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Heading out of Last Hope, we go north, and so we map out the basic circular route that leads to each of the towns of Maj'Eyal. We're heading to the Trollmire, north of Derth.
Our wilderness travel so far has been entirely uneventful. We've seen no wandering monsters, and no adventurer parties. We also didn't get the lumberjack quest as we were passing through the region north of Last Hope; we may have to force that one later.
We enter Trollmire level 1, which we've already cleared. We can just click on the exit stairs on the far eastern side of it (either on the mini-map, or by Shift-scrolling the main map) to go there. (If we happen to hit a poison vine trap or something along the way, we have the Wild Infusion to cure it.)
Our first escort quest. Aren't we glad we're level 6 instead of level 1 when we get this? Yes. Yes, we are.
There are no monsters in sight. We can Right-Click the paladin to ask her where the portal is.
Right-o. Now, the goal is to keep this gal alive and get her to the portal. Along the way, she is going to charge straight for every monster she sees. We'll try to kill monsters before they kill her. We can also use Repulsion to knock her back and daze her. And every few dozen turns, we can politely ask her to stand still for a short time.
The hardest part will be if we lose track of where she is. If we lose sight of her in these stupid trees, we may never find her again until something kills her.
She heads south, and we try to keep up.
At the fork, we went southeast, and spotted a troll. She must have gone south. We could charge the troll and kill it, or we could double back to see where she is. We've got no idea what monsters might be to the west.
We mouse over the troll and see that it has no target. In other words, it hasn't spotted us yet. Let's head southwest and see if we can intercept the paladin.
There she is. Let's ask her where the portal is now, so we can try to triangulate its general location.
She says it's still far away to the southeast. Well, that's no surprise, but it didn't hurt to ask. (Literally -- it takes no time.)
We'll ask her to stay here a few turns, and then we'll go beat on the troll.
We beat up the troll, and he drops a hat. We head back and find her already moving south again.
We parallel her course to the south as best we can.
Ah... when she said southeast, she really meant south, and then just a few tiles east. Escortees are terrible at giving directions. We can see the portal hidden behind a tree. We can also see that the paladin has found every escortee's favorite vice -- a monster to fight. Fortunately, this is just an insect, but we'd better get in there and kill it anyway.
No way! She killed it all by herself?! Wow....
After a quick check around the area, I see no more monsters. Eventually she wanders to the portal, and I get my reward.
Now, this is a tough choice. The Chants are sustained talents that scale with Magic, and our Magic is never going to be high; but it's free access to a talent tree that would otherwise never be available. On the other hand, more Strength is always good.
We'll take Chant of Fortress. It's not much, but it's something. While it's sustained, it gives us 2% physical damage resistance, and a point of retaliation damage.
It also makes us sparkly!
OK, now that we've completed our escort mission, we've got some more lore to find. When the Trollmire was first invented, it had 5 levels. There was a single lore scroll on each level, leading up to Bill, the boss, on the fifth level. Later, the zone was shrunk to 3 levels, with Bill on a special partial-sized fourth level that has to be unlocked by reading the lore... all 5 bits of it.
But 5 bits of lore couldn't be distributed evenly among 3 levels, so there's one piece on the first level (we already got that), 2 pieces on the second level, and one piece on the third level. In addition, there's a new boss on the third level, Prox, who has the fifth piece. So right now, we need to find the 2 pieces on this level.
Here's one....
And here's the other. We killed some vermin along the way, and picked up a few items, but none of them were worth swapping gear to wear.
Now we head to level 3. (If you're so inclined, you could fully explore each level of the Trollmire, and maybe find some good stuff... but the layout really is a pain to navigate, so I never bother.)
Yeah, another one, and this time on a level with a boss. Well, there's nothing to be done but solder on and try our best.
This time the portal is far away, to the north-east. Now, that could mean northeast, or it could mean north, or it could mean east. Let's head out, slowly, and see what we find.
We went northeast, fought off a few monsters, and then south to look for the escortee -- and she's nowhere in sight. Absolutely typical. At least the stone troll hasn't spotted us yet. Now, which way did that idiot go....
Aha. Now that we can see her, let's ask her to stand still so we can catch up.
Oh, by the way, the green health bar under the escortee is accurate, but the red health background on the Party Members panel is not. Or not always. In this case, it's not accurate at all. But sometimes, you get lucky, and it accurately shows you when they're dying.
We manage to catch up, and even get a little ahead, for some scouting. And there's the portal -- to the north, not the northeast. The rat is not a threat -- not even to the escortee -- but she's going to beeline for it if she sees it. There's no telling what other monsters might be over there. We'd better go that way first.
... like that stone troll. The one we forgot all about until now. It still hasn't seen us, though. Let's stand here and let the rat come to us.
As predicted, the escortee was drawn by the rat, and started toward us, until we killed it. Then she moved away, and headed toward the portal again.
The troll finally saw us, and is headed our way; the wolf hasn't seen us yet. The escortee, on the other hand, has seen the troll and targeted it.
That troll will kill her if we don't help. Well, that's what we're here for....
Wow, my second escort quest surprise in one zone... she's heading to the portal instead of joining the fight with the troll! That suits me fine. As long as the wolf doesn't get her first.
Success again. We were fortunate that the portal was nearby, and that we didn't spot Prox along the way. Now, the choices here are interesting. Arcane Eye and Vision are spells that we can activate using Mana (we'll get a Mana resource bar if we pick any of these talents). But we can't regenerate Mana, so we'd only be able to use them a few times on each level-up (leveling up replenishes Mana, Stamina, Life, and some others). Premonition is a sustained talent that eats most of the Mana pool, and gives you resistance against elemental attacks. As useful as Arcane Eye might be for scouting enemies, let's go with Premonition, and hope it isn't the wrong choice.
The popup says Premonition will give us an 11% resistance effect for 5 turns when we're hit by an elemental or magical attack. Sweet.
Now we've got some lore to find, and a boss to kill.
Here's the lore. Now where is Prox hiding....
A digger! This will come in handy if we have to remove some trees. The of endurance ego gives it a -4% Fatigue reduction. That will make our talents use a tiny bit less Stamina.
There he is, at the end of the road, with a buddy. He's about as strong as Norgos, so this won't take too long.
Here's what he dropped. The blue belt looks pretty nice.
If we swap that in, we'll lose some knockback resistance, but gain armour, defense, carrying capacity, and Fatigue reduction. That's a great deal.
Elisa (via the Orb of Scrying) tells us that the club is Bill's Tree Trunk. I wonder how Bill feels about the fact that Prox has it... maybe he doesn't know yet. Anyway, it's two-handed, so we won't be using it.
Now that we've read all the trollmire lore, the secret passage to Bill's lair should be visible, somewhere on the eastern edge of the map. We just need to look for it.
But first, we've got some more level-up points to distribute. We're level 8, which opens up a new set of talents, most of which require 28 points in their stat (28 is a magic break-point number for stats in this game -- 20, 28 and 36).
We'll put 2 stat points in Strength, and 4 in Dexterity. Our Dexterity has some catching up to do.
Overpower is not the most useful talent in the tree; I don't like its high Stamina cost or the knockback that it does. When I'm fighting something as a Fighter, I typically don't want to push it away -- then I'll just have to go chasing after it again. But Overpower is a stepping stone to Assault (an incredible talent), and hey, sometimes the extra shield hits might kill something.
Shield Expertise increases the damage done by our shield strikes. It doesn't say by how much, but it's certainly not negligible. And it gives bonuses to saves, too.
Further down, we also have access to Spell Shield (bonus to spell saves), and Perfect Strike (+100 Accuracy for 2 turns).
We're going to take Overpower and Shield Expertise now.
That leaves two generic points to spend. We'll put one in Armour Training, and one in Weapons Mastery.
Those defenses are coming along nicely. The offense is not terrific, but that's expected for this class. Our regular weapon attacks are going to do mediocre damage, but our talents (Assault, Shield Pummel, Shattering Shout) are going to do much more.
Now on to Bill!
Bill's lair is "guarded" by a single troll, and then a door. The first troll's no threat.
Opening the door leads to the lair proper. A level 12 mountain troll greets us, and we exchange "words" for a bit. Then he knocks us back, and we see Bill behind him.
Bill pushes past his underling, and we walk toward each other. Bill gets the first strike, and misses. Our Shield Pummel connects, and stuns him. He attacks us, and misses; we Riposte for another 26 damage. (Dexterity helps us score more Ripostes. These will become a huge part of our passive defense system later on.)
Several rounds later, he knocks us back again. But his days of trolling are just about over. A few more hits, and he goes down (and we level up). His mountain troll buddy follows quickly.
We put one stat point in each of Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. We put the class point in Spell Shield, and the generic point in Armour Training.
Bill dropped the Crystal Focus, which is automatically picked up (being a gem), and a battleaxe (two-handed) and a longbow. Both of those will be sold. The Focus, we'll hold on to.
The rest of the lair is easily cleared, yielding another greatsword, some gems and some gold. Time to go sell our junk.