Part 19: The Spider and the Sidequest, Part 2

Update 19: The Spider and the Sidequest, Part 2

Pantathian 1: Despair Thy Eyes, Grief of 1000 Nights, Mind Melt
Pantathian 2: Flamecast, Skyfire, Grief of 1000 Nights, Mind Melt
Pantathian 3: Despair Thy Eyes, Skyfire, Unfortunate Flux, Fetters of Rime

Which means that if two of them decided to start the fight with Grief and the last landed a cast of Fetters, they could shut down the entire party in one round and instantly game-over me. Thankfully it's not that bad. Instead...





Gorath eats a Flux and a Mind Melt(with the Flux rolling mid/low) that slices off about 75% of his total health before the party gets any turns, giving him a chance to chug a dozen vials of restoratives before the next barrage hits. Thankfully, the positioning of the Pantathians means that James can block two of them from casting again, and Owyn can block off the third with a Rusalki.



Luckily on retreat they don't split up and make it difficult to keep them from casting, but instead cluster up in one nice big pile where one single mobile character can ruin their day. It seems like enemy casters, even if they're melee-capable, will usually prioritize moving away so they're free to cast. Shades seem to be the only exception from this so far, though possibly that may be because the game parses their "spell" differently from "real" spellcasting.




From there on, it's just a matter of whittling them down. One Pantathian escapes because James is an incompetent clutz and I'm already missing Locklear, but that's alright since none of them care carrying an important loot, the big deal is finding them and killing them as part of disabling the "fuck you"-field they've inexplicably erected in this corner of the Dimwood. Before we leave, though, a new chest has spawned in that we gotta poke at.




We can't leave Old Man Craig without his ironjaw traps after all, which seem to be... designed after catapults... despite looking like crossbows? Whatever. Presumably it kills animals good.

In any case, having killed the Pantathians, we get a new chunk of text on heading back to the main section of the Dimwood.




What do you think the Pantathians were after, Owyn? Do you think they were rooting around looking for something?

With the Pantathians, who can tell? No one in the Kingdom knows exactly what they want, but they seem to get mixed up in nearly everything that's got a bad ending. My guess is that they were trying to channel the strength they were stealing into something else. Maybe they needed power for a spell.

I am none to comfortable with the thought of that. I felt their powers when we entered the area, though I didn't know what it was I perceived.

At least we have come out of there none the worse for the wear. I imagine that Craig is beyond help. It is a good thing we didn't remain a month, as he did.

Well, I don't know about you, but I feel almost normal again. I for one am glad the whole affair is over.

A noteworthy part is that this also cures any remaining Sick status, so you don't have to hurry for a temple if you're out of herbal healing packs or restoratives. Now to hop it back to Craig...






There's a small encounter with some moredhel and quegans on the way, but they just get run over by the party without offering any real opposition. As for Craig...


So he dropped us a ring that works like the Weedwalkers and the Amulet of the Upright Man in offering a permanent stat bonus while carried, in this case a +15% to Scouting, making the party a lot harder to ambush. What isn't pointed out is that this also opens a store in the north of the Dimwood, the Fife and Laurel, which is otherwise closed in chapters 1, 2 and the start of chapter 3. Nothing indicates that it being closed is related to the Pantathians being around, or that killing them will open it, so I don't quite get it. Still, if you weren't moving into the Dimwood until Chapter 3, it'd be very nice to have an extra place to offload loot as there's a TON of stuff to pick up in here.

Since I missed Squire Phillip, here's his updated dialogue for finding him in the Dimwood in Chapter 3.


I'm not sure why they refer to the Fife and Laurel as a tavern when it's actually a store. Strange. Anyway, we miss him because the party cuts across to the north side of the Dimwood in a more or less straight line.






Another two Moredhel ambushes await in the north, one is just a mass of warriors, but the other is similar to the one that kicked the party's ass on the previous visit.



Once again, the main danger is what the RNG decides the Witch Hags cast. One of them has Grief of 1000 Nights, another has Despair Thy Eyes and the last can cast Skin of the Dragon. Thankfully the party scores ambush, and they never get off a single spell. I feel like if anything, it's probably one of the bigger weaknesses of the game, how easily mages are neutralized if you win initiative, yet conversely how utterly they can annihilate you if they win the initiative. I'm pretty sure that what they cast is entirely RNG, though, like there's no real AI to it, it just picks a spell and then picks a target.




These guys go down a lot easier than the first time around.



Now, you might ask, why are we headed up the northern exit of the Dimwood? That's because there's a new encounter up in Wolfram on the Highcastle/Northwarden road. Also because I realize I may as well stop by Highcastle and upgrade everyone to Elven Greatswords, the best type of sword that can be purchased(and then later blessed down in Malac's Cross on the way back). This happens off-screen since showing a shop window isn't very interesting.





This bit can be done in Chapter 2, too, but I forgot about it. For whatever complaints I might have about BaK, I remain impressed by how much stuff they crammed into locations most players were incredibly unlikely to ever go. In any case, a house in Wolfram that previously had no reaction when interacted with now instead has...




A sudden ambush! It's not an exceptionally tough fight, but could be a surprise to an adventurous chapter 2 party depending on how much off-roading they did previously, mostly notable for three out of the five enemies being crossbow-users.




The odd thing is that, after killing them, they leave no corpses behind. Usually this is only the case for ghosts, "endless" battles(i.e. a "go back you moron"-fight that repeats until you go another way or somehow resolve it) or for one rare case we'll see later this update. Let's see what happens if we interact with the house again...




We were very nearly killed by your little pets. Not a very hospitable way to welcome friendly visitors.

Never mindin' the fact I didn't invite you! But if'n you got hurt, I wasn't meanin' for innocent folk to gets involved. It's just that the only guests I receive these days come from the Northlands...

You have friends in the Northlands?

Friends? No, not as such. The visitors I receive are never welcome. Goblins mostly, sent from ole Belly Khan to pinch my spellbooks and formulas. They don't much care for me interfering with 'em, working spells and such for Baron Gabot at Northwarden. I was hopin' these illusions I was makin' would be more effective, but 'parently they ain't worth a gnat's spit. Need to work on 'em more. Let me give you somethin' so you can get yourselves fixed up...

That won't be necessary. We're fine.

Who said anything 'bout you?! Baron gets wind I went 'round inflicting grief on innocent bystanders, I'll be dicing taters with the kitchen boys or singing duets with old mash brain Tamney. You'll find a pouch of two hundred gold in that little chest over in the corner. If'n you go north from here a bit, you'll run across the Temple of Tith. I imagine they can put you to rights again. But a word of advice, you see buglies in fronts of you in the future, insteada' fightin' em, run the other way!

True to his word, Patrus hands us 200 gold and sends us on our way. A pretty nice treasure if we came here at the start of chapter 2. For now, though, we're headed back west, to LaMut, because chapter 2 and 3 also open up new content at the bottom of the Mac Mordain Cadal.





Most of the contents haven't respawned, though, so the entire first level is still empty.




But this way down that was hidden in a corner now actually allows us to descend to the second level rather than warning us about a collapse that we can't make it past.






And the locals down here seem eager to get into a fight with us. I'm not entirely sure why, though.



Considering that they're inviting themselves to a three-on-two smackdown where they get their asses kicked. Their gear is a clear upgrade over most of what we've been fighting against so far, though, while they're still wearing standard Kingdom and Elven armor for the most part, they're now regularly armed with two-handed broadswords and Goblin Stickers as opposed to plain broadswords and Lampreys. We don't need the swords, but now they actually sell for enough money to be worth giving a single pass in terms of repairs and then hauling along to a store.





They're also guarding an INCREDIBLY easy-to-miss chest. Like seriously, that could've used a second pass in terms of making it "pop" from its surroundings a bit more, especially considering the contents.



A fucking DIAMOND, among other gems. There are only seven of them in the game, and yet they still account for about 20% of the total amount of gold to be earned from gems across the entire game as well. It's a pretty huge haul, you pretty much have to screw up on purpose to render it not worth a ton. In any case, it's only the first of several cool things the game hides down here.





This second group of rogues skulking around in the shadows may in fact have an even better haul.



This mage is yet another one of the many who could choose to cast Grief of 1000 Nights if he won initiative, however, because of the smaller battlefields underground and, as some mentioned, James having exceptionally good movement stats...



Bonk. He does have weirdly low health, though, only 50 points total, which makes this possible. There are a few outliers like that, enemies that for some reason are set to spawn with almost no, or greater-than-normal health pools. Still, this both evens the odds to a 3v3 fight and takes out the one enemy who could really cause us shit.




Now, they're not guarding a chest, and three out of the four of them are just carrying the normal upgraded swords that I'd like to sell, but one of them...



Is carrying a fucking suit of dragon plate! There's only one armor that's better but... we may as well not even think about it. James gets this one, and it'll keep him nice and safe. It's also going to get itself a level 3 bless on the way back to Romney, seeing as how it's a piece of gear James will be wearing until the end of the game anyway. We could already buy these at Highcastle, but costing about 1500 gold a piece, they're actually one of the pieces of equipment expensive enough to still represent an obstacle to the party's bloated finances.

And if you can believe it, we're still not done getting sweet rewards out of the MMC. There's one more down here yet.





So, there's this pit, which we can swing across to proceed deeper(but there's no reason to, as the only routes further on are blocked until later in the game), also note how while in the other types of dungeons, pits have some sort of high-contrast colouring, but here they're easily stumbled into... anyway, This pit, if we approach it, we get some dialogue!




Kobolds are mentioned as worshipping the dragon Rhuagh in Magician: Apprentice, and bringing her offerings of food and such, but I don't believe they're ever actually described in any fashion except as being small underground creatures. What this guy wants from us... we're carrying two suits of Grey Tower Plate already, but we're not handing those over since they're blessed and also preventing Gorath and Owyn from getting stabbed, and besides we can get a trash suit for free and the Kobolds don't care about the quality.

We pretend we don't have any and then wander back up to the entrance where Naddur is still hanging around, and now has a couple of new keywords.


We're at a deed 'alt at the moment. We 'ad a section of mine exposed, nearly the entire length to Elvandar when we found another blasted Brak Nurr hole! It was but a wee tyke and we were able to kill it, but that kept us bent in fits for weeks. Alone, 'e was able to collapse several hundred yards o' rock. We've got to make sure that the mine will 'old up to new 'ammering. Another few months and we should be through to Elvandar.

[ARMOR]

Any idea where we lay our hands on a suit of Grey Tower plate mail?

Ah, blast! I'll have those buggers for dinner if they keep this up... You've been talking to those bloddy kobolds, 'aven't you? What did they tell you they want the armor plate mail for? A treasure for Rhuargh? A ransom for a lost kobold princess? They're having you on and at our expense. Ya canna get Grey Tower Plate this side o' the Cadal!

How silly of me. I suppose the dwarves have sworn off wearing armor?

Daft as drovers...all you Kingdom folk. We dwarves no more live in these mines than your King Lyam lives in the ocean, despite the fact he rules his kingdom from an island! The great majority of our kin live in villages much the same as yours, the only difference being that most of our villages are on the western side of the Grey Towers. There's not much call for a dwarven suit of armor this side of LaMut...

Then there's absolutely no way we could find a dwarven suit of armor?

I did na' exactly say that, now did I? Ya might go an look at one of the old battlefields. Sometimes bits from the old wars turn up there.

[BATTLE SITES]

Owyn, how would you like to see a dwarven battleground? I know I would and I'm sure Naddur's just going to burst if he doesn't tell us how to find one. Right, Naddur?

If it's one thing a dwarf ne'er forgets, it's ground where kin 'ave spilt their lifeblood. Aye, I can tell ya where ta find a battleground. Tyr-bloddy-Sog. It's whar last your kin and mine crossed swords again' one another and that was a fiercesome battle what would make the battle for Sethanon look like a day at the fair. If you've truly a mind to this, try the west bank of the river right before crossing towards Tyr-Sog. That's whar you'll 'ave your best luck.

[PITS]

We were trying to find our way below and we ran across a pit we couldn't even see the bottom of. Is there some way of getting around it?

The only way around it is over it. Ya'll need a length o' rope before ya can get over the sink shafts. I'd lend you a length of ours, but if you'll pardon the jest, they're all tied up at the moment.

[SARTH]

I'm surprised we haven't seen many cases of Quegian Fever up this way. They're having problems with it down at the Abbey of Ishap at Sarth.

Ach! If you're going to talk about Bourgalan, call it by its name arights, not by that Keshian bark...

Sarth was dwarven?

Not the abbey itself, no, but the caverns beneath! It was the greatest emerald mine the dwarves ever delved, the Mac Bourgalan Dok. It ran for miles in every direction and part o' the chambers ran right beneath where the Abbey now stands, though I understand those silly priests 'ave stuffed the tunnels to the rafters with books. We'd still own the caverns now, but we made an arrangement with Mejakaar Blackpatch when he moved into the keep that 'ad been built over one of the entrances...

And Mejakaar still owns the mine?

Aye, if corpses can be said to own anything. 'e's been dead a long while, even as dwarves reckon time. The mines are the property now of the Brothers of Ishap, though I doubt they know how to get from their vaults to the main passages of the mine.

You can also talk with Naddur on the way in, but most of these keywords don't pop until you've talked to the kobolds. Now, this activates a trigger so that if we head up past Tyr-Sog, almost to Yabon, where the bridge crosses a small river, we suddenly get a pop-up prompt...


Being 45% and repairable, it's actually not a poor upgrade in chapter 2 if you haven't been ranging around too much, and might even be worth keeping for a while rather than handing over to the kobolds(though if you haven't been exploring around too much, what the hell are you doing back at the Mac Mordain Cadal in chapter 2 or 3?), though you should absolutely make sure to go pass them a suit before chapter 3 ends, because when you do...


Oh, I absolutely love the places travelling with you takes me, squire.
Don't you get sarcastic with me, you invited yourself along.
Maybe he's serious, maybe he likes drinking weird stagnant water given to him by kobolds.

So the practical effect of that it gives all party members a +5 to both Health and Stamina, increasing their total pool by 10. Since no one in the party has a total pool 120-ish, that's still about a 10% increase for everyone.

Now we're done playing in the dirt and we can head back to Romney... after a brief detour past Sarth and Krondor, because of course they've been updated as well. Why wouldn't they be?




They've also been updated with fresh encounters for that explorative player.



For instance, these moredhel brought their dogs out for a walk. I actually can't think of when else you encounter them, but ostensibly there are 41 dogs to murder across the game, so maybe we'll get them all! They are, sadly, pretty boring in combat, they work exactly as a moredhel warrior does, just with different attack stats and less armor, which is a bit of a shame.






The trip is uninteresting until the party gets down to Questor's View where we find something actually new...




I think someone left these Nighthawks out in the sun for a while.

Welcome to Black Slayers! I forget how much I've mentioned before, but strength-wise they're generally slightly sturdier Nighthawks. Their only main difference gameplay-wise is that if you leave one of them dead for over eight rounds, they pick themselves up again and return to the fight. If there are any Nighthawks in a fight with Black Slayers, they turn into Black Slayers eight rounds after their own death. Also, I've yet to test it, but as an oddity Nighthawks are supposedly immune to Grief of 1000 Nights but Black Slayers are not.




But if you cast Final Rest, they vanish from the battlefield so they can't get back up again. The downside to this, though...




The body's gone!
Now what are we supposed to loot?!

Thankfully there's no way to softlock yourself or anything with this, and they generally carrying poor equipment and no exceptional loot. It's worth keeping in mind, though, if you really want to completely maximize your loot.




The rest of the way south is mostly unremarkable except for one last Moredhel surprise north of Krondor...



They catch me unaware and this prick starts off by blinding Gorath with Despair Thy Eyes.



Then when James tries to disentangle Owyn, he gets blasted by a full-power Flamecast. I promptly have him chug Restoratives to undo the damage and then...



The fucker just does it again. Thankfully by that point Gorath starts to shake off his blinding.



And the mage is so low on health after multiple casts that Owyn just runs up and flattens him with a single whack from his staff, after which the two paralyzed enemies(courtesy of Owyn's dust pouches) get quietly put down.




Coincidentally at this point we're down by Sarth and we can check in on Brother Marc. He doesn't have any new keywords, but he does have a new intro text.



How could you not know? Every five year old boy in Tiburn could recognize the warning signs.

In Tiburn perhaps they could, but as I might point out, this is not Tiburn.

I thought the Brothers of Ishap at Sarth were supposed to know everything.

Perhaps we will someday, Ishap willing, but let me tell you something. When I was about your age, I discovered a miraculous thing about planting. For years I had kept a journal about the things that I had learned as I had scratched in the dirt. One day - shortly after my acceptance into the Brotherhood of Ishap - I was going over some of my notes and I made a miraculous discovery. It would change the way that farmers grew crops forever! I was so excited that I decided I would share this great secret with the world and I padded off to the nearest town with my journal proudly stuck under my arm.

Did the farmers use your technique?

Oh, yes...and they had been using it for over three hundred years! My humble tricks were childish speculation next to what the farmers already knew. My point is this: if our brethren in Malac's Cross have something that they consider common knowledge, it might remain uncommon knowledge to the rest of us for years because they assume we should already know it. Like any other portable good, Knowledge must be collected and given out. That, my friends, is the primary reason that Sarth exists.

I think it's a pretty interesting little story, I like that kind of scene-setting and it's nice to give a bit of character to Marc as someone who's doing his best and has learned to be humble, and also like... I just kind of enjoy it when a setting doesn't paint medieval farmers and peasants as idiots and rubes, but actually recognizes that farming the land successfully requires a hell of a lot of knowledge if you don't want to starve when winter rolls around.




Because we're in Chapter 3, Krondor's Temple of Astalon has opened up, and we can now enter the palace by the front doors(we cannot, in fact, enter the sewers in this chapter because the Mockers are having an important meeting down there, what I missed was Limm telling us about this and offering to sell us Amulets of the Upright Man for 300 gold a pop, which is about a 40-gold saving over the shops that carry them, so eh). What wisdom do the priests of Astalon have for us?


As usual, somewhat useless.

We can also go hassle Katala:


What she says feels somewhat silly since Pug pretty much always just ran off to other planets, dimensions or whatever without involving her in the past, except for giving her a chance to pout at him like a sitcom housewife. So, let's haul ass, we still have Arlie Steelsoul to visit south of Sloop before the update is over. He's the owner of that house with the "KEEP OUT!" signs posted near it.




Because I'm lazy and because I have one last thing to do in Malac's Cross this update, I pay to get teleported there, getting everyone's greatswords and James' new Dragon Plate blessed at the same time. What's up in Malac's Cross is that there's a new lecture to attend! I stop by and buy a ticket from Graves, then pop on in.


Notably, everyone at Highcastle almost fucking died during the invasion from Murmandamus 2, since the baron in charge of the castle refused to believe that any number of Moredhel were coming down from the North, and insisted that he would only listen to Lyam, the King, and not Arutha, the Prince of Krondor. He got killed during the initial skirmishes with the advancing Moredhel, and Arutha and the other protagonists promptly evacuated the place for a forced march south to Sethanon.

Once again, it merely boosts our useless Assessment skill but dammit, it's there so we're gonna do it.





This bit is actually mildly interesting because it has two solutions and neither's really telegraphed in any way that I can recall. Let's do the most obvious thing and approach Arlie's front door...



The moment we do, Arlie's manservant shows up and tells us to push off.


So, at this point we can do three things. Firstly, we can just toss some normal rations in the box. Nothing happens if we do.


This does not open Arlie's front door for us.

Secondly, we can toss some poisoned rations in the box.


This actually gets us in, as Arlie's impressed by what huge assholes we are and opens the door for us. We can either use "normal" poisoned rations or use Coltari poison to create our own. The third option, though, is to simply... walk up to the back door.




'course, Arlie has some mean home security. Still, it's easy enough to solve. See-through crystal to make the right-most blaster blow up a pole, then solid crystal below it so you can move the see-through crystal further left and blow up ANOTHER pole without getting the crystal-pusher blasted, and you're home free. This impresses Arlie with how ballsy we are.


You get a "Chapel's Rmur N Wepuns" book for it, which boosts weapon and armorsmithing, no matter which option you pick, and now we can go back and report to the Duke in Romney.







Now the prices in Romney are normalized, which is a shame, but at least we're getting paid. Also someone really brought out the thesaurus for this game. "Enfeoffed"? If you tell me you ever heard this word before, I will call you a liar.

Now can we get on with stopping Delekhan and saving your peoples and mine?
Oh very well, if we must.

Next time: We actually work on the main quest.