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Next stop on our tour of the newbie zones is the Scintillating Caves. It's by Elvala, in the southwest. So we'll just swing by Derth....

Derth Halfling: "Aaaah! Help us! Help us!"
Intrepid Fighter: "Uh oh, looks like you've got a slight air elemental problem there. That looks serious. I'd better, um, go find some help...."

Don't worry, though -- due to the magic of scripted game plots, the air elemental attack doesn't actually hurt anyone until you walk into the town. We can do that any time before level 20, so there's no rush.

We also swing by the apprentice mage. He would accept the Feathersteel Amulet to complete his quest, but we don't want to give that up. We'll keep looking for Kor's Fall or the Staff of Destruction or something.

Elvala, mercifully storm- and elemental-free, is still available for us to dump our loot. We'll hit the Runemaster store for this, and see if there are any good runes available.

No shielding runes, but that's typical. We could use a teleportation rune, though. The most important aspect of a teleportation rune is its cooldown; we don't really care much about the maximum range. Of the 3 teleportation runes for sale here today, two have 16-turn cooldowns, and one has 15 turns. We'll take the 15-turn one, and replace the lesser Regeneration infusion. This leaves us with Teleportation, Regeneration and Wild, and 91.90 gold (after selling stuff).

Now on to the Caves.

The Caves are highly irritating (and even potentially deadly) to low-level characters with no ranged attacks, due to the crystals. These have high-damage ranged attacks, and an annoying tendency to blink (Phase Door) away when you get close. They're too strong to take down with a single Shout right now, though that doesn't prevent us from using Shout to weaken them before moving in for the kill. If pressed, we can also use Rush.

This is not a zone where we will be fully exploring each level. We actually want to leave at least one red crystal monster alive, for a potential alchemist quest ingredient. (It's not on our list now, but it could be later. And we can't harvest ingredients in advance.)

So we take the stairs as soon as we find them.

We find a copper amulet of willpower (+2) on level 2, and swap that in for the Feathersteel Amulet.

Things start to get interesting on level 3. Looks like the boss is just outside of vision range to the northeast (that projectile is unique). One of the snakes stepped in front of an ice crystal's projectile, and got frozen. And we're on fire and poisoned.

Well, that's what the teleportation rune is for. Wild first to cure the poison, then teleport, and let's work our way back to where we believe the boss is.

Assault.

Assault.

Rushed in, and found a whole bunch of 'em. Shattering Shout hurt them a bit, but now it's time for some mop-up.

Oh, I'd forgotten about the leech on the gloves. A bit of free Stamina for me, I guess. Shield Pummel! Attack! Pretty soon it's dead (it blinked once, and landed on the other side of me... oops). That takes me to level 13.

It drops a dark rod (Rod of Annulment) and a grounding iron plate armour of lightning resistance which is a wonderful upgrade for our acid resistance armour. The +17% lightning resistance will help when we go back to Derth, and the +20% stun resistance will help everywhere else.

We put stat points into Strength, Dexterity and Constitution again. The class talent point goes into Shield Wall (now 4/5), and the generic point maxes Armour Training at 10/10.

With this much Armour and Armour Hardiness, most physical attacks will simply bounce off us. What we need to watch out for are magical or elemental attacks. This is going to be true for the rest of the game. A really high-level archer could pose a threat as well, but the spellcasters are going to be the main issue.

We'll sell loot in Elvala, and then it's on to the Rhaloren Camp.

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