmen. I open by summoning a couple fire elementals and drop a slow on them. Then a cloudkill. The king gets a hold of Jaethal, and she goes down, but we persevere. I drop by Sunny Hillock next. There's a merchant who's had a prank played on him by the fey and they stuck him on top of a pile of barrels. I ask for compensation to help him down, and just nail him with a stone. We're ambushed by treants. After dispatching them the nymph who perpetrated the prank shows up, I fail to intimidate her, and we're swarmed by red caps while she attacks us. We slaughter them and collect our compensation from the merchant. Time to head home, and the quest to deal with bald hilltop triggers on the walk back. I head to bald hilltop and put all my buffs and get ready for a fight. It's mostly beasts this time. I drop a couple fire elementals to help out. When the nymph and her smilodon like treant pop in she uses blinding beauty, which blinds all my characters in melee range. The smilodon manages to take Jaethal down, but we kill it right after, then Jubilost bombs the nymph to death and Demona hits level 10.
After some rest we get reports of magical creatures attacking the land and can invite the Embeth Travellers and hold a grand hunt. That sounds like a good idea, so I roll with it. I also now have enough military to hire another advisor, the warden. I stick Ekun in the role for now. I set off to the hunting lodge. I meet up with the other hunting parties. There's a sick servant, and I tell him to get the hell out, I don't want him infecting my guests.
We go to the hunting grounds. There's all kinds of magical beasties here to kill. I bump into the nobles from Pitax, and they're just lounging around. In the center a bunch of hydra, one of which is one of the great beasts whose heads we need. Following up the center, we bump into the Aldori sisters who are getting their butts kicked by a greater enraged owlbear, another beast whose head we need. I manage to kill the thing before it kills them. way up in the northeast is the group of Embeth travellers fighting a wyvern. I congratulate them on their skill and let them go. I've already won, so there's no sense in killing these people I invited to help me for that last head. I head back to the lodge to collect my reward for winning the hunt and the sick servant has an owlbear explode out of him. I suppress knowledge of the incident and head home for a rest.
When going over the incident at bald hilltop, I berate Tristian for slacking. I annex silverstep into the barony. I need to solve the epidemic of monsters invading the barony. Jhod wants to vivesect a patient, so I'm down with that. I side with Tristian and look in her stomach and make the diplomacy check to help. An owl bear pops out of the egg we remove. I kill it. I've now got the ability to hire a curator, so put Linzi in the slot. I've got a letter from Kesten wanting to meet Kesten on Moonday at the shrine to Lamashtu. I head over to the bridge over the Gudrin river, since there's some new events. On the way, I bump into some travellers, and convince them to get away from the sick one before an owl bear pops out of him. After we kill it, the travellers talk shit, so I execute them for treason. At the bridge, I scare the goblin prince into running and take the necklace. I meet the owner close by, and offer her the necklace back if she'll return to the city. There's a merchant gouging peasents. Using intimidate, I tax the hell out of him and make sure he doesn't abuse my peasents again.
It's time to do the Cragg Linhorn cave, that big monster I skipped earlier. We put up protection/resistance to fire. I Open with a ray of enfeeblement and hit! I throw up slow and prayer, Jubilost bombs, and Jaethal uses her judgements and bane weapons. I have my main equip a cold iron long sword, Jaethal a cold iron dagger, and Harrim a +3 cold iron sickle. It goes down fairly easily with all the cold iron weapons. I find a sweet top hat for Amiri. I head back to the bridge and an old man wants me to bring him berries to try and cure his affliction. At the end of the bridge are some bandits charging a toll, one of them claiming to be the stag lord. Screw this, he's dead, so I murder them all. To make things as embarrising as possible, Octavia uses a baleful polymorph to turn the fake stag lord into a wolf. I head over to the bush the old man told be about to get the berries. Amiri recognizes the berries are poisonous and cause immediate death. I head back to the old man. There's really no matching options for my alignment, so I tell him to go see Jhod.
I go meet Kesten at the shring of Lamashtu and ambush the cultists. We kill the cultists, but the priest runs away and we track her to the secluded lodge. I interrogate everyone and make them give me the keys to their rooms before I go upstairs. While I'm here I can pick up the lawbringer gauntlets for Dragn. Upstairs it's clear the couple's lying about him being a hunter and there's blood on the mattress the in the single woman's room. I accuse Tsanna the cook. I let the priestess go, she can worship her evil god if she wants, I step out of the lodge and back in and go upstairs and kill the stranger for his blood for Varrask. I drop by the shrine on the way back and hire Tsanna on as an advisor, a spare councilor will be handy, later. Drop by shambling steps and give Varrask his blood.
I head over to the lonely mill next. I spit on the ground and move on. This is one of the more fun events for a chaotic character. I drop by the goblin village. I murder my way through the goblin village. One tries to trick me into taming a beast, so when I get back out of the pen I murder him. They have lots of hydras and manticores in pens in the area, but they're not too tough. One goblin tries to lure me through some traps, I disable them and murder the goblin. Just south of him there's a goblin selling drastically over priced goods, so we move on. Guarding the entrance to tower I spy some goblin alchemists, so I put up protection against fire spells. Once I get past the guards, the goblins are tryiing to sacrifice one of their own to their goddess by having an owl bear eat him, the owl bear turns on it's handlers, then on us. Their sacrifice wants to join the party, his name is Nok-Nok. He's the character written by Chris Avellone. Jaethal hits level 10. I kill the rest of the goblins and Harrim and Amiri get to level 10 as well. I march home.
At the capitol I meet with the advisors to discuss the monster situation. Tristian points out most of the victims are from along the Gudrin river. Kesten comes back in informing me there's a mob outside rioting. I have them rounded up and half of them executed, that'll show those bastards. For some reason Linzi thinks this is good time to throw a party. I drop by the inn and see Elina the in keeper, most of the companion quests are fairly short and easy xp. A mysterious woman named Ntavi claims to be a friend of Ekuns and recommends a picnic in the hunting grounds. I drag his sorry but over there, and sit through his boring little party. I tell Ekun to get his shit together and to name his damn dog.
I swap out Octavia for Nok-Nok and head over to the Goblin Fort. Kesten's camp's already under attack. I murder all the prisoners so they can't be used as hosts for monsters. I find more prisoners in cages in the goblin camp and kill them too. It's overall pretty much a murder fest the whole way through without much danger, so I'm not going to go over every bit of it. I bump into that merchant that was overcharging peasents by the bridge, Tigni. I make him bribe me to free him. At the end, I let Nok-Nok do things his way and duel the chief by himself, it's one of the more fun book events in the game. My main distracts them with a bluff, Nok-Nok climbs up on the hut and pegs the chief with a wasps nest, causing him to flee. It's a big fight with a winter wolf and a conjurer. I throw up a haste and split the group, with my main Nok-Nok going for the conjurer. I also protection against cold spells. Not a hard fight when you make sure to take the summoner down first. The priest says the season of the bloom has begun, and we need to find the source of monsters, Lamashtu's womb up river. I make my way back to Kesten. Only one prisoner made it back that an owl bear bursts out of, so we kill it and talk to Kesten. I tell him about the womb, and he wants to run off there immediately. Since I'm lawful I can order him not to go. If I weren't lawful, I'd have to choose between saving him or Jhod, although there's a way around that.
The capitol's under siege. Outside I swap Nok-Nok back out for Octavia and head in. The place is a wreck with monsters running loose all over the streets. I bump into Elina, the tavern keeper, and ask if she's heard about the new levy for defense. In the southern portion of town I bump into some looters. I decide to post their heads on the wall as a warning to others. Once I've cleared all the beasts, I head back to Hyland and a great primal owl bear busts in. I open with boneshatter, slow, shocking grasp and bombs. The battle's over and I saved all my advisors.
@DrHappyAngry, I’m loving this input for the game that you’re contributing. Great stuff!
I’ll ask the important question, though. As a lover of mead myself, what was in the Horn from several nights ago? I’m lucky enough to be in an area with a decently sized mead footprint thus may be able to find it.
Back to the game, I’m amazed you’ve been able to make it this far without a reload. I’ve been deep diving into the game again myself, and even with nearly a thousand hours invested, I still get occasionally roflstomped in some battles (granted due to my own errors). Props to you!
@DrHappyAngry, I’m loving this input for the game that you’re contributing. Great stuff!
I’ll ask the important question, though. As a lover of mead myself, what was in the Horn from several nights ago? I’m lucky enough to be in an area with a decently sized mead footprint thus may be able to find it.
Back to the game, I’m amazed you’ve been able to make it this far without a reload. I’ve been deep diving into the game again myself, and even with nearly a thousand hours invested, I still get occasionally roflstomped in some battles (granted due to my own errors). Props to you!
The bottle's in the pic with the horns, it's Skyriver mead.
Sorry I haven't had time to post here, it's been a busy work week. I should finally have some more time this weekend.
For some reason, pictures in the thread aren’t showing at all on my phone. Thanks for the info! I’ll keep an eye out for it.
Weird, just checked from my phone, outside my home lan (disconnected from wifi), and they load in firefox. I don't suppose you can see what IP address happyangry.com resolves to on your phone? You might need some tools like a terminal emulator or something that can run nslookup directly from your phone to see. It should resolve to 63.231.18.145. I did notice, that for some reason, in chrome on my phone, that pic of the horns with the bottle of mead seems to load last and a bit slow, for some reason.
I realize now, I never built my town in silverstep, so I build silvershire on the west side of lake silverstep and stop there on the way to the womb, to give Mim her emerald. I don't build anything there, since Jubilost is 11 days from fixing the deal with Ioseph, and when he's done my building's will be back to normal cost without the +25% extra cost. I keep going east and make my way to the womb of Lamashtu. Inside I make sure to put up delay poison and head in, killing my way through some the goblins near the entrance. I explore the hallway south and pick up the loot, then go back to the chamber near the entrance and go east and clear that room of spiders. I find a sweet headband of wisdom +4 that goes to Harrim. I go back to the main chamber again and head North this time. We spy a trap with some spiders behind it, so we fireball the spiders to lure them past the trap and take them out so we can disable the trap. We keep exploring and kill our way through spiders, giant slugs and red caps exploring the northern portion of the map.
We eventually find a passage up north that turns south, leading to an opening, we go through and end up in a room with 2 other ways out, so go east first. There's a big mob of spiders in here, backed with swarms and a spider matriarch, and the matriarchs can be tough. I drop a slow spell on them all and Jubilost easily takes out the swarm with a bomb. After that it's pretty easy to clean up. We follow the path and climb down a ledge to another room with 3 ways to go, so I go west. There's a few waves of spiders and swarms in here, and a pair of spider matriarchs come out in the last one, so we drop a slow spell on her when she comes out, finish off the other spiders, and then take out the matriarch without much trouble. There's a belt with +4 to dex and con in here and I give it to Jubilost, just to cut down on the number of buffs he has to cast. Octavia also hits level 10. We go South from there and find a passage that we heedlessly go through. Clearly we're not in Kansas, anymore.
I spot some spiders and hit them with a fireball to get their attention, unfortunately it doesn't do any damage. I slow them, since that'll mess with those quick spiders, and take them out. So the thing about this area, is that there are actually 2 worlds, and the mist gates you between them. I pick up the bird and go through the mist and get a cutscene of the guardian of the bloom. Further to the north another cut scene playes with her being punished by some sort of powerful entity with a curse to make ruin to 1000 kingdoms.
There's nothing to do here, so I through the mist again. In this world there's a gnome at a camp in the clearing. He gives me a riddle to solve this place, and Jubilost is thrilled at being in the first world, but miffed the gnome can't tell him why the gnomes left the first world. The gnome also gives me a magic lamp that will let me pass through the mist without switching worlds when it's on. I take the opportunity to rest at the camp, equip the lantern and start clearing out the area, there's lots of magical beasts here, manticores to the east, and an owlbear by the pool to the west of the camp. There's a cut scene of the guardian of the bloom crying by the pool. There's a couple more owl bears and then a narrow path through a trapped area, with swarms that pop out as you near the traps. The swarms are no match for Jubilost's bombs and delay poison. Another cut scene of the nymph arguing with one of her underlings, wonder who that guy in the robe could be. After the cut scene we fight our way past some more spiders and come upon some mist, so I turn off the lantern and go through. There's a flower that's the cause of the monsters, as well as a bunch of wyverns. I put up some heat resistant spells and a haste and attack. I try to destroy the flower, but it just grows back, so I head through the mist to the north.
Now I'm in the other world, and pop out near the north of the map. On the twisting pathway there's a huge mob of spiders with a matriarch. I manage to hit the matriarch with a critical hit on a vampiric touch for a total of 79 damage! Back at the dais, there's no camp and no gnome, so I can tell this is a different place than the other world. East of the camp are more spiders, but more interestingly a passage to the upper level with a massive owl bear. I put up tons of buffs before I head up there. I start with a slow and ray of enfeeblement, Harrim casts boneshatter, we want to weaken this guy as much as possible. After the fight, I turn off the lamp and go through the mist to get to the camp with the gnome. This time, before I rest, I put the bird I found on the dais then rest. When I wake up, the bird's dead and just bones are left. I go to the pond, throw the bones in and take some of the water. Now I take this water back to the evil flower.
I poison the flower with the water, and it shrivels up and dies. A bunch of really tough owl bears come at me, and nearly take down Demona. After they're dead, the old gnome comes over and tells me I have to kill it in both worlds by splitting up the group. I tell him I have unfinished business, so I can prepare for the fight. I've been dreading this fight in a no reload game. Since the first group has the much tougher fight by far, I send me, Amiri, Harrim and Jubilost, Jaethal and Octavia go to the other flower. The fight starts with some dire venom wolves, I have harrim summon up a fire elemental to help since we're short on party members. A greater owl bear like treant enters the scene. I keep my party back and hit it with bombs, bone shaker and ray of enfeeblement. I want to weaken it as much as possible before I engage it. Once the fire elemental has it's attention, we hit it hard. Amiri uses her defensive stance, Demona uses vampiric touch and Harrim drops a prayer. In the end, Demona has to switch out to a cold iron long sword to be able to finish it off.
Meanwhile, Jaethal and Octavia find a big ass fly trap. I open by summoning a fire elemental, this will let Octavia sneak attack since it'll be flanked by the elemental and Jaethal. The plant goes down without any trouble, and the rest of the party enters. Monsters start to swarm in, so Harrim summons another elemental and we attack. Hmm, seems like they made this fight a lot easier in more recent versions of the game. No swarms or dweomer cats and only one spider matriarch. We easily tear through them and burn the flower. I loot the room and head back home.
On the march back, we're ambushed by a pair of elder air elementals, Octavia actually manages to baleful polymorph one. Demona hits level 11 and gets weapon focus and improved critical with scimitar. I pick dragon's breath, since I get stoneskin from my bloodline this level. I've finally got enough parts to restore the forest knight's bracers and ring of reckless courage from the storyteller as well as to hear the tale of the cyprus queen.
Comments
I mostly agree with that, but there some spells in BG that if you get them off, you win. For the first several levels, sleep will win a huge amount of fights and chaos will take you through a good chunk of BG2. Insect swarm's a fight winner, too. I don't feel like Pathfinder has any spells that make so many encounters a cake walk. Cloud kill's probably the closest, but even then there's a lot of fights where it doesn't do much or anything at all. The metamagic options in Pathfinder do give you some ways to make magic more effective against higher save enemies, especially heighten spell.
I've got to say, I didn't find the cyclops dungeon that difficult, you mainly just need enough rations and castings of restoration to get through it, and there are rations to be found in that dungeon. The only thing that's difficult in the fight with Vordakai is that he finger of deaths your weakest party member, so generally winds up nuking Octavia or Linzi, but ya those alchemist's bombs are kind of over powered at times, especially since there's a bomb that'll work on anything.
But for a fair comparison, you can't just win the fight with the dragon in the mountains (I forget his name) in P:K with just sirrocco and stinking cloud and bombs. You could just dump a pile of traps at Firkraag's feat and instantly win the fight. I always liked using that spell that gives spell resistance 20% or 40% (a priest spell I forget the name of, and can't recall the exact numbers since it's been awhile), then hit him with lower resistance until he's got no spell resistance left, throw in a greater Mailison, and you can smack him around with any spells you want. Maybe it's just that everyone hasn't worked out the finest details in the game, yet, but I haven't had as easy of a time with that dragon as Firkraag.
Maybe I just get unlucky, but I don't tend to get everyone with AOEs in P:K, like in the BG games. This is even using heightened spells and taking the spell penetration feats. Plus a lot of spell equivalents from BG to P:K now do friendly fire like sleep and confusion, so you can't just throw them down anywhere. I also found there were so many more fights in the BG games (especially the first one) where you could just drop a fireball and kill everything. I've certainly had some enemies escape from a sirocco on challenging. It definitely helps, and pins down a lot of them, but if they're tough a few can slip through.
I get to a break in the wall and can either go over it or break through it. I'm going to try and go over. I want to make this roll, so Linzi uses her inspire competence song and she makes it.
I bump into one of the stag lord's henchmen and convince him to turn himself in with the lawful option, and my main character hits level 5 and I take power attack and cleave for my feats and get bulls strength for free and pick effortless armor.
Going through the camp, the goal is to kill all the bandits and henchment without them alerting the Stag Lord to my presence. So I head east into the camp and charge the first group and take them down.
I keep moving East and do the same charge at the gate guards. They die in horrible poverty.
I go East some more and another group of 3 bandits, I catch their alchemist by themself and rush her. The barbarian comes around and really messes up Harrim before I can do anything and starts going after Demona. I get up a mirror image and shocking grasp him, and he goes down. The last one makes a run for it to warn the stag lord, but I hit him with scorching ray from Octavia and Jaethal does a boneshaker and goes down.
I heal up and go east a bit more and fight some wolves. Move some boxes and open some chests. At this point, I decide I'll play it on the safe side and walk back out to the world map and rest.
So after healing up, I head back in and pick up. There's a huge mob up ahead, so it's all buffs up and charge in again taking out the roaming guard first, then I shocking grasp the mage and chunk him. I need to be careful to damage everyone, so I can kill whoever's left fast, so my main moves to attack the furthest archer. I make sure the last one alive is the one that got hit by their own mage's color spray. So far so good, no alarms tripped. Jaethal hits level 5 and I take skill focus perception and effortless armor on her.
I go east and come to an owl bear pen. I want to make my roll to tame it so Linzi uses inspire competence again. She fails to tame it but Octavia at least is able to mangle the lock so it can't get out and hits level 5, so I can take her first level of arcane trickster. I take precise strike for her feat and burning arc and glitterdust for her spells.
I keep going east and there's another huge mob, most of our buffs are still good, but a fresh bless will help. We charge the first guy and cut our way through the rest, using a color spray to catch some of them. The last one tries to run again, but I catch him with a boneshaker and he drops.
The last of the henchmen are ahead to the East, a mage and a barbarian. I rush the mage and drop a glitter dust on them. Even though I'm lawful evil, I decide to gut the mage when he asks to join me. I finish the barbarian with a shocking grasp. Amiri levels up to level 5
We're a little low on spells, so I decide to rest before killing the stag lord. I just decide to burn my rations rather than walk all the way out.
Now it's time to fight the Stag Lord. With his henchmen all dead, the fight should easier. I didn't manage to poison the wine back at the ford, so he won't be sickened, but it shouldn't be too bad. I aproach up the stairs with my main and Amiri and Jaethal in the lead to attack the Stag Lord, Linzi and Octavia in the middle and Harrim to hold the stairs to make sure nobody can get up them. The Stag Lord drops from Linzi's hideous laughter and shocking grasp him. We proceed to beat on them. I use a glitterdust on the mob Harrim is holdin at the steps and he banes them. With the Stag Lord down, I switch Amiri and Jaethal to ranged and Demon rushes to join Harrim in holding the stairs. The remaining bandits go down pretty easily and we loot the corpses. Amiri gets the Stag Lord's helmet and Linzi his armor, Harrim hits level 5.
Inside we find the old druid (the stag lord's father) in a cell. He goes hostile as soon as we open the cell, so we murder him. I finish looting the place and am done with the fort. I still have 52 days on the timer to complete the chapter. Definitely not my fastest run, but I played on the safe side since it's no reload.
I'm going to call it a night here, because it's Friday night, and I've been drinking and don't want to get sloppy on a no reload run. I'm also getting a respect for how much of a pain in the ass it is to screenshot, documenting and format all these posts, so more power to @BelgarathMTH for doing them.
Oh ya, he had a great story, and if anyone hasn't had a run with him, I'd encourage them to take him along. The problem for me is Nok Nok is big hero and I'm just a little hero.
Next stop is ratnook hill. I've got Harrim at level 5 so this shouldn't be tough at all. I make my way up disabling the traps. Before I go into the cave, I have Harrim cast Resist fire, communal, in addition to all the other buffs we roll with. I open up with a stone call to flush out the rats. I go for a shocking grasp on one, while Linzi hits another with hideous laughter. I take some damage but Harrim keeps me in the fight. We can mostly shrug off the alchemist's bombs with resistance to fire. In the end Jaethal and Harrim boneshaker the wererats, and we're victorioius. We get some magical kukris and leather armor. No use right now, but that bombardier's vest will be handy when I pick up another character next chapter.
The last spot we haven't been to is the trail in the hills, so we head there next. We put up our buffs, and a mature leopard charges at us. These things have a crazy amount of attacks. I shocking grasp it while Amiri tanks the thing, Jaethal and Harrim shake it's bones and Octavia hit it with scorching ray. We finish it off handily. There's +1 shortbow for octavia, not that she really ever shoots her bow.
Along the way back to Oleg's I hit up Nettle's crossing to get my reward from Davik. He drop dead and leaves a +1 spear and 1800xp.
Time to head back to Oleg's and finish off this chapter. I dump the loot off first, and then let Oleg know the Stag Lord's done with.
Back in Restov it's a celebration for my ascendency to baron. I convince Esvanki Keeg to build a shrine in my capitol. I take up Ioseph on his deal for supplies. I decide I'll take Shandra from the Surtovas as my envoy, and I'm a baron now.
Kesten takes me on a tour of my barony's capitol, where the stag lord's fort was. Now it's time to start whipping this place into shape. I'm going to play the kingdom management as a populist. Since this is a no reload run, I'm going to go for choices to try and keep my kingdom's state at serene, just because it makes the rolls a bit easier.
I name the kingdom Demonia. I pick Octavia for regent, Shandra for councilor, Regongar as general and Harrim as high priest. I set Regongar to pillage the temple of elk for much needed build points, Harrim does Ezvanki's offer to get that free shrine. I've got an event for mysterious weed, so I set Shandra on it.
In my capitol, itself, I start off with a long house, barracks, shop, piers, smity wooden wall, bulletin board and stocks. The bulletin boards and stocks will make kingdom management easier, since they provide bonuses to solving events in the region. Bulletin boards require lawful, and stocks require evil.
Now Octavia and I claim the outskirts.
2 weeks later. Shandra asks who to hold a celebration for, I'm a populist, so I go for the common folk. Let them think I give a crap about them. Harrim asks to go to some Dwarven ruins.
In my capitol I build that free shrine. I found the new city of tradeguard in the outskirts, right next to Oleg's. I kick off tradeguard with a longhouse, bulletin board, stocks, wooden wall, barracks, shop, shrine and smithy. Shandra's still tied up with that mysterious weed event, so I head out to Oleg's to recruit Bokken, stopping by the storyteller and merchants in the town square. Nyrrissa stops me in the town square promising to reward me. I've got a decent sized war chest now, so blow most of my cash on a ring of plentiful hunts for Amiri, Trap Springer's gloves for Octavia and a bag of holding so we can carry more crap. We head back up to Oleg's to get Bokken to be the court Alchemist, and he accepts. Once back out of Oleg's I build his shop in tradeguard. I'm down to just 4BP. Early on, I can risk going this low on BP, but after this I need to make sure to keep a decent sized bank of build points around, in case events cause me to go into debt and threaten the kingdom's stability.
I'm so happy that you've taken up this thread after I failed utterly and got discouraged. I hope you go all the way to the end! But if you don't, I hope you will either continue as a minimal reload, or go back and get on the horse again. This game desperately needs a no-reload community, in my opinion. Well, maybe not desperately, as most P:KM players I've seen so far are infinite (I hate to say it because it is an insult term - "save-scumming") reloaders.
I really have no respect for any game (or, dare I say, any players) any more that some online hero doesn't show me can be no-reloaded, or at least minimal reloaded. I've been hopelessly corrupted for all time by the Baldur's Gate no-reload community from the old Bioware boards, who have now migrated here. If it can't be no-reloaded, it's not worth playing!
I am not proud to say that I've been influenced irrevocably into that mindset. But here it is, and here I am not wanting to play any game I can't at least minimal reload while roleplaying my chosen character.
I suspect part of it's just that all the ins and outs of the BG games have been found over the last 20 years, and this game's still pretty new. Once it's been dissected as well as the BG games have, we'll probably see a lot more hardcore no reload runs. I think I've got a decent enough knowledge of the game that I can make it through a no reload.
I skip by the Ford and the lone house. I know there are story events in those areas coming up shortly, so no need to drop by there, yet. I keep moving to the bandit camp. These bandits claim to be loyal subjects. I pick the lawful evil option, and hire them on, but make sure they understand I get the taxes they collect. I loot ther stuff and get a +1 mace for Harrim.
I probably should head back home now, since the timer on the curse at bald hill top is coming up. I head back and rest up. There's some new merchants around, too. I pick up some scrolls for octavia to learn fireball and haste from, some healing and wounding potions, and another set of boots of elven kind. I talk to the tiefling Kaessi, and she wants me to meet her at sorrowflow. I'll come back to that later.
I love the little touches your alignment has on your kingdom. I'm lawful evil so I have a set of gallows in the square.
Now we've got troll trouble and the actual start of chapter 2. Octavia hits level 6, and gets her second arcane trickster level. I just had her pick up haste and fireball from scrolls, so pick slow and stinking cloud. I head out to the ford across the skunk river. Over to the east there's some kobolds to kill. I find a crowbar in the chests at the camp.
I head up towards the center, and there's some gnomes under attack by kobolds. After we kill the first group, we bump into an old "friend" Tartuk. We fight. Linzi glitterdusts the archers to make them less effective, and we kill our way through the kobolds.
We need to help the gnomes save the cart from going over. I really want to make these checks here. Linzi already had cast heroism on Demona, but now she casts it on Amiri and uses inspire competence. Octavia casts cat's grace on Amiri, and I have her take off her armor for now. I set a crowbar under the wheels and tie a rope to the cart, first. Amiri hops over and manages to calm down the ponies, making both the mobility and nature checks (that's why I took her armor off), the boots and ring I bought her were worth it. After looking at each of options to get the cart out, I go with athletics, since it's the easiest out of the rolls to make, and we get the cart free.
Jubilost is thankful for the help and I recruit him into the party, replacing Linzi. Jubilost gets the bombardier's vest and headband of intellect we found back at ratnook hill. To the north to the left and right of the path are some more wolves and minor loot, so we finish off the area and head back to the capitol for some rest and to set Jubilost as the treasurer and start on that deal with Ioseph. Demona hits level 6 and I take enduring blade for my arcana and the web spell.
After resting. The eight legged plague has begun. I put Octavia on the event and head over to bald hilltop. Obviously we're dealing with spiders, here, so I have Harrim cast delay poison, communal on everyone and we buff up before heading into the fray. Most of the spiders go down fast, but a doom spider stealth attacks and a dryad pop in for the finale. I use slow to make them less dangerous. Demona and Harrim get stuck with the nymphs hold person spells, but Jubilost's bombs and Octavia's sneak attacks from scorching ray and snowball take them down. Back to the capitol for some rest before we start to go after the trolls.
We head over to the lone house. I go north from the starting point and come across a large group of bandits. They're probably the toughest thing on this map, at this point, so I cast my buffs, including haste and charge the leader. Octavia drops a fireball, Jubilost starts chucking bombs at their alchemist, and we finish them off and Jaethal hits level 6, I take outflank and cure moderate wounds.
I pick up the loot and move east disabling the traps as I go, then start working my way south and find Wain. I decide the traps would be doing the world a favor if they got him, and leave him to his fate. I head south towards the road and follow it east. There's a couple bandits in the road, so we kill them. Then bump into another group of three and kill them, as well. Amiri hits level 6 and she takes weapon specialization great axe. I follow the path north, disabling more traps, loot some stuff to the east of the house then talk to Bartholomew. He's got a small bag of holding for sale, so I grab that up, then talk to him about the trolls. He's interested that they're immune to fire, so we go off with him to kill one. He realizes the brand is why they're immune to fire and asks me to meet him in his house, so we head there.
In the house, we find a chest behind a hidden door with a pair of bracers of archery and a cloak of resistance. There's a troll being held captive that asks me to c kill it. I have no qualms about Bartholomew running his experiments, so let him continue his experimentation on the troll. Octavia's not happy about about it, but I tell her to stfu. I finish looting his house and hit the road.
The next stop is the ruined watchtower. Following the path south, we find a dog. We follow it to Ekun. I let him join, but send him back to the capitol and wait in ambush for the trolls. We take them out without so much as a scratch. I love mirror image. We hit a dead end with an armor amulet, so head back to the main road, then go east again. We kill some bandits and Harrim levels up. There's another wolf pack that we defeat, and then we climb down a cliff. We loot a camp and continue east killing more wolves. We bump into a group of travellers who had a prank played on them by the fae, and were stuck up on a cliff. I ask how much they'll give me to help them, of course. Then make them pay in advance, and give me more gold on top of it. Then I catch them with an outstretched cloak. I maybe evil, but I honor my agreements. We get a dwarven cog wheel from them, it'll be needed later.
I head West, back towards the main road and spy a group of trolls with a kobold thundercaller. Octavia chucks a fireball and we charge. Jubilost throws bombs at the thundercaller first, splatting him. We finish off the trolls and have a well earned rest, but get ambushed by a mob of spdiders. Harrim casts communal delay poison and we kill them all.
We keep going west and bump into a wolf pack. There's a narrow gap between us I can use as a bottlekneck to keep them from all getting to me at once. I approach, but as soon as the fight starts, I pull back just past the bottlekneck before engaging the wolves. They go down pretty easy and we find another dwarven cog wheel.
Continuing on, there's another wolf pack, this one's much tougher than the last, but there's another bottlekneck we can take advantage of. Octavia chucks a fireball and we position ourselves at the bottlekneck. Harrim drops a prayer, and we proceed to kill them one at a time. I grab the minor loot off the corpses and head back to the main road.
I spot some bandits attempting an ambush, so we kill them. Southwest there's another group of bandits, so I fight them, too.
At the base of the ruins, I throw up a delay poison and climb the steps and wind up in the middle of a spider swarm. Octavia uses slow on them and they die pretty easy.
In the tower, we find a chest. Demona makes her athletics check to bring it down, but Jaethal fails her perception check to find a key, fortunately Octavia picks the lock. Now we've got a sweet great axe that does 1d6 acid damage that goes to Amiri, as well as a breast plate +2 for Jaethal.
Up the path there's a statue of Torag. I try to put the cogs into the mechanism, but they won't go, so Harrim figures it out. There's a nice belt of physical perfection, some +1 plate mail and some cash.
I kill a troll and it's hounds, a wolf pack fighting a troll hound and work my way to the western exit. On the way out, I bump into 3 idiots who think they're going to dig up treasure under a tree. I take the lawful evil options and let them dig it up so I can take whatever they find, which as it turns out is nothing.
We head down the kobold trail, which is a book event. I have Octavia cross the river, she easily makes the mobility check. When we come across a shrine I leave it alone.
I keep going south to the kobold camp. There's not that many options dialog wise that fit lawful evil, so I wind up with the chaotic evil path and murder the buggers. Man Octavia hates me.
We pass by the swamp witch's hut and go to the monster lair. It's a wyvern so I put up delay poison with my other buffs. After the fight Octavia levels up.
Your images aren’t showing up for me with the safari browser in iOS. I just get a “filename.jpg” placeholder when I open the spoiler. Could just be my issue but I wanted to point it out.
We head back to the main path and keep following it south, and there's another branch to the east again, so we follow it and spy a couple of Hodag like treants. These suckers are tough. My buffs are still good, so we charge in. Octavia slows them and jubilost chucks bombs. I use shocking grasp on the first one. Octavia crits the second one with a scorching ray and it explodes
Continuing along the path, we bump into a couple will o wisps and use communal electricity resistance. They can't do much to use with it up, so we kill them.
Moving along, we bump into some boars and kill them. We stumble up on the witch's hut. I ring the bell. She's a little annoyed at our presence, but not hostile. She wants me to get mushrooms from the mud bowl, so we'll do that one later.
A little the south I kill the Tatzlworms and then go East. There's a well, but I'm not going to risk opening it, yet, since it's a no reload run. I keep going east and kill another wolf pack. I have Octavia fireball them, to get their attention. I use some of the bushes to bottlekneck them, so only a couple can get at me at once. Jebus, for a game called pathfinder, the pathfinding is terrible.
It's time for a well earned rest before we go further. The next day we keep moving east. I talk to a specter and just leave him be. I keep going eastward, and there's some spooky fog, so I make sure to put up delay poison. Here's the scythe tree. It's a tree, and trees hate being cut and set on fire, let's do that. It took about 3 scorching rays, a couple of bombs and the rest of us just beating on it, but it goes down.
Moving north from the scythe tree we find a plant called dizzy head, so we pick it up. We bump into some giant slugs, which means we want communal resist acid for them. We kill the first one pretty fast, but they manage to get a couple of big hits on Amiri. Funnily enough, my Magus' weapon was still charged with a shocking grasp that I didn't get to use when I killed the scythe tree. The second one manages to do massive damage to me, and gets a crit on Harrim while he's moving around trying to heal people. Things were looking dicey for a moment, but I got a series of hits, starting a crit on a shocking grasp from my main for 69 damage and a hit from Amiri and a snowball sneak attack from Octavia, we take the thing down. I search the rest of the area around them for some minor loot and more dizzy head. I show the dizzy head to the witch and she tasks me with finding some herbs. Were pretty beat up, so we rest.
I head back south of the witch's hut and cross the water with a mobility check. There's some more wisps, so we use protection electricity. I hit them with a glitter dust so they can't go invisible. There's a dead body there, clearly magical. Screw this, I loot the corpse. They tell me they'll find me. Oh noes!
I head back to the main path and go on the path west I passed by earlier. I kill some more tatzlworms and Jubilost finally hits level 6 and I grab the crucial infusion discovery. Now he can cast shield on Amiri and Jaethal. I say hi to the ghoul on the path and keep moving. There's a swampy area with some gloomberries and more giant slugs, so it's acid resistance time. I use haste and chuck a fireball at them before rushing and slowing them. We actually cut through the 3 of them much more easier than the 2 we bumped into earlier.
I head back to get my reward from the dryad and satyr for killing the scythe tree and leave the area. I'll come back later.
Next stop the Hodag Lair for Amiri's quest. It's nothing too bad, I just make sure to buff up and have delay poison on everyone. It doesn't even scratch us.
On the way back to the capitol, we get an event with a kobold conducting a ritual on some trolls. I creep up and read their body language to figure out what's going on, and manage to push a troll into the fire. I still have 2 trolls and a kobold flame shaman to deal with now, and no buffs up. I toss up a mirror image on Demona before she heads in, and slow the trolls, while jubilost bombs the shaman and the rest attack the trolls. The flame shaman had a cloak of resistance +2, which Demona puts on.
Back home, the spider invasion has been completely dealt with, I get some cash for that and check up on things in my kingdom. My deal with Ioseph is done and I get 500BP, but now all buildings cost 25% more. That's part of the reason why I built so much right off the bat in my first couple of towns. These BP will come in real handy in a bit, though, so I think it was totally worth it. We can fix the deal later on, anyway. I dump off the loot with the storyteller and the merchants. I Finally have enough to buy Amiri that adamantine heavy armor +1. I also try to redistribute the loot, so everyone has some OK gear, even the party members I don't use.
Back on the road I head over to the Verdant chambers, but get an unavoidable event on the road. I put all my buffs up and head in. Remember that corpse I defiled in the swamp witch's hut area? well the fey found me and send a few waves of monsters at me. First frogs, then tatzlworms, and finally a poisonous shambling mound.
I get to the verdant chambers, rest and dismiss the rest of my party, since I have to go see the nymph alone. I cast my buffs and head in. Of course it's a trap and the nymph has a bunch of monsters. I just chug a potion of invisibility and move to the wall. With the help of a bull's strength spell, I manage to climb up after a couple tries. I follow the path the red cap walks, and climb down a tree and kill a couple of wolves. There's a corpse with a couple more potions of invisibility, and part 3 of transmutations of the body, I'll need that for a sidequest later.
I get the hell out of the verdant chambers and Demona hits level 7 and takes cleaving finish for a feat, snowball, haste and vampiric touch. She can also wear medium armor and cast spells. So I think instead of wasting the couple days to summon up my party, I'm going to do something really risky and try to walk back home on my own. I've got potions of invisibility if I get attacked on the road. I make my way back with a stop by the overgrown pool, and hand in those feathers from the nymph's cousin. My main was falling behind Octavia quite a bit, so thought I'd soak up some more XP. I make it back to the capitol, all by myself, without getting attacked.
A snooty noble from Pitax is there. I tell him if he doesn't screw off I'll have him executed. A mother is missing her child and wants me to find him. I tell her I don't have time, but I'll do the quest anyways, since I need the xp. Bokken gives me an acerbic ring, Jubilost'll love that. Bokken also wants to talk to me back at Oleg's. I'll head there later. I make sure all my events are being handled, dump any loot and hit the road with my party again.
I head back into the swamp to find the kid and hit an event while walking. That nobole from Pitax is being attacked by trolls. We kill the trolls and let Stefano go, but warn him we'll probably be enemies the next time we meet.
I go by the troll clearing, and wait, and wait and wait. I eventually get some supplies. I rest and head north to the lizardfolk village. Outside I talk to an old lizardfold shaman, and he informs me the missing child is here. I head towards the gate and intimidate them into taking me to their leader. I take the evil route and threaten him and his tribe, so he says if the great ancestor will go with me, then I can take him. Octavia uses cat's grace, a potion of heroism and ranged legerdemain (since you get an unlimited number of attemptes) to pick the lock in the lizard chiefs hut. The spirit just hands the child over to me because it feeds on fear, and my threatening the lizard folk fed it plenty.
I finish looting the camp and exit through the gate and start heading east. I kill some monitor lizards, and circle around the camp walls, picking up some minor loot along the way. When I get to the western edge of the map, there's a venom hodag hiding and it attacks me. We kill it without too much trouble and find a cloak of stealth hidden near it.
I cross the river and come to the wolf lair, so we explore it. It's not too big of a deal, but the more wolves will enter from every direction during the fight and 3 alpha wolfs spawn out of the caves afte killing all the wolves. The caves are not explorable and there isn't much else here, save for a handful more wolves in the southwest, so we hit the road again.
Off to the mud bowl to pick some mushrooms for the witch. When we enter the area some of the party are nauseated. I wait for the effect to end on Harrim and throw up delay poison. Then cast my buffs and get ready for a fight. I hit it with a slow and beat on it and bomb it. Demona finishes him with a crit on a frigid touch for a grand total of 47 damage. I pick up a bunch of those black rattle caps and some minor loot and head back home to the capitol.
Kesten informs me Bartholomew's in trouble with trolls, so I rest, dump my loot and get ready to head there. So the area's swarming with trolls. One of the worst groups is in the northwest of the map, same spot where the bandits and the stoned rock troll were at. Harrim hits level 7. We find some spiders fighting trolls in the middle of the map. After killing all the trolls on the map, we head into the mage's house and buff up with a hase spell. With this fight you have to act fast, as well as be ready to heal the mage if you want to save him. Unfortunately it doesn't happen. He dies before he can get any buffs up and before I can even take any action after taking a 64 point critical hit. Damn, I wanted him as an advisor. I guess I'll have to settle for Valerie being my diplomat, later. Oh well, at least he had a headband of intellect +4, which goes to Octavia, and a cloak of resistance +2 that I give to Harrim.
I head back to the swamp witch's hut to finish the area off before I go to end the trolls. First I'm going to try and harves that mud leaf I left earlier. I use owl's wisdom and Jaethal casts heroism on Amiri. Damn, she only harvests 2, so I can't complete the quest. I head back to the witch's hut to at least turn in the mushrooms from the mud bowl. She'll at least trade with me now, so I pick up some potions for future battles. I head down to the well and buff up with resist/protection from electricity communal before opening the well. At least Harrim makes his will check opening it. There's a bunch of ancient will o wisps inside. I have octavia use glitter dust on a couple of them. Jubilosts bombs work great on these things, too. It's not much of a fight, they're hard to hit, but can't hurt me with the buff up. I pick up the coins and head back to the specter. I put the coins on the alter to get rid of the annoying specter. I head back to the ghoul and tell him what I did, and he goes hostile. He's no big deal, though. I tell the witch about what I've done, she asks who I think that's at fault here (none of the answers really matter), then head back to the fey in the northeast. I tell them Elga's moved back and they want me to take a letter to her, so I take it to the swamp witch and leave the area.
I finally head over to the old Dwarven fortress. Harrim and Jubilost both wanted to come here, so I can settle up their quests. Jubilost pays me 1800 gold for bringing him here. We bump into a polite troll, but I don't tolerate them in my kingdom, so I attack. He's not too tough and we bring him down. We kill our way through some kobolds, a troll with some hounds and more kobolds making our way to the northwest. We take a key off one of the kobolds and go up the hill and over the wall, so we can launch a surprise attack on these fools. Octavia hits level 8 from disabling a trap, I bump her intelligence and take obsidian flow and shout. I get ready with a haste and charge the trolls and hounds. When the boss troll hound comes out, I drop a slow on him. I explode the greater trollhound with a shocking grasp crit for 63 damage! The rest of the trolls aren't a big deal. Harrim caught bloodfire fever from the troll hound, but just uses treat affliction to fix it. He's also depressing about the state of the place. I head east walking on the ramparts. There's a kobold and a troll further on. After we dispatch them, another branded troll tries to come from behind, but he's no match. I pick up some loot on the ramparts, and there's a sweet piece of armor on the southwest corner with a trap in front of it. Octavia handles it and my main has a really sweet mithril breast plate +2, the heart of valor. I head up the entrance to the fort and rest. We get ambushed by kobolds twice while hunting, which turns out to be a blessing, Jubilost finally hits level 7. He already knows haste and cure serious wounds from scrolls, so I take heroism.
I head back in and take the northeast stairs to get to the lower levels. I kill the kobolds and trollhounds and go northeast and find a dwarven rune that Harrim shows some interest in. I keep following the path northwest and find a hidden room with a mimic in it. They're no big deal and we loot the room and continue west. After more traps and trolls we come to a lair with kobold shaman and a bunch of spiders. Octavia uses a fireball and we bottlekneck them in the narrow hall and loot the room. The only way to go now is southwest. I follow a branch south and enter a room with some kobolds trying to teach, and the trolls and kobolds go hostile, so we murder them. This is the room those 2 dials open, and the solution is right next to the sun and moon. I loot the chest for a couple grand and armor only a paladin can use, but will fetch a nice price back at town. I go back the way I came and keep following the hallway southwest and then south for some more more loot. Demona hits level 8 and takes a point of strength and stinking cloud. I head back to the door across the hall from the room with the sun and moon statues and kill some more trolls. We bump into a large group of arguing kobolds and trolls and take them out. They have a whipe that Octavia takes a shine to, but I keep it for myself. I keep following the path the only way I can still explore past some more traps and trolls.
I rest in the main room before the big boss fight. It's every buff I've got. I talk to Tartuk and Hargulka, but a fight is inevetible. I open with a prayer and slow spells, Amiri tanks Hargulka and Demona goes for a shocking grasp while Jubilost bombos him. Harrim has to keep healing Amiri while she chugs potions, but she still goes down right before Hargulka. Tartuk is nothing without him and we show him no mercy. They've got some awesome gear, headband of charisma +4 for Demona, a belt with +4 to strength and con for Amiri, ring of luck +1 for Demona, Mallet of Woe (+3 heavy mace with freedom of movement) for Harrim, another ring of protection +2 that goes to Amiri. I loot the rest of the place, and Harrim takes interest in the forge, then smashes it for his amusement. We finish looting the place and leave.
The remaining kobolds outside look to me in fear, so I murder them, there really should have been a lawful evil option here. After I finish them off I leave and that's the end of that chapter.
I head back to the capitol to celebrate our victory over the trolls. I finally have some time to devote to managing my kingdom. I'm not going to get too into that, since I'd expect it doesn't make for exciting reading, so I'm just going to give a vauge outline of what I'm doing for the minor stuff. Oleg doesn't want to pay his taxes, so I send guards with him to take what's mine. I claim the souther narlmarches which costs a whopping 400bp. Glad I took the deal with Ioseph. Hmm for some reason it thinks I was at negative bp and my kingdom hit worried, not sure when that happened, since I've maintained positive bp the whole time. I should be able to get it back up shortly. I build narlkeep and just put a longhouse, piers, stocks and bulletin board there, I'll build more later. Dragn also drops by asking me to build him a shop, so I do it. BTW, I built narlkeep as close to my capitol as possible, it's just a 4 hour walk away. You'll see why I did this later.
We get a letter from Fredero Sinnet, wanting to take Valerie away. I take the letter to her and we go see him at Oleg's. I can finish Bokken's quest for books while I'm at it. I swap out Octavia for Val, since Octavia's so far ahead on xp and set off for Oleg's. I buy the second volume of Transmutations and bodily poisons off Bokken, then give him all 3 volumes to finish the quest. I talk to Fredero, and Val winds up in a duel with him. I've never used Val the whole game, she only just hit level 3 from giving Bokken the books, so she has absolutely no chance to win this duel. If you've used Val and she's well equipped and level 8 with a level in stalwart defender, the duel isn't bad if you buff her up properly, though. Anyways, she loses the duel and Fredero leaves. Val now has a scar across her face from the duel. Back to the capitol to swap my party out and head over to narlkeep.
Dragn wants me to find the pieces of his daddy's armor. I also meet Shanih'a, who wants to tell her story to a scholar, so I have her tell it to Jubilost (linzi could work here too). Now she wants a shop, too, so I build her one and head back to the capitol. I spend some time raning up my advisors, right now I want to prioritize the councilor and the treasurer. At level 4 loyalty I can annex the kamelands, and level 3 economy I can fix that deal with Ioseph so I don't have to pay 25% extra on building costs.
Jaethal comes to me in a fury, claiming a Enneo the merchant knows something about her death, so we go investigate it. I also get a letter from Svetlana asking us to check up on Bokken, back at Oleg's. We head out to old sycamore first. We find a dead boar, and Amiri makes her check to figure out it was near water when killed and we get the location of a camp on the the map and hits level 8, taking her first stalwart defender level. Since I'm high enough level now, I rest at the camp surrounded by corpses in old sycamore and get ambushed by Viscount smoulderburn. At my level he's not too bad. We get a diamond and Jaethal hits level 8, another point of wisdom and searing light. I head over to the camp at the Thorn Riverbank. I disable the traps in the area and as soon as I approach the elves, they attack. I nail them with slow and cut them down. Jaethal animates one of them back as undead, and I let her keep her little pet.
At Oleg's we talk to Bokken, who's immersed in his research, and agree to try his potion on a dog that attacks us. We kill it and let him know how it went. He wants us to try it on something closer to a human, and knows of a wererat encampment nearby. While I'm here, I buy Dragn's lawbringer cuirass of Oleg. I head over the wererat camp. We cut them through them like butter and force the last survivor to drink Bokken's potion, it dies anyways. I head back to Oleg's and rest and tell Bokken what happened. He decides we need another subject and tries it himself and goes nuts and attacks. After a sound beating I make him beg for his life and leave him to it. This will pay off big time in the late game.
Back to the capitol. shaynih'a wants to talk to me back at Narlkeep, so I head there. This is why I built it so close to my capitol. Her quest is a generic delivery quest, take her message back to a merchant in my capitol and then let her know how it went. I do it and get back to my kingdom. Maegar Varn wants a trade agreement, one of the few trade agreements that's really worth the investment of BP, and Linzi wants to see me at the tavern.
So I've polished off that bottle of mead, and that means it's time to call it a night.
Back to managing the kingdom and levelling up my advisors. Shaynih'a wants me to talk to her in Narlkeep again, so I head there. She wants me to take a spearhead to the storyteller to have him examine it. I head back to the capitol, give it to the storyteller, who wasn't a great a hero, but pretty cowardly. I let her know the truth and get back to managing my kingdom. I annex the Kamelands into my barony, having this area in my territory will make it easier to explore, since I can still keep an eye on my kingdom and manage it while I'm out there. Jubilost has written an essay on my barony and I tell him it's trash.
I build a new town, The Shambling Steps, just across the bridge over the Gudrin river. I keep the towns with fetch quests as close to my capitol as I can to minimize the walking back and forth. I'm getting low on BP, but am flush with gold, so buy some. I remember I forgot to talk to Val, Ekun and Jaethal about their quests, and wrap them up.
I head over to Shambling steps. Varrask, an Orcish smith has pawned his tools, so I buy them back so he'll enter my service. Jubilost finally hits level 8 and takes fast bombs. An elven smith named Nazrielle wants me to build her a shop too, so I build both Varrask and Nazrielle's shops there.
After some more kingdom management a man named Remus has been spreading false prophecies. He's the old man we met on the road way back at the beginning of chapter 1. I put him to death, so I can get on with managing my kingdom, but Nazrielle's apprentice tells me the blade she was making for me has gone missing, so I head out to see Nazrielle. I've got to search the bridge for her missing assistant, so head over there. I find the apprentice fighting a wolf pack, and kill the wolves. I intimidate him into dropping the sword and take it. I might as well explore the area while I'm here. There's some wolves, tatzleworms and bears in the Northern portion of the map that I make short work of. There's a Hodag pack that we kill our way through. I come to a cave on the easter edge of the map. I know the Cragg Linnhorn's in there. I probably could take it, but it's risky at my level, so I'll come back to it when I revisit the area later. I cross the bridge and kill some bandits and explore the southern portion. There's a nest of owl bears in the southwest. I head back to Nazrielle and get rid of the cursed sword.
I think I'll head up to sorroflow, finally. Along the way, we're ambushed by cultists, with one turning into an owl bear. At sorrowflow we meet up with Kalikke and her sweet teeth. She makes me dismiss my companions and we head into the ruins together. We kill some spitting frogs and climb up the cliff without even using a rope. I explore the cave, and it's full of centipedes. I'm so glad I've got mirror image. Back outside I kill some gargoyles, and Demona hits level 9, which gives me +2 to strength from my bloodline, and I pick dimension strike dispel magic. At the cliff Kalikke changes into her sister again, and she realizes the cat's out of the bag. We decide to attack the big gargoyle and it goes down easily. she absorbs the disk and can change between sister's at will now. I head back to the capitol, and Octavia hits level 9 in a random encounter.
Back at the capitol Tristian has news about the cult, so I go meet him in the main square to talk to the cultist and get the location of their meeting. I head over there and listen to Remus, who I put to death give a speech. The high priest comes out and identifies me to them, and they go hostile so I murder them. Tristian is not happy that I want to destroy the cult and all it's members.
Back home, I put Jubilost on the project to fix the deal with Ioseph and keep ranking up. Willas Gunderson drops by asking me to go investigate Candlemere and the party he sent there that went missing. Varrask the orc smith in shambling steps wants to see me too. I head over to shambling steps, and Varrask wants me to get him metal from the Technic league camp. I head over to candlemere next and make sure Harrim's got lots of resist/protection from energy communal spells memorized. This is whisp territory. As long as I keep my protections up, they're not much of a threat. I follow the path and bump into more wisps. There's a diary on a dead body in the northwest. I go back to the brush covered area and try to use athletics to push through. outside the tower I find an ancestral dwarven shield I give to Harrim. I rest, and get attacked by wisps, Harrim goes down before I can get any protections up, and things look dicey there for a moment, but we chug potions and thunder through it. Jubilost's bombs are such an ass saver in this area. I find the crazy mage Rismel and convince him he's not a chosen one by presenting him with evidence of the deaths of his comrades and we fight Duke Dazzleflare. I leave the mage here, since he's a free gate keeper to keep an eye on the portal.
I head back up north to the Technic league encampment. There's just a few bandits here, and I grab Varrask's ore. I head back to the capitol to turn in Gunderson's quest and rest, and bluff Gunderson into thinking I blame him, and he compensates me with 3000 gold. I head over to shambling steps to turn in the Inubrix to Varrask. Varrask wants me to kill the person that killed his family. They're at a location I'll have to visit later, anyways, so I put that task off, for now. I'm going to explore the loop around the southern Kamelands, so head east from shambling steps to a cave. The cave's full of spiders and other creepy crawlies that are easy to kill with delay poison up. I stop by Dragonleaf gulch, there's just a poisonous fly trap and some minor loot here. Next stop Bald Stones. There's a nightmare on this map, so it's all the fire resistant buffs we have. It goes down pretty easy, since it can't hurt us.
I head on up north a bit to Lonely Barrow. There's some bandits that have made this place their home, and I intimidate them into leaving. I head further into the tomb and find a sarcophagus, and we make all the skill checks to examine and open it. When we do, we're attacked by skeletons. The door we came in has shut, and we need to explore other branches that have opened up to find triggers to open other doors and eventually get out. I fight through some skeletons to get to a couple of the switches in the southwest area and find a hidden room with minor loot. Having hit those 2 switches, a door opens up and we can go northwest now. I make my way past the traps and skeletons and go east. There's a pair of golems here, so I use a haste spell before attacking them. Jubilost bombs them and we beat them down, since they have super high magic resistance. I go back to the hallway since this is a dead end, and pass by some stairs, there's no reason to go down there at this point in the game, so I keep following the hallway. I come to a large chamber with a lonely warrior in it. This is basically the boss fight for the dungeon so I buff with Haste and protection from arrows, communal and rush the warrior. More skeletons enter from every angle, so I have to keep Octavia and Jubilost moving around while the rest of the party engages and kills the skeletons. We finish them off and Amiri hits level 9. Most of the loot's fairly minor, but we come across Second Execution, an undead bane great axe that'll come in super handy later.
I've still got 10 days until the attack at bald hilltop will start, so I head over Lake Silverstep. I go South and climb down the hill into a bunch of Tatzlworms, Jaethal hits level 9. I kill them and head West and talk to a nymph. She drowned some travellers, so I kill her. In the village, they apparently think a silver dragon has blessed them and is making all the fish jump on land. I spot that the merchant Brevis' wares are more like bandit's loot, and he bribes me. He also expresses some concern about Ivarr, the hunter and voice of the silver dragon. I head north from the village. I pick up a fish on the beach by some tatzlworms and come to a cave. There's some bandits in the cave, so I kill them. Harrim hits level 9 and can cast the awesome spell Boneshatter. Before I open that sarcophagus the bandits had, i put up a remove fear and Amiri equips that axe we found in the tomb. An undead cyclops pops out of the tomb, it's not that tough, and it goes down. We also found a scimitar called slicer that goes to Demona, it's +2 scimitar with runic mage blade, so if it's charged with a touch attack spell it acts as +2 better than normal. I kill my way through wolves, boars and a nymph with a couple hydras as I continue North. I notice some scratch marks near pile of fish bones, and put the fish I found on the beach on the pile, an ancient wyvern shows up, so I have to kill it. I talk to Ivarr, and inform him I'm numero uno around here, he doesn't agree, so I have to murder this fool. Turns out he's a werewolf. I kill him and explore more to the East. There's a nymph with some frogs and another wolf pack to kill. I head back to the village, and inform Aysel that his silver dragon wasn't real and it was the undead cyclops causing the fish to jump. He asks where they can get another cyclops. I then inform him Ivarr was a werewolf, and is dead. I also tell Brevis. This sets me up to be able to annex silverstep in the near future.
I stop by the ancient mine, there's another ancient wyvern here. We kill it of course. I head back to Shambling steps to see what Nazrielle wanted. she blames her apprentice for sabotaging her work, so I head to the capitol to have a word with him. He screwed with my stuff, so I kill him. I inform Nazrielle and now she can finally start being useful. Jubilost hits level 9.
After some rest we get reports of magical creatures attacking the land and can invite the Embeth Travellers and hold a grand hunt. That sounds like a good idea, so I roll with it. I also now have enough military to hire another advisor, the warden. I stick Ekun in the role for now. I set off to the hunting lodge. I meet up with the other hunting parties. There's a sick servant, and I tell him to get the hell out, I don't want him infecting my guests.
We go to the hunting grounds. There's all kinds of magical beasties here to kill. I bump into the nobles from Pitax, and they're just lounging around. In the center a bunch of hydra, one of which is one of the great beasts whose heads we need. Following up the center, we bump into the Aldori sisters who are getting their butts kicked by a greater enraged owlbear, another beast whose head we need. I manage to kill the thing before it kills them. way up in the northeast is the group of Embeth travellers fighting a wyvern. I congratulate them on their skill and let them go. I've already won, so there's no sense in killing these people I invited to help me for that last head. I head back to the lodge to collect my reward for winning the hunt and the sick servant has an owlbear explode out of him. I suppress knowledge of the incident and head home for a rest.
When going over the incident at bald hilltop, I berate Tristian for slacking. I annex silverstep into the barony. I need to solve the epidemic of monsters invading the barony. Jhod wants to vivesect a patient, so I'm down with that. I side with Tristian and look in her stomach and make the diplomacy check to help. An owl bear pops out of the egg we remove. I kill it. I've now got the ability to hire a curator, so put Linzi in the slot. I've got a letter from Kesten wanting to meet Kesten on Moonday at the shrine to Lamashtu. I head over to the bridge over the Gudrin river, since there's some new events. On the way, I bump into some travellers, and convince them to get away from the sick one before an owl bear pops out of him. After we kill it, the travellers talk shit, so I execute them for treason. At the bridge, I scare the goblin prince into running and take the necklace. I meet the owner close by, and offer her the necklace back if she'll return to the city. There's a merchant gouging peasents. Using intimidate, I tax the hell out of him and make sure he doesn't abuse my peasents again.
It's time to do the Cragg Linhorn cave, that big monster I skipped earlier. We put up protection/resistance to fire. I Open with a ray of enfeeblement and hit! I throw up slow and prayer, Jubilost bombs, and Jaethal uses her judgements and bane weapons. I have my main equip a cold iron long sword, Jaethal a cold iron dagger, and Harrim a +3 cold iron sickle. It goes down fairly easily with all the cold iron weapons. I find a sweet top hat for Amiri. I head back to the bridge and an old man wants me to bring him berries to try and cure his affliction. At the end of the bridge are some bandits charging a toll, one of them claiming to be the stag lord. Screw this, he's dead, so I murder them all. To make things as embarrising as possible, Octavia uses a baleful polymorph to turn the fake stag lord into a wolf. I head over to the bush the old man told be about to get the berries. Amiri recognizes the berries are poisonous and cause immediate death. I head back to the old man. There's really no matching options for my alignment, so I tell him to go see Jhod.
I go meet Kesten at the shring of Lamashtu and ambush the cultists. We kill the cultists, but the priest runs away and we track her to the secluded lodge. I interrogate everyone and make them give me the keys to their rooms before I go upstairs. While I'm here I can pick up the lawbringer gauntlets for Dragn. Upstairs it's clear the couple's lying about him being a hunter and there's blood on the mattress the in the single woman's room. I accuse Tsanna the cook. I let the priestess go, she can worship her evil god if she wants, I step out of the lodge and back in and go upstairs and kill the stranger for his blood for Varrask. I drop by the shrine on the way back and hire Tsanna on as an advisor, a spare councilor will be handy, later. Drop by shambling steps and give Varrask his blood.
At the capitol I meet with the advisors to discuss the monster situation. Tristian points out most of the victims are from along the Gudrin river. Kesten comes back in informing me there's a mob outside rioting. I have them rounded up and half of them executed, that'll show those bastards. For some reason Linzi thinks this is good time to throw a party. I drop by the inn and see Elina the in keeper, most of the companion quests are fairly short and easy xp. A mysterious woman named Ntavi claims to be a friend of Ekuns and recommends a picnic in the hunting grounds. I drag his sorry but over there, and sit through his boring little party. I tell Ekun to get his shit together and to name his damn dog.
I swap out Octavia for Nok-Nok and head over to the Goblin Fort. Kesten's camp's already under attack. I murder all the prisoners so they can't be used as hosts for monsters. I find more prisoners in cages in the goblin camp and kill them too. It's overall pretty much a murder fest the whole way through without much danger, so I'm not going to go over every bit of it. I bump into that merchant that was overcharging peasents by the bridge, Tigni. I make him bribe me to free him. At the end, I let Nok-Nok do things his way and duel the chief by himself, it's one of the more fun book events in the game. My main distracts them with a bluff, Nok-Nok climbs up on the hut and pegs the chief with a wasps nest, causing him to flee. It's a big fight with a winter wolf and a conjurer. I throw up a haste and split the group, with my main Nok-Nok going for the conjurer. I also protection against cold spells. Not a hard fight when you make sure to take the summoner down first. The priest says the season of the bloom has begun, and we need to find the source of monsters, Lamashtu's womb up river. I make my way back to Kesten. Only one prisoner made it back that an owl bear bursts out of, so we kill it and talk to Kesten. I tell him about the womb, and he wants to run off there immediately. Since I'm lawful I can order him not to go. If I weren't lawful, I'd have to choose between saving him or Jhod, although there's a way around that.
The capitol's under siege. Outside I swap Nok-Nok back out for Octavia and head in. The place is a wreck with monsters running loose all over the streets. I bump into Elina, the tavern keeper, and ask if she's heard about the new levy for defense. In the southern portion of town I bump into some looters. I decide to post their heads on the wall as a warning to others. Once I've cleared all the beasts, I head back to Hyland and a great primal owl bear busts in. I open with boneshatter, slow, shocking grasp and bombs. The battle's over and I saved all my advisors.
By the way, I'm still at zero reloads.
I’ll ask the important question, though. As a lover of mead myself, what was in the Horn from several nights ago? I’m lucky enough to be in an area with a decently sized mead footprint thus may be able to find it.
Back to the game, I’m amazed you’ve been able to make it this far without a reload. I’ve been deep diving into the game again myself, and even with nearly a thousand hours invested, I still get occasionally roflstomped in some battles (granted due to my own errors). Props to you!
The bottle's in the pic with the horns, it's Skyriver mead.
Sorry I haven't had time to post here, it's been a busy work week. I should finally have some more time this weekend.
Weird, just checked from my phone, outside my home lan (disconnected from wifi), and they load in firefox. I don't suppose you can see what IP address happyangry.com resolves to on your phone? You might need some tools like a terminal emulator or something that can run nslookup directly from your phone to see. It should resolve to 63.231.18.145. I did notice, that for some reason, in chrome on my phone, that pic of the horns with the bottle of mead seems to load last and a bit slow, for some reason.
I realize now, I never built my town in silverstep, so I build silvershire on the west side of lake silverstep and stop there on the way to the womb, to give Mim her emerald. I don't build anything there, since Jubilost is 11 days from fixing the deal with Ioseph, and when he's done my building's will be back to normal cost without the +25% extra cost. I keep going east and make my way to the womb of Lamashtu. Inside I make sure to put up delay poison and head in, killing my way through some the goblins near the entrance. I explore the hallway south and pick up the loot, then go back to the chamber near the entrance and go east and clear that room of spiders. I find a sweet headband of wisdom +4 that goes to Harrim. I go back to the main chamber again and head North this time. We spy a trap with some spiders behind it, so we fireball the spiders to lure them past the trap and take them out so we can disable the trap. We keep exploring and kill our way through spiders, giant slugs and red caps exploring the northern portion of the map.
We eventually find a passage up north that turns south, leading to an opening, we go through and end up in a room with 2 other ways out, so go east first. There's a big mob of spiders in here, backed with swarms and a spider matriarch, and the matriarchs can be tough. I drop a slow spell on them all and Jubilost easily takes out the swarm with a bomb. After that it's pretty easy to clean up. We follow the path and climb down a ledge to another room with 3 ways to go, so I go west. There's a few waves of spiders and swarms in here, and a pair of spider matriarchs come out in the last one, so we drop a slow spell on her when she comes out, finish off the other spiders, and then take out the matriarch without much trouble. There's a belt with +4 to dex and con in here and I give it to Jubilost, just to cut down on the number of buffs he has to cast. Octavia also hits level 10. We go South from there and find a passage that we heedlessly go through. Clearly we're not in Kansas, anymore.
There's nothing to do here, so I through the mist again. In this world there's a gnome at a camp in the clearing. He gives me a riddle to solve this place, and Jubilost is thrilled at being in the first world, but miffed the gnome can't tell him why the gnomes left the first world. The gnome also gives me a magic lamp that will let me pass through the mist without switching worlds when it's on. I take the opportunity to rest at the camp, equip the lantern and start clearing out the area, there's lots of magical beasts here, manticores to the east, and an owlbear by the pool to the west of the camp. There's a cut scene of the guardian of the bloom crying by the pool. There's a couple more owl bears and then a narrow path through a trapped area, with swarms that pop out as you near the traps. The swarms are no match for Jubilost's bombs and delay poison. Another cut scene of the nymph arguing with one of her underlings, wonder who that guy in the robe could be. After the cut scene we fight our way past some more spiders and come upon some mist, so I turn off the lantern and go through. There's a flower that's the cause of the monsters, as well as a bunch of wyverns. I put up some heat resistant spells and a haste and attack. I try to destroy the flower, but it just grows back, so I head through the mist to the north.
Now I'm in the other world, and pop out near the north of the map. On the twisting pathway there's a huge mob of spiders with a matriarch. I manage to hit the matriarch with a critical hit on a vampiric touch for a total of 79 damage! Back at the dais, there's no camp and no gnome, so I can tell this is a different place than the other world. East of the camp are more spiders, but more interestingly a passage to the upper level with a massive owl bear. I put up tons of buffs before I head up there. I start with a slow and ray of enfeeblement, Harrim casts boneshatter, we want to weaken this guy as much as possible. After the fight, I turn off the lamp and go through the mist to get to the camp with the gnome. This time, before I rest, I put the bird I found on the dais then rest. When I wake up, the bird's dead and just bones are left. I go to the pond, throw the bones in and take some of the water. Now I take this water back to the evil flower.
I poison the flower with the water, and it shrivels up and dies. A bunch of really tough owl bears come at me, and nearly take down Demona. After they're dead, the old gnome comes over and tells me I have to kill it in both worlds by splitting up the group. I tell him I have unfinished business, so I can prepare for the fight. I've been dreading this fight in a no reload game. Since the first group has the much tougher fight by far, I send me, Amiri, Harrim and Jubilost, Jaethal and Octavia go to the other flower. The fight starts with some dire venom wolves, I have harrim summon up a fire elemental to help since we're short on party members. A greater owl bear like treant enters the scene. I keep my party back and hit it with bombs, bone shaker and ray of enfeeblement. I want to weaken it as much as possible before I engage it. Once the fire elemental has it's attention, we hit it hard. Amiri uses her defensive stance, Demona uses vampiric touch and Harrim drops a prayer. In the end, Demona has to switch out to a cold iron long sword to be able to finish it off.
Meanwhile, Jaethal and Octavia find a big ass fly trap. I open by summoning a fire elemental, this will let Octavia sneak attack since it'll be flanked by the elemental and Jaethal. The plant goes down without any trouble, and the rest of the party enters. Monsters start to swarm in, so Harrim summons another elemental and we attack. Hmm, seems like they made this fight a lot easier in more recent versions of the game. No swarms or dweomer cats and only one spider matriarch. We easily tear through them and burn the flower. I loot the room and head back home.
On the march back, we're ambushed by a pair of elder air elementals, Octavia actually manages to baleful polymorph one. Demona hits level 11 and gets weapon focus and improved critical with scimitar. I pick dragon's breath, since I get stoneskin from my bloodline this level. I've finally got enough parts to restore the forest knight's bracers and ring of reckless courage from the storyteller as well as to hear the tale of the cyprus queen.