Part 9: Pest Control

Pest Control

Working on the major sidequests in a couple of areas.

Storm Coast is a medium-sized mountainous area. It can be hard to get around until you know the terrain, as a map marker might be above or below you with no obvious way to get there. You'll find the Blades of Hessarian in number and if you choose to deal with them a different way than we did they'll remain hostile. There are only two things to do here right now, the Blades sidequest and then find signs of Grey Wardens passing through the area. Later in the game a couple more things will pop up. You can find serpentstone and iron here, along with spindleweed, blood lotus, and the rare plants prophet's laurel and black lotus (though they can be found elsewhere too). It's also the earliest place to find a quarry if you need one.

Fallow Mire is small and the majority of it is covered by water that you don't want to blunder into. There are only two camps, but beacons can be used as fast travel points once you clear them. It's dark, gloomy and full of hidey-holes. Once you take care of the beacons and Avvar there's no reason to come back unless you're looking for crafting mats. You'll find blood lotus aplenty, the rare plant dawn lotus, blue vitriol and summer stone. There's also a critter called a bogfisher, which is a kind of hippo/rhino thing. They're not hostile but they are hard to kill and oftentimes one of your dipshit party members will hit one accidentally during a fight and then get wrecked.

I have one more non-story update, a chat with all of our friends, and then it'll be time to advance the plot. To give you an idea of how much I've been cutting, we have around 3 hours of updates, but my game clock is at about 18 hours. Most of it is running around picking up mats and doing dinky sidequests for power and influence to get those sweet sweet perks. Once we get a little further in the story we'll unlock the ability to create masterworks and then things will get hilarious. I still haven't found any fade-touched items (which you need for the masterwork) but I know where some guaranteed stuff is so we'll be ready when it's time.