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We're 96% of the way to level 17, and we've got a big Shielding rune and some lightning resistance, so it's time to go rescue Derth. While we're there, we can unload some of this junk.
We swap in the lantern of health (Summertide won't help us here), and head east toward the buildings. We want to proceed slowly now, because when the elementals spot us, they're going to start hitting us with ranged attacks.
It doesn't take long.
We dodge southwest, and then head for cover behind the weapon stores.
We dodge again, then take a non-dodgeable Lightning bolt. Premonition helps here; all the damage we take is going to be a single element, and we'll have Premonition protecting us the whole time.
The building turned out not to be safe ground, so we try to take out the closest elemental. We eat a Shock and another Lightning, and hit it with Assault.
Now looks like a good time to hit that Shielding rune. Then we dodge north, take a Lightning from the northeast elemental, and finish off the closest elemental with a regular attack. We don't get Step Up from that one, so we're still moving at normal speed, with two elementals in Lightning range, but well out of melee range. Rushing one is an option, but that would bring us farther out into the center of town -- there could be more of them there. We decide to retreat southwest instead.
Three steps later (eating two Lightning, dodging one Shock, and losing the shield), we're partially behind the building, two steps away from the ultimate gwel-whatever. One step south, and it misses us. Assault kills it (though we take 39 retaliation damage), and this time Step Up fires.
We're able to take 4 steps toward the next ultimate E without any of them moving or casting spells. "Any"? Yeah, as it turns out, there are now 4 of them in sight.
We're at 394/568 Life, so we can endure this for a bit. Shield Pummel hits, and ends our speed boost, but fails to stun. The ultimate E misses us, and the others start to move in. Another regular attack, another miss from the E, and we eat a Lightning from the southern one. We hit Regeneration, take 26 damage from the ultimate E (who finally managed to hit us), and two of the others throw Shocks at us. We dodge back to the west, eating another Lightning, but not either of the Shocks.
Another attack; the ultimate E misses us again, and we eat two more Lightnings from the north and south Es. If the eastern E comes one step closer, they'll all be in Shout range. Assault is ready, but the ultimate E is too weak to justify it. Another regular attack takes it down to 7% Life, it misses us, and the others all move in.
Shattering Shout finishes the ulimate E and wounds the rest. It also brings us to level 17. We decide to dodge the incoming Shocks first, this time heading northwest toward the opening in the trees. (No Step Up on that kill, unfortunately.)
We eat a few more Lightnings and a Shock before we make it behind the trees. There's a human farmer out here who doesn't even have enough sense to run away. He's northwest of us, on the road, with a tree behind him. If we take a step north, we can throw him to the west.
Or so we thought. When we step north, he steps northeast, trying to go around us to get closer to the monsters. What an idiot. Well, if he's that determined to die, we can't prevent it. We duck back behind the trees again, heading toward the moat.
After a few turns in the moat, eating one Lightning while we wait, a couple of them finally approach us. We hit Shielding, and then Assault kills one outright, and Step Up fires. We stride up to the next one, hit Greater Weapon Focus, and Shield Pummel it, followed by Overpower -- which takes it to 15% Life (and us to 35/138 Stamina). A regular attack kills it, but doesn't give Step Up this time.
One step northeast brings us face-to-something with the next one, though, and we kill it with 3 attacks (2 of them criticals -- lucky). Step Up fires, but there are no other Es in sight, so we're not sure which way to go next. We decide to check behind the infusion shop, and we spot two more. We quickly duck back around the corner, and wait on the western side of the building.
Bear in mind, that little scout-and-retreat happened during Step Up time; it takes 9 keypresses on the 5 key to end Step Up and return to normal speed once we reach our chosen spot. Five more keypresses at normal speed bring them both into line of sight.
We eat a Lightning from the north one as the south one approaches us, and dies to our Assault (but no Step Up). The other one moves one step closer; we wait. As it moves into melee range, we Shield Pummel it, then finish it with 3 more attacks (one of which misses). Then we rest.
Six turns into the resting, we take a Lightning from something we can't see. We hit the Shielding and Regeneration, and take a few steps north to see if it's coming from that way. We don't see anything on the north side of the building. We head back, and then spot it coming up from the south, 8 steps away. That's too far, and we're still too tired to Rush it, so we hide on the north side of the building and wait for it.
After resting 7 turns, it comes into line of sight. One more turn of waiting, and it's next to us; Assault kills it and gives us our Step Up. We head east, and don't spot any hiding in the northeastern corner. Then we head southeast, and spot one on the far eastern side of town, past the gem store. As we approach it, we see another one hiding on the eastern side of the Arena building.
We decide to take out the northern one first. Still in Step Up speed mode, we walk up next to it; the other one fires a Shock spell, so we reposition slightly, still remaining next to our target. Step Up wears off right at that moment. Assault is still on cooldown (Step Up doesn't help with that), so we Shield Pummel. The other one hits us with a Lightning, and then we remember to use our Shielding.
Five regular attacks bring it down, and the other one comes right up next to us (pretty much the stupidest thing it could have done). Assault brings it to 6% Life, and an attack finishes it.
One more E is coming up from the southeastern corner, and we're not in quick mode, so we duck behind the Arena. For reasons we do not understand, our rest finishes completely -- 46 turns, and it didn't follow us around the building. We hit Shielding, then step out.
It's still standing in the same spot, northeast of the archery store. Our shield drops, and we eat a Lightning and a Shock during the approach. An Assault drops it in one turn, and that's the end of the elementals. A Scared Halfling peeks out from somewhere unspecified, and we reassure him that it's safe now.
We still haven't opened Angolwen, though. That's just going to have to wait.
We head into the gem store and sell off all the heavy junk. This brings us down to 77/146 encumbrance (we're still carrying several swap items, and all the rings, amulets, runes and infusions), and leaves us with 367.55 gold.
Now, it's time to hit the Old Forest.
Oh, right, but first we can level up. (Should've done that earlier, for the extra point of Step Up.) One point in each of Strength, Dex and Con. This leaves us 4 points of Con short of the next level of Thick Skin, but we don't have any +Con swap gear (we had a +3 hat, but Garkul's helm made that completely obsolete).
One point in Step Up (now 4/5), and 1 point in Weapons Mastery. When we max Step Up next level, we are going to get that super speed burst after everything we kill.
Now, it's really time to hit the Old Forest.
That party's hanging around right where we want to go. How inconvenient. Let's see if we can lure them away.
After a bit of dancing, the adventurers decided to go northeast, away from us. We're able to get into the Old Forest without having to fight them.
The Old Forest layout is the same as that of Norgos' Lair, but mirror-imaged. It's fully lit, so we'll keep using the lantern of health.
We can get escort quests here. We don't get one on level 1, but there are 4 more levels to go.
We find a mini-vault with a skeleton mage guarding a 2x2 hut full of runes and infusions. There's a nice Regen infusion (257/Dex) but it's slightly worse than the one we're currently using.
We fight lots of snakes and wolves, and one dredgling, which hits us with a Dust to Dust spell, but dies to a 309-point Assault. There are no other noteworthy finds on the first level.
On level 2, we find a snow giant, and then a vault full of poison ivy.
A Shout weakens the big group in the center, and then we just start smacking them. The treant in the center takes an Assault, a Shield Pummel, and two more hits. The poison ivies are easily beaten. The treant was guarding leeching iron gauntlets of butchering, with regen and healing penalties. Meh.
Orcs! We take out the bees, then Assault the wyrmic who's probably the group's leader. This kills him, and we Step Up, grab his heart, and head over to the honey tree, which is summoning more monsters. This, we Shield Pummel, at which point another orc blinds us (again). Our Wild's on cooldown after the first one, so we hit Shielding and try to remember which direction to attack the honey tree.
A few turns later, we can see again. We finish off the tree with an Overpower and a regular attack, then the bees with another attack. Then we retreat to the northeast and wait for the orcs to come to us in the corridor.
That weapon turns out to be an icy steel waraxe of paradox, and if we didn't already have the Crooked Club, we'd wield it in a heartbeat. But the base damage on the Club is just so much better that we're not willing to sacrifice the damage output, even for the freezing ice. Quite simply, damage output is the one thing we're always going to need more of, as a Fighter.
Another difference between Norgos' Lair and the Old Forest are pits of monsters. In this case, snakes. The corridor north looks like a good place to make a stand.
For this fight, we won't be using our hardest-hitting talents. We'll just be hitting them with regular attacks, with an occasional Shout, and using the Shielding and Regeneration whenever they're available.
When we kill a snake, we're going to get a Step Up (80% of the time), so we could either mash the "stand still" key a lot, or we could just walk up to the snakes and hit them and then fall back. Whichever is less irritating.
Pretty soon, they're all dead.
We find a bandit's hideout vault as well. Inside, there will be a cluster of rogues in the first room, then two more individual rogues in their private bedrooms.
We dispatch these, then proceed to the treasure.
The gold is ours for the taking. The chamber on the west side requires digging with our pickaxe, and has three gems.
The rest of the level is uneventful (a few dragon hatchlings are the pinnacle of excitement).
We find an orc master assassin on level 3, but he seems to be alone. The only other interesting thing here is a honey tree vault:
The initial bears are quite high level (level 40 grizzly bear, several upper-20s), but the ones that get summoned by the honey trees after that are more reasonable. We're able to fight our way into the crowd, using Step Up to get to the trees faster. Once we take those out, there will be no more summons, and then we can mop up easily.
On level 4, we need to find a specific piece of lore, which has a key in it. We've actually been clearing every level thoroughly up to this point, so that's not a change for us, but it's worth pointing out.
Some random vermin bring us to level 18. One point in Str, Dex and Con. One point in Step Up (maxed), and one point in Weapons Mastery (5/10).
We find another bandit hideout in the northeast. One of the bandits in the main room drops our first random artifact.
Random artifacts are orange; predefined artifacts are yellow. It's a bit surprising we haven't found any random artifacts before now. This one's a dagger, so we're not interested in using it. Even if it were an axe, this one's not very exciting. Would be nice for a level-10-ish Rogue, though.
We finish the vault without any issues.
We find the lore we want in an insect pit, south of the hideout. There's nothing else worth mentioning on the rest of the level.
Level 5, and still no escort quests. That means we'll be getting them in the hardest zones... not a good thing. It will be much tougher to succeed in most of those places.
We manage to hit our encumbrance limit while gathering junk, so we decide to swap in Feathersteel (losing 2 Willpower doesn't hurt much -- it's a bit of Stamina and saves).
There is another honey tree vault in the north, and we slog through it without issue, resting afterward to regain Stamina spent on talents.
We find another insect pit in the east, again simply a matter of bashing repeatedly. Eventually, we find Wrathroot, the boss.
He's a spellcaster, known for his freezing. Our 97% stun resistance will help. We could swap in a hat to get 100%, but 97% should be enough, given how high level we already are.
We're still Stepped Up from the last kill, so we simply walk up to him and Shield Pummel. He manages to throw a Freeze at us while we're doing this (time doesn't actually stop for everyone else while we're Stepped Up), and even with Premonition it does 117 cold damage. The Shield Pummel stuns him; we raise the Shielding and Assault for 230 damage. There are a couple ants in this clearing, but we'll just ignore them.
Five more attacks, another Pummel, and another Assault take him down to 40% Life. We hit Regeneration. Another normal attack, and he does a 140-point Healing. Two more attacks, Pummel, Assault, and he's at 16% Life. Three more attacks, and he's dead. And we like what we see:
We've also leveled up, so let's do that before we forget: 3 points in Constitution, 1 point in Riposte (2/5), and 1 point in Thick Skin (2/5).
We quickly finish the ants, and then grab the loot. And it's a double serving of fun today -- the Blood of Life, and a verdant steel plate armour of the dragon
So many powers they don't even fit on the screen at once... if we scroll down, we also see Life regen: +0.70. Just as an afterthought, mind you. Obviously we wear this. In fact, if we hadn't found this within a few more zones, we would've opened armour shops looking for this, or something as close to this as we could find. It's magnificent.
We also drink the Blood of Life immediately. This gives us an extra life, should we find ourselves prematurely deceased. It only works once, but it's by far the best security blanket we're going to find.
We're a bit overburdened even with Feathersteel on, so we drop one of the junk armours we've picked up along the way. This drops us to 172/173, which will have to do for now.
The stairs leading to Lake Nur are on the southern edge of the level, rather than the eastern edge. Technically Lake Nur is a different zone, and it's where things start to get interesting.