Dungeon Siege

[Boro]

I played this game since I was eight, on and off for a decade and a half by now, leveling multiple multiplayer characters to and deep into veteran levels, even doing a solo melee character which was by far the hardest for me, since melee characters get to struggle with the dicey melee system where your attacks can whiff more often than they contact for the first half of the game, not to mention the tough melee enemies they have to trade blows with, that other characters can completely negate by tempting and running circles around them. Interestingly, I never played a single player game to completion after I first finished back in 2002.

There was one skill I avoided all times before, and it was the doom of a single-player attempt back in 2013. That skill/class was the nature mage. It's problem was the low damage, which made it hard to balance my XP out with my more dps-oriented party members. So when I picked this game up again in this june/july, trying this class, solo, just felt like a good idea to me. For a reasonable goal, I aimed to get my solo NM to at least the traveler's camp, or the eastern swamp. Right now she's in Glitterdelve, ready to enter the mines. Naturally, this game is a Single Pass Full Clear run, thanks to the non-respawning enemies. (It's also the reason all my single-player parties halted... I'd worry over the possibility of screwing up my gold and getting hosed by poor drops until I couldn't play anymore. It wasn't until this february that I could at last overcome that feeling, and that was in D2)

I named my nature mage Compa, after the friendly nurse-to-be with a giant hypodermic needle from the Hyperdimension Neptunia jrpg-series, since it's been a habit of me to name my latest game toons after characters from that game/anime.

Here is how that adventure went.

Dungeon Siege, Solo Nature mage: Compa

Compa started level 0 the same way as most other nature mages: Killed the first krug with a knife, grabbed and equipped Zap, and kept zapping everything she came across. Scavengers took a few hits, the Farm Skrubb a bit more at the bridge, but once through, she was soon level 1 putting scavengers firmly down to two-hits, scouts to three, phrak to 1-2 and phrak piercers to 1, and Snappers don't get a mention because there are so few of them.

The strongest enemy was unsurprisingly the krug dog. It is fast, the attack check is at the beginning of the attack animation, rather than mid or end, so tempting them is more or less a crapshoot, and it has the same health, plus better armor than the scouts.

I did my usual starting routine, killing everything by the small lake, and grabbed Altan's Leather from the bear, who was as usual laughably easy when one has ranged firepower (even if that firepower is rather meek).

Phrak Ballista was a cake. I fired, I dodged, I fired, it died. Then it was time to do the first sidequest, Edgaar's Basement. It is always good to go in there, as there is usually a staff or some decent gear to fill out your slots, if you haven't already. Brankar's cronies ate my first nine zaps, then Compa put him out of misery, and I gained gloves, boots, and a better armor (Torn Leather 16def) than altan's leather (10Def +5Health) out of this struggle.

Tip: when comparing armor with better defense to an armor with more +Health: Compare the armor percentage boost to the health percentage boost. The higher wins. With Altan's, my defense was 25, somewhat safe, with my health sitting on 63, but the Torn Leather put it up to 31 Def, a better than 20% boost, and lost only a meager 5, less than 10% HP in the process, resulting in a net 10% survivability gain.

Shortly outside Edgaar's house, Compa leveled to two, which finally put the phrak into one-hit-kill range, and scouts to mostly too, but sometimes three.

Just in time, as Apprentices and Wolves turned up. Wolves took 4-6 hits (18 hp, and zap only does 3-5 damage), have the same front-loaded attack animation that makes tempting impossible, but luckily, they aren't very fast and tend to stop to growl at you, so compa could dance around them with minimal damage taken. Apprentices are scouts who can attack from range and always hit, using the same zap as you do.

Enter the forest, towards the crypt. First side-trip is the alpha wolf near the healing shrine. Now, if I were a combat mage, full of heavy hitting fireshot power, I'd make my stand on the regenerating shrine and focus the small wolves down to balance the gain/loss out the fastest way possible.

But alas, I'm a nature magician with a tiny peck for a punch. So I danced, tempted the best I could, and punished every stopping wolf with my tiny shocking power until they dropped dead.

My next stop was to retrieve the Puller Staff from the side crypt. It does nothing. It requires 12 intelligence and it's magical property only works for physical attacks. I still need it every time though. It just feels good having it, plus, I have the intelligence, so why not?

The side crypt contains compa's first encounter with Gargoyles (2hits, melee), and Jade Gargoyles (1-2 hits, ranged), as well as Skeletons: 20hp and 2-4 damage per hit taken means 5-10 hits, averaging 7. Thankfully, these fellas pose virtually no threat with their lumbering speed, and my zap costs barely any mana. However, they hit hard in melee, so one shouldn't grow complacent while fighting them. In fact, from then on, avoiding melee will be the order of the day.

After finishing up the rest of the forest, it was time to head to the crypt proper. A krug after the solitary skeleton dropped Healing Hands, finishing up my repertoire, and right at the last few wolves, I made it to Nature Magic level 3. Rounding up the last few enemies even gave me 10-15% towards the next level.

To compare where I was before. At the start, past the starting bridge, just as a level 1 nature mage, I'd have to duck and dodge between farm skrubb spits and tempt fate with scouts. Now? I could kill the last two of them (The last two I met in the entire game. I love no-respawn for this reason) before they got to act!

Unfortunately, Nature Magic level 3 also did something unfortunate: It upped my Zap's cost from 2 to 3. This was a massive 50%, which not even the slightly reduced "casts needed to kill" could properly offset. Later on, with extra intelligence (During level 4), and even more later on, with items this could be offset, but right here, and right now, it was a game changer.

The crypt was rather uneventful: I picked up the two hacks dropped by the captain and the skeleton guard respectively, and tried to not open the rest of the sarcophagi/urns, to prevent their loot from despawning. I grabbed the healthy boots and replaced my own leather boots with them, finishing up the set of magic items I wanted before stonebridge, and I locked one skeleton to test if monsters despawn(they don't). (I'd come back later once I've got my mules) For reference, I dropped the Altan's Leather, previously my go-to item on every run in the last ten years, and it despawned. 19 gold just isn't worth it and a dropped Torn Leather's armor of 16 > +5 HP any day.

The Ruby Gargoyle was hit by Sleepy Gas (Another lucky drop), then got zapped. Sleepy Gas is a wonderful spell, at least early on, when the health totals don't make it cost more than half your mana bar. In fact, this was the ONLY way I can reduce insta-hitting bosses' damage. I expect it to be useful against the giant spider too.

Next was the run to stonebridge. If the skeletons didn't pound it into my head, then the krug grunts definitely would have, that Melee Range isn't for nature mages. They also took plenty of hits to kill (About 15 mana at level 4, 20+ at level 5, another sign of how the increased skill level affects my mana economy) I fought myself down to the camp, not touching the tower, then ran past Futak's little beach party.

Once there, it was selling off my stuff, buying Flash and Spark for offense, Orb of Frost to add up my damage when it gets tough, but no dancing zap on sale yet.

But seeing how bad Spark is energy-wise, at least at start, I shelved it. I don't know how it's mana costs scales up. If it's worse than Zap's(+1/2 lvls), then the skill is hopeless. But if it's +1/3lvls or better, then we'll be good. I have to keep it in mind though that scaling isn't a perfectly linear, but a rather precarious curve for each spell, so checking every few level ups will be a good idea.

I slotted Flash into my second attack spell slot, and rearranged my hotkeys, and got the following setup.

1: Zap (dropped by the first krug ever)
2: Flash (shop)
3: Sleepy Gas (drop in the crypt)
4: Healing Hands (drop from a krug after the first skeleton)
5: Orb of Frost (shop)
6: Magic Armor (picked up from a lakeside house before the bear)

Spark is shelved for possible uses, I got Silverhoof and Flare as my pack carriers, and it was time to finish up the krug camp, and the rest of the crypts. And lo and behold, the skeleton I closed in alone dropped another copy of flash. Too bad there are no other nature mages with me, because now this is 60 gold down the drain. With the crypts and the rest of Stonebridge (There is some decent loot in crates alongside the shoreline) cleared, I gotten two inventories worth of loot, and reloaded the magic seller's stock, who finally decided to put Dancing Zap on sale. Yay!

With plenty of gold, level 5 + 80%, and two pack mules, it was time to put this chapter behind me. It was time for the game to really begin.

[El Grillo]

Cool writeup! I very vaguely recall playing this game in the early 2000s, so I can just about follow along, but I honestly never thought I'd hear Dungeon Siege mentioned again. It sounds like you have a plan for how to tackle the game with this variant, what will be the trickiest aspect, damage or survivability?

[Brian Shanahan]

It'd be nice if you could post a few screenshots. Never seen the game, though I think I know the type.

[Bacchus]

Yeah, I was struck with surprise that this game has a current following. I do remember it being fun, in some ways more fun than Diablo.

[gsorel]

[Boro]

Oh there are screenshots., I passed the 150 mark just yesterday, around the time I hit Glacern, and I'll post some as soon as I can.

For the question, it's both offense and defense. Some foes in the mines (Rock Beasts, Horrids, Mine Worms and Krug Commanders) took a lot to kill while Darklings were the worst in terms that they could make my health disppear in a flash... Still, the versatility of the Nature mage meant I manged without guzzling a potion.

I haven't drunk one since a long ago. I want to see how far I can go this way

Edit: I managed to squeeze a couple of pics, almost the entire highlight of chapter 1 into this mosaic:

[Boro]

Chapter Two: Journey to the Overseer

The hulking and killer gremals posed no problems at all, and I got level 6 on the first few krugs. Finally, I could begin using dancing Zap, one of the cornerstone spells mentioned by nature mage "experts" on the internet.

Now, Dancing Zap is a peculiar spell. It fires a bunch of globules, each doing damage to anything nearby. They move erratically, doing the most damage in point blank range, and the direction is somewhat corresponding to the line drawn to the target's "target point" and your location. For example, if you fire at low-disposition enemies, they'll clip through the floor and fly through it into the nothingness below.

We don't want that. We want them to stay near as many enemies as much as possible. Another interesting part is that all the globules disappear if the targeted enemy dies. As such it's worth targeting a spot on the ground (but not a close one), or a high hp unit in the far back, such as archers, or krug chuckers, so that an entire enemy mob gets the dancing zap treatment.

Even without this knowledge, getting up to the glitterdelve pass was easy enough, as no group was too large to defeat. I had the closest brush to death before the rope bridge, accumulating hits from the shamen and the chuckers, but a quick casting of healing hands pulled me out.

There is one thing I learned here for certain: Playing this variant absolutely demands hotkeys if you don't want to abuse the pause button, and using healing hands is faster than drinking a potion. Interestingly, this let me do more daring maneuvers and handle larger groups with Compa than with any other characters before, save for the combat mages perhaps.

Wesrin Cross, informally known as the Spider Dungeon, was a nice step up from the tame, almost yawny farmlands and the constant monotony of the krug. With slow monsters, slower archers, no enemy armor, and large groups, the opposition was rather tame for the first part. Then the second part introduced Mucosae, which were fast, fragile, and deadly, the ranged vile mucosae (it's like as if their spittle curves mid-air to home in on you, but it doesn't... I can't get that nagging feeling to go away *shudders*), and the Rectors, flying flame skulls whose projectiles are actually fast and hard to dodge.

There was another near-death situation when I encountered the first Rector, coupled with a spider ambush (spiders coming out of the grated floor), a skeleton archer battery, and several vile mucosae, at the same time. I was eating melee and ranged attacks faster than I was comfortable with. There were moments where Compa waded through a literal carpet of spiders dripping their spittle and with the rector's fireballs pelting her back, having barely enough time to launch the next healing hands to keep herself out of the embrace of death! Tough stuff! Still, they did themselves in by combining into a death ball, tough for melee fighters lacking AoE damage, but making them dancing zap bait.

Compa was just shy of level 7 when she entered, and she made it to level 10 by the spider tunnel parts. A trip back to town turned up a +6 armor spellbook, upping Compa's defense from 37 to 43, another 1/6 of damage eaten. By this point, she could take out anything but the dark mucosae with two shots, and even oneshot regular mucosa. And the best of it all, she could do it without regard for the engaged group's size, so in the great hall, I had a lot of fun rounding up large mobs and AoEing them down with my spells.

One might wonder why this supposedly variant character is having such an easy time here though. The slow and numerous enemies are one thing, the other is my level. I'm level 10 in an area where a 4man party would be level 4-6. That's about five levels!!! All that experience condensed allowed my nature mage to hit level 11 in the halls. This meant more mana from higher intelligence, higher spell damage (and cost), and possibly higher armor penetration, if damage calculation goes the same way as dungeon siege 2, where your nominal damage is multiplied by the ratio of (2x Character_Level / enemy_total_defense). My nature mage is easily twice as powerful, when factoring in the extra intelligence and nature magic levels, as a "full" four strong party, especially considering her AoE capabilities using Dancing Zap allowing her to ignore the number of enemies engaged. Plus, she was royally equipped too!

So Compa made a good progress clearing the right side of the hall, the only notable drops being Zapper Glyph, and Summon Killer Gremal: The first is hopelessly outclassed by dancing zap, while the second is a melee summon, and melee summons are bad in this game: too much mana for too little effect.

Finally, the Mucosa Brute, the second boss of this area croaked alongside it's cronies (I didn't even target him more than twice, just DZapping his cronies got him with the fragmentation damage) and let me open the gate to the Giant Spider.

She is the second "act boss" of the game, and just like the Ruby Gargoyle, you have to kill her in order to progress. She is deadly in melee, with a stomp-barrage that can take compa out if she takes a whole salvo, and a relatively tame spray attack. Absolutely deadly for melee characters who don't have too much extra armor at this point, but a cakewalk for anyone with ranged options, such as Compa. I enchanted her with Magic Armor and two castings of Orb of Frost, then went to town.

My strategy here was to cast dancing zap as close to her as possible, then dance out of her melee barrage. It worked most of the time, but at least twice I was grazed by a single stomping hit, and it took almost a quarter of my life! Yikes, I'm not looking forward to doing it with a melee character.

Anyways, 450 hp or not, the giant spider died eventually, with no potions used, and only a few quick healing hands needed to keep me topped. I almost ran out of mana, but that's mostly because casting the orb took almost a half of my mana bar. The boss drops were junk, and were added to my mule's pack, and with one mule completely filled up, I resolved to hit the next merchant up and clear the rest of the great hall later, rather than risk running out of inventory space.

So up the elevator I went, and in the small treasury/store room found the successor of the Puller Staff, a Feisty Cruel staff: an uncommon (purple) item with 4 mods: two melee mods, +6 armor and +12 health! Not quite a jackpot, as I would have liked +1 nature magic and +12 or so mana somewhere in there as well, but you can't have everything. I also found a riveted leather, another +2 armor upgrade, and retired my torn leather.

The next merchant (Bodrus) was in the mining town of Glitterdelve, where the Wesrin Crossing surfaces. I offloaded my mule to him, scoring another 7k gold to my 14k (just for reference, my first Chapter accumulated a net total of 2k, and we aren't even through half of the second chapter.), opened the shortcut back to stonebridge (I went back there, but found nothing useful on the smith or Adwanna), and got an upgraded pair of gloves from Bodrus, sporting +6 armor.

Cleanup was routine, Compa hit level 12 in the great hall, putting her WAY above the usual multiplayer character stomping around those levels (If my calculations are correct, then it's close to 3x the power) Another benefit of returning to the halls was that it reloaded Bodrus' stock, and the second time he had a Spidersilk Hauberk with a base armor of 32 (with +3 armor as a mod totaling it to 35) in stock, and that was a large upgrade from the studded leather's 19 armor which I just bought from Stonebridge before (Yes, I went to Stonebridge first, expecting no INT-based armor to show up, and spent some coin on the nonmagical studded leather, the best no-req armor you can buy. Yes, it was another 100g down the drain and no, it's not going to be a problem.)

Finally, Compa relieved the merchant's partner from his extra mule, Mabel, and we were ready for the Dwarven Mines.

The mines themselves were duplicitous. Of dual nature. On one hand, the krug at this point posed no threat to a nature mage beefed up on magic armor, and were little more than hanging XP and loot bags to be picked, and Compa danced through them with ease. Same deal with Scorpions — Mucosa with more HP and that's roughly it. Rock Beasts took more hits to kill, but were no threat at all, their damage just not enough to really scratch me, and my healing was always on hand too! Mine Worms, Moths... Dancing Zap fodder. Horrids are Rock Beasts 2.0, except with more damage, and Krug Commanders were horrids without any speed to speak of. Most of the challenge from these foes was to figure out how to take them down with the least tedium.

Darklings on the other hand... They fire a mono-spark at you, which is just like yours, except it fires only one homing spark-missile, and it's fired in a straight line rather than left and right, it's impossible to dodge without some wall to bait it into. Best of all it deals reasonable damage. Ironically it's reliability makes it more useful than my spark... however even that pales to the might of my dancing zap.

So for the first time in this game I had fights on my hand that were actually tense. Darklings would appear from concealment in groups of twos and threes, and could easily take my hp down to 1/3 or half even when I concentrated on them.

Of course, even that changed. There is one room full of hidden darklings, and it didn't take me much time to figure out that these guys had to be dealt with pronto. Enter one unused spell of my arsenal: Zapper Glyph. It's a spell introduced in the expansion set, that drops a glyph that counts down from five seconds and explodes the moment it senses an enemy within range. It's not as impressive damage-wise as the combat mage counterpart Acid Glyph, but it has a LOT of range and reliability to it's credit. It has a suitably large mana bill too, but it could take almost a roomful of these bastards down with two castings, and even reveal hidden ones caught in the explosion radius! It was definitely worth every single mana point used here.

I didn't use it all the time. Smaller groups of darklings could still be handled with use of terrain (read: ducking behind corners) to clump them up and reduce damage taken, while larger encounters found zapper glyph and more intensive use of healing hands.

Lootwise I found my first +x to Nature Magic Damage staff right after the first room, a measly +1-2 bonus but I started using it anyways. I didn't bother actually checking how the damage works with Dancing Zap, as it's too random for me to notice any correlation. Aside from that, many melee weapons had +mana modifiers, which was nice but the 15 strength requirement made it unattainable. Another nice find was that Fiber Boots, which have only 12 Dex as requirements were all readily usable and had nice magic mods, for entry level magic gear at least. My healthy boots at +15 health were however better than the +3 armor or +7 health I found so far.

This is another nice feature of the expansion. Along with the spells, the ability to have specialized ranger and mage gear with DEX and INT requirements respectively, rather than forcing them to use robes (mages) and fighter hand-me-downs (Rangers) as per vanilla dungeon siege.

I found a nice bow with 14 Dexterity as requirement sporting +29 mana, and stashed it for future use. I can probably equip it once I'm around level 22-24 I expect, and although I won't fire it even a single time, it's mana boost will help me out at least a bit.

Management-wise I had to do a single run back to Bodrus once my mules were 2.7/3 full, and I was confident the rest could be all picked and cleared up with three mulefuls of inventory space.

After that, the rest of the mines went down in a hurry, and Compa cleared house with plenty of inventory space to spare. No notable bosses were encountered (the Venom Scorpion died in the first part of the mines), all chests were opened, and I was able to say goodbye to the krug for good. There were some "Stairs Traps" when you drop down into a rock-beast ambush or two, but not even those were a threat. With 90 armor (thanks to a perma magic-armor enchanted shield), Dancing Zap, and Zapper Glyph for large darkling blobs, I turned the situatons on their heads.

Finally, as always, I had fun dispatching the group of two commanders, some shamen, and an assortment of Raiders, Chuckers and Guards blocking the elevator out of the mines. I've come to call them the "farewell party", since they are the last krug in the entire game, and the elevator itself is a HUGE turning point in every sense of the word in this campaign.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Since there were some Darklings there as well, I broke Zapper Glyph out first, taking them and most of the weaker krug out in two castings, including the annoying shamen. From then on, I combined the commanders into a deathblob, and kept dancing-zapping them until they finally gave up. I was in no danger from the moment the second glyph went off, and Compa finished this first part of the game in style

Then, I took the elevator, and emerged into the snow-covered mountains.

This elevator is a dividing point.

Up until now, you fought in farmlands, green mountains, crypts, dungeons and dark mines barely lit by flickering torches, classic fantasy fare. From now on, you'll never see a familiar environment again, up until the very end of the game, but even that will be different...

Up to this moment, I fought mostly against krugs, save for the dungeons that broke up the monotony (Although both the ending of the crypts and the beginning of Werin Cross featured a couple of krug shamen). From now on, I'd never see a single krug again (I said this many times by now :D), thank goodness.

Up until now, most enemies were dispatched en-masse, and were weak with little HP or armor, and rarely posed a threat. From now on, all but the weakest enemies will pass the 120-130hp mark, easily going up to 200 with both good damage and speed too.

Yes, I love this part of the game. Pulling the lever to send the elevator out of the mines will always be special to me. It yanks me from the comfortable and the familiar into a place where the adventure really starts.

And it starts because WOW those white/snow wolves have 153hp each and there's five of them? (almost 20% more than the rock beasts), Klaw monsters with 202, more health, more damage and a LOT faster than the Krug Commanders, and there's six of them converging on me?

I started counting. 5-6 dancing zaps for the wolves, 7+ for the klaw, lots of healing hands inbetween still made it pretty workable, nothing like praying for successful rolls to hit with a melee specialist.

The enemy lineup soon got their ranged specialists in the form of humanoid sheeps called Braak Mages. They could each fire a trio of ice shards at me in an arc, at a decent rate. Since there were often five or more of them, that meant a LOT of ice shards. They didn't hurt too much, but it obscured much of my screen and contributed to me eating hits from white wolves and klaws.

That was the way I came to the Furok cave, the furok which are long haired yetis or something with big clawed paws. The game went completely off the rails when it comes to monster design. Aside from the undead (there are still more after the fury den), you'll never find a staple or overused fantasy monster in this game ever again. Anyways, the Furok Cave was populated, aside from the Furoks, with braak mages (five Zapper Glyphs) and the miniboss, the Grizly Furok which, as usual with these minibosses, was just a Furok with more hp and armor. There was also the Dark Klaw miniboss along the way either before or after the cave, I can't recall.

Still, I didn't have to drink potions, so I was fine.

At some point or another, I switched from the +1-2 NM damage staff to the Brilliant Cruel Staff I found on a plateau just above the elevator, since it had HP, Armor and Mana, for better survivability, but that was it. Some more encounters, a few Furok, Wolves and Klaws, and I was home free in Glacern.

There were no spells to buy, aside from maybe healing wind, since I was well overleveled beyond the usual expectations, a full 8 levels above the minimum required to enter in multiplayer (I was level 16), and 6-7 levels above my last party. This allowed me to use the best gear on sale at the smith though, and I bought another armor upgrade in the form of a Crude Electric Plate (49 armor) with a mostly useless mod (chance to cast zap upon being struck, meh), better than my 32+3 spidersilk hauberk (with the same mod by the way). Similarly, I found a glove upgrade, +2 armor and +12 health. There was a no-requirements short bow of the fox, gaining me +17 health, and finally a Rough (+3 armor) mushroom cap shield (8 base armor of the badger (+12 health) to replace my Decrepit shield (4 base armor) of Magic Armor (+11 armor, prevents casting of magic armor). Sure I had to re-cast my magic armor from now on, but I had a grand total of +23 armor compared to my previous equipment, bringing it up to 106. I then finished the quest (to talk to Ada Riverstan), and that way gained a magic ring of +3 armor. With magic armor up, I could hit 120, which is 33% more than I had before at 90, when I entered the mines. Neat stuff, absolutely necessary for the next part of the game.

Finally, I bought out the entire stock of the Frozen Yak Corral, and added Midnight, Goldie, and Benny to my mule following. Compa was being followed by six packmules. I hope this will be enough to carry my loot between two merchant points in the game from now on, or that I can get one more. heh.

This brought chapter two to a close. I talked to the Overseer, picked up the next quests, and braced myself for the hardships to come.

(no screenies yet because uploading is a pain at 32kbps :/ )

[Boro]

Just chiming in: Compa has achieved her set goal of reaching the Traveler Camp, making her the first singleplayer character to do that since 2002, and she didn't stop there. She did the dark forest (which is a lot darker than D2's Dark Wood), the Eastern Swamp, the goblin lair/factory, and the following forest/temple route, and she's comfortably sitting in Fortress Kroth, preparing herself for the final push towards Castle Ehb and the conclusion of the campaign.

[Boro]

Chapter three: The Search for Merik

Before heading off, there was one last errand to run. Ada Riverstan's house had a cellar, and that cellar opened into a cave that led to a snowy outcropping guarded by two Furok Slashers (as strong as the Grizly Furok each!). There was some loot there, but it was worthless, and got sold. Although the staff was a Strength adder, and combined with a spellbook costing about 50k gold, could have raised my strength to 13, enough to wear some magical warrior gear. However I declined that, reasoning that my stuff is decent enough and I didn't see any particular piece of equipment that needed STR and would have helped me.

Aside from that, this chapter was the shortest of my entire run. The first part was the continued roam in the snowy landscape, broken by the blacksmith's cellar (Quest: Homeless Blacksmith) that had some OK loot and a health fountain, but nothing notable. Shortly after that part, I found the Pitiful Braak miniboss, who dropped pitiful loot, and was dispatched with pitiful difficulty along with the nearby Ice Cellar 2. Then there was a vale with a mana shrine but without enemies to fight (the closest were far enough that I didn't bother pulling them there, since Compa was mana-efficient enough) and a small mine filled with scorpions (laughably easy) just right of the Ice Bridge.

The only new enemies in the area were the melee-only cousins of the Braak Mages, the regular Braak, and of course the enhanced versions of the Furok, the Furok Slashers. The cellars held some Frost Spitters, spiders who spat blue flame looking projectiles that did minimal damage. The scorpions were a nice throwback though, it felt good blowing them up with single castings of dancing zap

The second part, of course, was the Ice Caverns. As usual with this game, by the time you get comfortable with an area's set of foes, the area changes, and new challenges appear.

This time the challengers were the 288hp Ice Warriors, the 240hp Ice Archers, and the weakish 99hp Ice Fly enemies, along with the slow moving but rapidly-attacking Frostnids, again, melee cousins of the Frost Spitters. Ice Flies often attacked en-masse (if you were paying attention, this means easy dispatching with AoE spells), Ice Archers clumped up and could rapidly damage Compa's health down, and Ice Warriors were relentlessly chasing her, robbing her from advantageous positions to take the Archers out. There were also some Ice Mages (130-ish hp, extra dead enchanted), who looked like witches and could summon one ice warrior or archer each. Those summons could drop loot, by the way.

The only way to counter them was to pull them in bigger groups and use Zapper Glyph to take them out all at once. The mana used on zapper glyphs saved me from spending mana on healing instead. This worked to a degree. Since only so many enemies can be active (with AI, chasing after the player, casting spells, attacking, etc.) at a time, most of the time all they reacted to the glyph damage was to converge on the glyph's location, and otherwise standing still and doing nothing. This made it a lot harder to get them done with a single salvo of glyphs, and stretched my mana supply on more occasions than one. Still, I didn't need to drink a potion, as managing my mules was all the time I needed to regen.

The mini-game (find the three secret paths, to build the bridge and cross it to the snow shrine) was easy, I found the three side-paths (The first path is before the first archway, going up and straight, the second one is after the second archway, going downwards and to the right, while the third is right at the beginning of the large U-turn from where you can see the frost archer miniboss.) and claimed my first rare (gold item) as my reward. It was a staff (yes!) and it was junk (meh) chock full of melee/ranged mods.

The rest of the ice cave was pretty routine, herding groups together and taking them out with zapper glyph, using Dancing Zap and Spark to take stragglers out, up until the last part, where the frost drakes showed up. Frost Drakes have 900+ hp and hit hard. How hard? Well, the drake has three attacks, and uses them depending on how far you are. For close range it has two melee attacks: One kick with the hind legs, and a double-bite attack that strikes twice. Each hit(!) could take half of Compa's health out. For range, it has a frost breath, that can deal again, as much as half of compa's health in a single attack. The melee attack, is fortunately easy to tempt, but the ranged one has a further reach than my dancing zap... So my strategy was to bait it into meleeing, then keep tempting the drake and casting dancing zap up close for maximum damage, healing up when necessary.

This worked well for the first drake, but I got cocky when attacking the second one. I foolhardily pulled a group of ice archers/warriors into the dance to conserve mana, and they whittled my health down to around half while I was dancing with the dragon as well, and then I had to run under the dragon to finish the pull, and ouchie. That was the first dead Compa. So much for a "queen run" heh. But, since this is not hardcore, I reloaded to the save I made right before that second dragon, dealt with him without much trouble, then cleaned the ice archer/warrior pack up, and freed Merik.

Now that I looked at Merik's loadout with my solo NM's perspective, I found to my surprise that he isn't as poorly equipped as I thought him to be, when my main spells were Flash and Zap and I was younger than ten He had Iceshard (not an instant hit like zap and has a lower rate of casting, but deals more damage, and costs the same mana) in his spellbook, and Firespray (blah), Resurrect (necessary for any party), Dancing Zap (Uberspell), Hold Creature (never used it) and Healing Wind (A++ for any party since it heals the entire party once, but a bit less powerful for a solo character).

His equipment was no less impressive. Starlight Vestibute had +2 intelligence and +1 to health and mana regeneration (The +1 regen alone doubled my mana regeneration rate), and +20 armor added to it's base 20 armor, only 9 less than my crude electric plate, neat! His Satin Boots had +24 health, +29 mana and +1 intelligence, so I retired my healthy boots (found in the crypt when I was just a level 3 zap caster ) and said hello to a massive increase of +104 mana, totalling me to 621.

All this at the cost of 9 armor too!

After stripping him of his gear (which will serve me well), I cleaned up the farewell committee of a dozen ice warriors accompanying a frost drake (the third, and final in this entire campaign). The next stretch was again just a bunch of Klaws, Braak Mages, and White Wolves, old hat for a level 21 nature mage, and thus did I reach Jeriah's Trading post, where I switched my long-worn Woven headgear (+12 hp) to a Wooly cap of +1 Nature Magic, and sold off the loot, netting me 294k gold total.

This is how chapter 3 ended, and Chapter 4, the Warding Staff began.

Chapter 4... Looking for the staff that might help me but finding something way worse.

In the next area, the Crystal Caverns, I made a terrible discovery: Zapper Glyph doesn't award experience. OUCH. That's a lot of XP lost by glyphing down large mobs. Infuriated as I was, I blazed through the area, grouping enemies and dancing-zapping them down. Great Trog Warrior, and the Shadow Lunger went down in a hurry, dying alongside the rest of their packs, and I regained most of my levels. (By the swamp, the XP loss would be worth half a level at most, and by the end of the game, a single enemy would award about as much as I wasted, so it's not a big deal. Still I tossed the spell onto the junk carrier mule to be sold at the next stop.)

In the forest, I found to my surprise that This Was It ™, the training wheels were off for good. Dancing Zap, Flash and Spark stopped scaling any higher with my nature magic. I was level 27 (Modified to 28 with the wooly cap), and they all refused to go higher than 24-26, and the only spell I could still get higher was the laughably weak Iceshard, which I only used to finish off near-death enemies up till now. I was literally running on dancing zap's fumes! Thankfully it was good enough to get me to the Traveler Camp (level 18 to enter in multiplayer mode, I was 9 levels higher than that, so I knew I was good level-wise ). As for gold, I hit 600k by selling all my excess accumulated loot, and could afford an improved spellbook (+51 mana) and spent about 80k on spells too.

There I got a much needed spell upgrade: Lightning (instead of iceshard), and Iceblast (Instead of Spark). Dancing Zap, as it is, remained my sole AoE spell so I kept it. Lightning was a slower-firing Zap and dealt more damage than iceshard, whereas iceblast fired a flurry of five shards of ice, doing five times the nominal damage listed on the spell's page(30-40). In reality, the enemy armor rating cut it down to about 20 on average, so I averaged 100 against the Forest Trolls' 540 health (and regen), but even that was a step up from the crappy 50 per dancing zap. To top it off it cost 20 mana as opposed to Dancing Zap's 30.

Other spells of note were Mana Shield (YES, my lovely mana shield!) to improve my durability (It distributes damage between health and mana, putting my mana regeneration into play), Regeneration (To improve my health regen), Accuracy (Dex Boost) and Focused Mind (Int boost). I already had Accuracy, and skipped on Focused Mind for now.

Since all these spells stack in duration, I used my massive mana regen and cheaper spells to buff myself with a lot of each (Magic Armor, Regen, Accuracy, MS) when I had some excess mana to spare inbetween fights.

This was a good thing too, because even with the extra mana, spellpower, and durability, things were going really slow. Whereas in the ice caves I coulld kill a group in 5-6 casts, here I needed 4-5 casts to kill a single enemy, and encounter sizes didn't change much. Still, I slogged on, fighting the Gorack (900 hp, yikes), enraged gorack (1000+, more armor), and even the bandits, who were extra difficult because they had the same speed as me, being humans. Thankfully, there aren't many of them in this map, and they were dealt with using tried and true tactics of happy feet and tempting fate. It struck me ironic that whereas in the early game I spent a most of the time moving my mules up and distributing the loot, now I was moving so slow, and needed so much maneuvering room (Stringing enemies out if possible, round and round, kinda like an icy Ember) that I barely touched my mules at all!

It did come to an end eventually, by opening up to the swamp, which was even slower, if that's possible at all. By this point, I picked Focused Mind up (from a return-trip to the Traveler Camp to see if they had any useful spells) and found a staff of +3-8 nature magic damage (Which improved my damage by 15% or so!), but even with all that I was struggling for every slimy, muddy, murky pool of water and dank patch of ground.

But before that, I turned to the right and looted the Lost Witch's garden. She dropped junk.

The swamp temple caused me my second death, where I stumbled into more laser gargoyles than I could handle, whose attacks I can't avoid and couldn't outheal. Nyeh, good thing I saved often. The zombies and other nastiness was handled with patience, taking another page from the offensively crippled sorcy's book. Slightly later I died again (I know, I shouldn't mention Ember with a character who dies-a-lot), when I stumbled into more swamp witches (who summon 270hp slingers who hurt a lot from range or 1040hp monsters who hurt me even more in melee) than I could handle. I ran out of mana, refused to drink, and eventually ran out of life too. My mistake here was to follow the road without making sure I had retreat room. As bad as that defeat was, however, I was tired enough from the 8 hours total of playing to call it a day.

The next morning I progressed more cautiously, skipping a bit of the U-Turn that was lost in the previous death, and I reached the next vendor in no time (25 minutes). Then I died again. Cause, Laser Gargoyles, and that the brand new Major Heal I picked up acts with a bit more delay than the healing hands I was used to.

I regained the lost ground with little difficulty now, perseverance winning the day, although the swamp trolls (480hp and fast health regeneration) took a lot of happy feet to finish off.

After that, I did a run back to the Traveler camp, both to refresh Verna's stock and to check if there's something new at the magic vendor there. Turns out there was, and I picked up two new spellbooks, one with -5% from the cost of Ice spells, and one with +71 mana. I made the mana book my main spellbook, and put all my excess spells into the other. Verna was nice too, this time offering multispark on sale (Which was the spell I wanted, as it is the other "power spell" mentioned by google grand mages). It deals slightly more damage than Iceblast, and it's a homing spell, with all the inaccuracy of the regular spark, but this time it fires four of them instead of two. It was a much more elegant way to deal with the bronze gargoyles than point blank iceblast, that's for sure.

Compa was level 37, modified to 39 by that time, 13 levels higher than the multiplayer 24, and 12 levels higher than the hirable party member Andiemus (level 25 nature mage, 90k, junk gear, but iceblast as his main spell), so my XP loss wasn't very noticable, if at all.

And would you believe it, one island later I found the entrance of the goblin hideout, in the stump of a rotten swamp tree.

At this point I had a decision to make: Clear out the swamp and hope for another chance at Verna's stock, or push through the goblins and see what comes up at the next vendor.

On one hand, Verna's unlikely to restock if I stay in the swamp, on the other hand, there is a nice staff, one of the best in the game, at the end of the goblin dungeon. So Compa headed for the goblins.

The entrance led to an elevator. The elevator led to a stairs trap. Except there was no escape from that one, since if I went to the elevator valve to launch it back up, I'd have to happy feet on the elevator platform all on it's way up. I had no choice though, and my saving grace was that there were so many goblins, the game couldn't assign each an AI again and most of them just sat down there doing nothing.

Those I had to dance with on the elevator ride up (and already sending the mules AWAY from the top end of the elevator, rookie mistake) almost killed Compa (There WAS need for major amounts of Major Heal), but with lots of dancing zapping, they were weakened to the point where a multispark or iceblast could finish them off.

Down I went again, and cleared some more room out to work with. Then came a corridor with flamethrower tanks and more goblins.

The enemies up to this point were:

Goblin Grunts: 320hp green guys that die to 2 iceblasts/multisparks.
Goblin Guards: 440hp armored guys that die to 3 iceblasts/multisparks.
Heaters: 460hp flamethrower tanks, takes a lot to kill, no threat.
Gobbot Igniters: 660hp goblin bots, uses flamethrower, deals negligible damage.

Then I met the kill bots, the bane of my solo multiplayer mode warrior. 400hp and slow to move, but it eats Compa's HP so fast that a deathblob of them can theoretically take her from full to zero in a single split-second attack animation. The area after the corridor was a nice walkabout, so after clearing it, I decided it was safe to move the mules down the elevator (and I had a full inventory anyways, so they were due to a visit). Then came a bridge-y area with a valve and a toxic gas pipe... it dealt a total of 1 damage to the goblins who came through it (Good because I kept the rest of their XP).

Around that time I met Gobbot Shockers, who were the same as the igniters, except they dealt more damage. Oddly, their lightning guns are usable by mages, only requiring 14 dexterity and 17 intelligence. They still award XP towards ranged skill, so I'll have to pass on that. The other new enemy were the Blaster tanks, 840hp and a grenade attack that does... (Guess what!) scratch damage. Sometimes the fastest way to kill them was to sit in their face and multispark away.

Other enemies of note were the Box-delivered Proxos (walking bombs of 40hp that suicide against you in melee... laughable threat), and the flying copters (300hp, dies to two multisparks, deals somewhat respectable damage with a nose mounted lightning gun). One more room, and I'm at the small bridge where you can pull a lever to switch the bridge from north-south to east-west. Obviously it is there to allow a nice loop and lengthen the entire dungeon run without stretching it out too much. Next up are Hunters (440hp kill bots that have an even bigger bite), Perforators (680hp Gatling-wielding spider-legged mechs) and Blasters (840hp Grenade tossing tanks). Of the three, only the Hunters posed a threat. Perforators and Blasters could force healing when they were present in large numbers, but I could handily separate them most of the time.

The loop was thankfully short, and contained only a treasure room of note, tucked in a corner designed to look like it's a dead end. Heh, can't fool me though.

Operating the bridge lever opened up the second half of the dungeon, introducing the Gobbot Grenadier (same hp as the other gobbots, minimal threat). However, one thing to note, is that when combined with melee bots (hunters) and goblins (normal or guard), even this scratch damage can add up sometimes. This was the case of the room right after the bridge-room. At first it was an ordinary room clear: pull in ones or pairs, dispatch them, kill the enemies that emerge from side-garages, and handle the group that arrives by the moving platform.

But that other end of the moving platform! Four copters, half-dozen Hunter bots, Two heaters and blasters each, and an assortment of gobbots, with no space to maneuver in.

What to do in this situation? First, frantically pull the lever and send the platform back, sending multisparks to weaken the opposition. That worked without any hunters getting onto the platform (which would be a hell to handle, thanks to their massive melee attack. But now, they were crowded around my landing point.

What to do... Save the game, stock up on buffs (mostly mana shield and regeneration, I had three hours of magic armor prebuffed already), load Dancing Zap, and let the fun begin. Microloops, avoiding tempting fate wherever possible, healing up early and often, and going round and round, sending 30hps of dancing zap through the crowd (Hey, don't laugh, this was still better than trying to work it by using multispark!). This worked well enough, the hunters soon combined into a deathblob which is exactly what I wanted, thanks to my diminished but still not useless AoE powers, and the game went on. Round and round I went, but eventually I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. First a copter went bust, then another, and soon the hunters gave in aswell.

Once the pressure started letting up, and a few gobbots disappeared, I switched back to multispark for the last few foes, and it was a routine cleanup. Almost all my mana was spent during this battle, but Compa emerged victorious, without a single potion gulped.

The rest of the dungeon was more of an exercise in tedium rather than an actual challenge. Kill off the melee, then grab a drink while Compa finishes off the rest of the completely harmless enemies. With this feeling I arrived to the third act-boss of this game, the Goblin Robo-Suit.

This monster packed 3120Hp and a lot of armor, backed up by a chest-mounted grenade launcher, arm-mounted Flamethrower, arm-mounted Gatling Gun and shoulder-mounted Lightning Gun. All combined it was enough offense to drain my mana supply through Mana Shield, and after bringing it down to 1800hp, Compa had to play a bit of hide and seek to recharge. Once the second round began, there was no quarter given. Compa squared off against the wood-and-metal monstrosity and kept casting and healing until she won. The "uberdrop" was trash, and got put onto the junk packmule.

The Warding Staff was a nice staff though, except it didn't increase my damage with neither Iceblast nor Multispark.

Chapter Five, an ancient evil (or two).

For a change of pace, Compa mowed down the enemies of the beach (leaving the 720hp sea manglers for later) and headed deep into the following forest area, since then next merchant, Thayne was right around the corner. Or, in this case, Infested Larch miniboss. Oh well.

Enemies of note: Larch 888hp (same as swamp creature but with more defense), Forest Phrak 180hp, Spiked Dweller 285hp (Same as spiked maw but tougher), and the odd cyclops (1240hp) here and there. Our old friends, the black wolves from before the swamp returned, but were taken down en-masse.

The next merchant held a wonderful spell with the paltry requirement of nature magic at level 42, namely Shock Wave. This was 66% stronger than dancing zap, and my first area effect spell since the end of the crystal caves, woo. It was rare for a session of slogging through slow areas to end with me feeling like a god, but it was in full effect here. Even though the damage was still relatively weak. For the moment, I was happy as a clam.

Money-wise, the single "Massive Club" that a cyclops dropped sold for 200k, and I was firmly above 4 million, even after expenses. The maximum gold is again, 10 million -1, seven 9s in a row, like this: 9999999.

After consolidating my position, I went back to take the Sea Manglers out. Shock wave performed as I expected, and dealt with them in moderate time. (14-18 castings). Next up was visiting Verna again (no usable spells), finishing up the swamp (every last enemy was hunted down and killed), and recruiting the nature mage Andiemus as a bridge-operator (he was the closest character I found, and only cost me 90k which was small change). Thanks to his help I could cut down on the time needed to return to Thayne, who graciously gave me lightning blast and shock armor. The former replaced lightning as my cheap instant-hit spell, the latter became another defensive buff to stack on top of magic armor for the extra tough situations.

Those were aplenty in the Water Dungeon, but I'd rather not talk about that, or the death that happened here. The enemy lineup was Water Lungers (720hp tough, likes deathblobs and hits hard in melee), Water Slingers (ranged enemy, moderate danger) Pickers (bug versions of kill bots, 800hp), Unguis (tentacle, immobile, only dangerous if I enter in melee) and Shracks (fish with tentacles for fins, dies in two hits and can't come out of water). The death was a full to zero hp strike by the last enemy group in the entire dungeon, a classic lunger deathblob in action. Iceblast was the bread winning spell here, as multispark tended to hit the walls more than the enemies, most enemies had low disposition and I had a hard time hitting them.

After that painful slog (seriously, each enemy takes 6-8 attacks to kill. This is SLOW), I continued in the forest, breathing a sigh of relief that the claustrophobic confines of that dungeon were over. The game saw this, and threw darklings at me. Forest Darklings, I mean. Meaner, leaner than their mine cousins, even a single one forced me to use healing, while two at a time meant alternating two multisparks with a major heal.

Three were undoable, as I couldn't avoid or mitigate their homing attacks. Imagine if the Blood Stars were homing in diablo, and you got what I had to deal with. The spiked dwellers that sometimes popped up were harmless by comparison. For melee, the larches were replaced by Wraiths (740hp, two handed axe, hits hard), Battle Wraiths (960hp, hits faster), the miniboss Warrior Wraith (hits even harder, 1212 hp), and the relatively harmless Blue Drakes (1680hp, I didn't even come close to melee range, just took a step back every time it breathed blue stuff). Cleaning up the ruins entrance (an underground path towards fortress kroth, and the continuation of my campaign) took an hour in itself, separating forest darklings and melee enemies and taking them down in ones or twos. A full clear is a full clear, and I needed all the XP I could get. (I was still sore about that zapper glyph :P )

Behind the ruins entrance (The ruins are an underground area using mostly the mines/caves tileset), was a dead end with the biggest pack of darklings I've encountered (and tried to fight in vain on top of a mana shrine, no dice, the mana shield drained my mana until I couldn't heal and escaped from with a sliver of life remaining), a pair of darklings that forced my first potion use since I got my hands on the first healing spell, back before the crypt (I miscalculated my spell casts, I was on delay, and thought from the three sparks I saw that there were three of them).

The pressure was off now, I was again willing to use potions. I had enough gold that even if I had to drink a large potion for each enemy fought, I'd still have a fortune to spend on stuff by the end of the game. I finished that area, and the darkling cave and took on the two blue drakes without much difficulty. The loot was crap, but at least I got up to level 48.

Inside the ruins there were more wraiths, Wraith Archers (495hp, lots of damage but dodgeable, thank goodness), Googore Grubs (260hp grubs that evaded both my iceblasts and my multisparks, but shockwave took them down quickly), Googores (mine worm 2.0, 1330hp, negligible ranged threat, nasty melee bite), Wraith Mages (450hp wraiths firing homing missile pairs... pure pain), and finally, the Fury Spawn, tiny beholders shooting lasers out of their tentacles and sporting a colossal 1960 hit point count.

All the other foes could be easily separated and handled with some healing interspersed between attacking, but the fury spawn deserved respect. Their attacks can't be avoided, and they deal so much damage, that my only hope was using major heal after every multispark I sent into their face. I tried healing wind once, but it wasn't enough. No words can emphasize how painful it was to watch my HP plummet while waiting for my casting delay to end, hoping that I switched to my healing spell and my keyboard didn't eat the input.

This wasn't a quick dungeon though, only a few spawn to deal with before the inevitable FURY encounter. 4200hp, regular purple and green laser attacks, and a nasty breath that fires a ball of acid at me. After the fury spawns, I had serious doubts that I could win this battle.

The first try failed after I screwed up the shoot-heal-shoot routine, shooting twice and getting late with the heal.

Second try worked well, down the big bad bug to 2850hp and even managed to disengage. Apparently a lot of multispark projectiles fail to hit the fury, and I was losing damage. I buffed up with regen and shock armor, and the second round began...

...and failed at 2200hp-ish. Another heal came too late, and I was out of potions.

Third try was the charm. First I tried mana shield, got 400hp off of it before running out of juice. Healing on time was a better way to use that mana. I disengaged, recharged, refreshed my buffs, and came back for a third round.

Here I changed tactics. if I got close enough, it'd do a butt stomp attack, and I could dodge it, along with several breath attacks in a row, and when they missed they gave me an opening to attack again. Slow, patient play won the day here.

For the note I think it's possible to win this battle without disengaging once, by drinking a rejuvenation potion when you start running low on mana. That restores both health and mana while you do the drinking animation, so you won't miss out on healing in that downtime.

After that, Compa finished off the farewell party of wraith mages and fury spawn (the last one forced a red usage, I was slow on swapping spells) and it was onto the deserts and Fort Kroth.

The brand new enemy lineup here was

Skeleton Krug Dogs (660hp, fast, must tempt)
Skeleton Mercenaries (slow as a zombie in the blood moor, damage sponge, 752ish hp)
Skeleton Rangers (Archers, good damage, 525ish hp)

And I discovered two things. For one, the sleepy gas spell costs some 15% or so (actually 1/6) hp of the target, and would have saved my butt against things like the fury spawn, the second was that AT LEVEL 52 (49 naked, +3 from gear) Iceblast was maxed out!!! Now I had a good reason to hurry and get to Fort Kroth, to pick up Icefury when it comes available, and to get Light Ray (Stronger and cheaper than Lightning Blast) ASAP.

I just had to overcome one nasty little obstacle... Gresh.

But first things first, try to get everything else cleared. That was almost not threatening at this point thanks to my newfound crowd control power. And I played this game all the way to this point without it?! Well, looks like there WAS an easy way with the fury, just needed a mana potion or two. No useful drops, final result, level 49.96 (modified to 52.96), four percent from another level up. Meh.

Problem with gresh is, he summons a bunch of helpers and he hits hard too. Those helpers include skeleton archers, which deal a lot of damage even to a beefed up multiplayer warrior (who has to chew through a grand total of 35% of the enemy health that awaits poor dps-deprived Compa). As an icing on the cake, he cages the entire party into a small area, just to make sure there is no retreat room... Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. With sleepy gas's power at hand, I felt reasonably sure of my abilities. And since I didn't level up, I could expect at least one full heal in combat.

Enter cinematic, enter the helpers: 4 skeleton mercenaries, 2 skeleton krug dogs, and 6 skeleton rangers totalling 3008 melee hp, 3150 ranger hp with six arrows per shot, 1320 Krug Dog hp, and 3200 hp on the big guy himself. I'm about to soil my pants here! I DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR THIS!!!

Wait, wow those spikes at the back are really sparse. Hold on, my mouse pointer says I can move out, wait what? I'm saved! Compa was out of there before you could say "six arrows at once equal one dead nature mage" (which is true, each arrow dealt ~100hp to my 640 total. Being anywhere below max hp, or high rolls on their part meant certain doom).

The skeleton mercenaries followed me, and then died to multisparks. They couldn't hurt me if they couldn't hit me. Then came an archer, separate from the rest, and easily lured out for a quick kill. Then the two dogs, down to multisparks. Compa gained level 50 in these proceedings, a refill that didn't help as much as it was convenient, since I could be a bit more liberal with multispark usage.

For her next trick, since the enemies were so close together that going in would activate two archers and Gresh, Compa employed an unorthodox use of Dancing Zap. I cast it at the ground, and the edge of the spell just nibbed a ranger, who dutifully followed me out of the boss arena.

Yes, even thirty levels after it's heyday, Dancing Zap was seeing use. I used it before against the forest darklings for the same purpose, especially in the Darkling Cave where I could see them, but it wasn't worth a mention until now.

Two more rangers were taken out the same way, which left just Gresh and the two rangers who were far in the back. Time for the big showdown, Compa vs the penultimate act boss. Except now it was Compa who had the home field advantage, having prepared a large area to loop around in.

Came then Commander Gresh, throwing Fireballs if I was afar, and using flame whips when I closed in... The fireballs were lethal. One hit, and you are dead from the explosion, unless you drink precisely the same time you get hit, and Gresh is slowed so he won't hit you with a followup during the drinking animation. Still, it was easy to dodge them all, and got it done on the first try with a single gulp used.

                   

[Boro]

Part four: Salvation and the final Conflict

Chapter Six, Unwise Alliance
Chapter six started the same way as any other: Shopping, and running back and forth between bonepicker's post and fort kroth to refresh stocks. +10% to electric and ice spellbooks came up, and even at the hefty 1.5million gold price were worth it. With the sluggish killing speed of multisparks and iceblasts (of which the latter is, once again, maxed out) I was needing everything I could get.

I continued shopping for better staves too, but none turned up yet, and I couldn't reliably restock the merchants. That Staff of Liveliness was my best hope for surviving the chapter. I'm starting to think that the steam-nature mages who say bonepicker can give +30 to nature magic damage is wrong.

Other than the books I bought better armor to use in high-risk situations. The starlight vesture was still my main set of robes, solely for it's regenerative properties, but now I wanted something for emergencies, which were cropping up more and more often.

Once we were finished cleaning up the rest of Gresh's undead army, Captain Tarish told us that to get to Ehb, first we have to subdue the droog village at the Cliffs of Fire, so that's our next destination. The new enemies in this chapter were the desert-dwelling droog. They are marvelous smiths (See the Life of Etan Stonebridge lorebook for details) and have a knack for deserts. And they live at the top of an awesome looking canyon.

Combat-wise they are the same as the skeletons, only faster, and have mages. Their warriors take 8 shots to kill, their archers 5, and their mages 3-4 nothing out of ordinary here. The desert cave made things harder, but once I established my retreat zone where I strung my enemies out, and my killing fields where I could minimize the enemy cover (from nearby walls blocking multisparks), they were routine. The archers stung a lot, but that was life.

Still in the caves Compa came across the Hall of Skulls, which had tough 1180hp flame spitting possessed skulls, more painful cousins of the spider dungeon's rectors. This was a true slog to clear out, literally the last one in the game. The tight corridors and hard-hitting skulls made this a true test of endurance.

To quote my notes here:

There were Skulls, Skulls that chase you around, skulls that suppress you with alternating fire, Skulls with Skulls, and Skulls with more skulls. Oh, did I mention the skulls? Once killing all the skulls, the adventure continued. The drops were not skulls, for a change, but might as well been skulls, for all they were worth to this offensively challenged nature mage.

Once that PAINFUL episode was over, (the lore reason for going in there was to rescue Sikra, daughter of Nong from the Traveler Camp) I emerged to the canyons. Then I wished I didn't.

The Droog can ambush from under the sand, which they couldn't in the cave. In fact, ALL the droog were ambushers at this point, with the exception of the slightly-tougher-but-nothing-else miniboss Droog Captain. He had an ambush-happy entourage though.

Anyways, the next part of the journey was probably the most breathtaking. Up until now we saw the rugged farmlands, crypts, dungeons with spiders, mines, alpine peaks, ice caves, subterranean rivers lined with crystal caves, dark forests and murky swamps, goblins, ancient ruins and a cave full of undead horrors, strange worms and beholder-types, but now we'd go WAY above all. This droog cave exited at the bottom of the canyon, running along a small desert river, and we have to climb all the way up to the top of it. Too bad you can't look up normally, because looking down, and seeing the cave entrance we emerged from really adds to the sense of accomplishment, that much I remember.

However to have that accomplishment, first Compa has to climb up. And she is at the very rock bottom, to say the least. There are two ways to go... try left, yep, dead end, just goin to clean that up... or not! Six droog archers popped at first, cue happy feet. OK try again, nah, there were four more. I make it sound easier than it was, but Droog Archers were serious business. At 130-140 damage per droog arrows, I couldn't handle more than one at once, and my tactic was shoot-retreat-shoot to prevent their fast firing rate from being utilized. Yes. Six hits at once meant certain death, and I wasn't to keen on experiencing that. The canyon walls blocking some of my multisparks added to the danger by lengthening the encounters. Finally they died (and they took a lot of time, even at five full multisparks each, pretty standard fare for your average archer enemy) and I could continue, but barely did Compa turn a corner and...

Sand Mages [720 or 798hp, rated four full multisparks, they summon flames below your feet and are dangerous to characters forced to stand still, but were minimal threat to Compa as long as happy feet were exercised], and Sand Rippers [960hp, fast melee buggers] ambush me. Neat, more ambushes. And it's FIVE of them? Switching to shock wave. They didn't even give me the luxury of choice when it came to tempting fate, and wow they hit hard. They are so fast they dodge multispark sparks, so that's out of the question even after I split them up. The sand mages died fast at least.

Then, just around a corner (there are a lot of corners in this canyon), in a small dead end, two more sand mages and a triplet of lizards were guarding a chest. I split them up, eliminated them, and my reward from the chest was ... nothing. Nothing dropped at all! Phew this game likes solo nature mages a lot. Oh, I still didn't have a loop track cleared, and it was already half hour just from exiting the cave.

   

The loop track took another two droog groups to split, but once the second bridge was over, it was a piece of cake from there on. Piece of cake as in, I had retreat room, room to whittle them down, room to string them out, room to FIGHT (see Ember, normal, act IV, outer steppes). That there was only one group till the second bridge helped too, as I had less hp and armor to go through in the form of Giant Wasps, Sand Mages and Sand Rippers. The droog were guarding a Mana Shrine, so I decided to get creative from here on. I summoned a Barkrunner (melee mob, low chance to hit, decent HP, and most importantly TRANSFERS EXPERIENCE to the caster (or so I thought)) to help me out, and he did an awesome job thinning out some nasty sand mages. The mana shrine covered the summoning cost.

And one of the second group dropped Icefury. My lovely Icefury! Not even Fortress Kroth could sell it, I needed a whopping Level 54 Nature Magic to use it, but I was level 53 with five +1 nature magic adders, easily meeting the requirements.

With the +10% cold book, the damage was 73-90 PER SHARD. Now that doesn't look too much of an upgrade from 66-79 of Iceblast, or 100-120 (counting the 10%) of Multispark, but whereas iceblast fired a stream of five shards, and Multispark fired four homing missiles Icefury had Eight. This spell also has a large maximum level, making it my final and most powerful form of attack for this campaign. Compa was SET on offense.

Now to get a better picture of the offensive situation. A full multispark fired 100-120 per spark fired, for four homing sparks, totalling 400-480 damage per multispark. This translated to 200-210 for weakly armored, and 150-155 to heavily armored targets. Iceblast had 330-395, with the appropriate multipliers (0.5 for ligthly, 0.25 for heavily armored), and Icefury was 584 to 720. That was an almost 50% increase in offense! As cherry on top, each of the 8 iceshards fired had a 1% chance to freeze. With 8 shard hits that was 7.7% chance to freeze, pretty damn good on top of all the firepower. And the shards flew FAST.

Compa used the company of a summoned forest klaw alongside the spell, and even went back to collect a +4 nature magic robe and a 115 armor mechanized suit from Fortress Kroth. The first was for curiosity's sake, as the Starlight Vestibute is clearly the superior armor here, while the second is to replace my current high armor set.

Even without selling the real money-makers, the droog swords (140k) and bows (333k), or my 200k staves and bows and stuff, I was still heavier than 6million upon leaving. Yep, I had enough gear to max out my gold, and the locals dropped a nice 17-18k when they croaked. I could guzzle mana potions through the rest of the game without my purse feeling it. Still, no +30 to nature magic damage staff. /sigh

The game really sped up after this. I was KILLING things and killing them FAST. I took a look at crossbows in town, and after calculating my proper DP10s value, I concluded that an icefury nature mage kills WAY faster than even the strongest bow user, and even has the advantages of all the nature magic utility in the world.

       

At this point the canyon opened up into a deeper canyon, and so Compa descended, finding that the denizens become easy prey to Icefury. Giant Wasps are 3 shots, Droog Warriors 5, Droog Archers and Mages 3, that latter assuming all shards hit, which is a problem at range, so a mixture of multisparks and icefury was used here. Giant Lizards took 5 hits, just like the droog.

The new enemies were two-shot Soul Stingers, which look like tail-heavy wasps? meh. Exploring the canyon further revealed Sand Bashers, meaner cousins of sand rippers, but otherwise identical. Tempt-shoot-dead.

From then on, instead of moving alongside the river, Compa kept moving above it, moving between the canyon walls via rope bridges and stone arches. One of the bridges was guarded by the Droog Captain, who was easy prey when separated from his cadre. He was guarding an elevator, that began my ascent up towards the droog village.

What happened next was possibly the biggest, worst stairs trap I've ever seen. SEVEN (actually, six)!!! Droog Archers surrounded the elevator, enough to get me in one salvo. I tried running towards uncharted land to get a better footing, I tried summons, I tried every trick in my spellbooks, but all failed, all died.

Eventually, I figured I'd just run and heal, but even that took abrupt and final ends at a ledge, where I had no room to dodge arrows, and sand mages kept scraping away at my health. A death there, then another when I try a different way of maneuvering, but the arrows hit me in the back, and the sand mage fire fries me before I can heal up.

   

The third time I pause before the ledge popup and look through Compa's magical arsenal. There isn't much there. Think Focused Mind's +7 hp through the +1 INT is going to pull me through? NOT. Heh. I thought so, but as I'm losing all my hope I wander to Mana Shield. I stopped using it after the goblins and only took it out for the Water Temple, (And it failed me miserably against the Fury) but it might just be the ticket. I use it, I survive that part, run, heal, start running low on mana, lose some, try not to wake some, oh there is a ramp up but I'm low on health, and NOT ENOUGH MANA!!! Mana Shield drained me dry. I drink health potions TWICE IN A ROW until I get enough misses from the soul stingers (They still HURT even if they are two shots a piece) to comtinue forward, I run some more, through the sandy bridge and wheew I'm in town?

A weak, frail nature mage subdued the droog village by running in missing half her health, with half the wildlife and the droog army hot on her heels.

*cough*, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I finally had some room to work in, and work I did through the stragglers that came after me (The droog villagers of course were NPCs who didn't attack/couldn't be attacked, so we were good). I made a saved game. I knew there were a few more droog in the village who were rebels or fanatics, and had to be put down before I could shop, so I did that, in order to secure more retreat room and to see what Nonataya has in stock. There were two mages, two archers, and two warriors. The mages went squish fast. The archers pushed me through a house but I worn them down eventually, though a lot of healing and dodging was required. The warriors? No threat at all.

From here on, it's patient clearing up the canyon, working myself down back to where I left my mules, and once I'm finished, I decide to take a trek back. Why? There is ONE more possible sardine can in this game, in Castle Ehb, down an elevator to the castle dungeons.

So I went back to Fort Kroth. Then back to Bonepicker, Then back to the swamp, then back to the Traveler Camp and I even walked the Crystal Caverns for a nostalgia trip till Jeriah's Cabin. Remember when Dancing Zap meant overwhelming AoE power? Me neither. The good memories have been burned out by the slooow slog up to the point where I was.

I bought an Orb of Lightning, Orb of Healing, and found an orb of frost in one of my dusty tomes, I bought a better staff too, 5-15 nature magic staff, in fortress kroth, for my glorious return. Then I died right at the gates of the droog village because I pulled too many enemies!! ARGH!

Reload, to jeriah's cabin.

Cursing myself, I did the trip again, picked up Phaedriel as a stablehand (she didn't gain experience) and thaaankfully found ANOTHER 5-15 nature magic damage staff in Fort Kroth. The design looked worse, but this time I made GOOD use of both the Quick Save and the normal save functions. Everything was cleared up to the cliffs of fire. I also found a neat treasure room with the kingdom of ehb map on it.

I marked the droog village in red, and placed yellow X-es at the two locations still to visit. I saw Nonataya's stock again, picked up Spectral Image, then concluded this chapter with the thought that the worst part was over.

Chapter Seven, King and Castle

Nonataya told me that the Vile Evil etc. Seck pressed them into an unwise alliance with their overwhelming might, and that I must go to Castle Ehb before they trash that place.

And it was. The enemies outside the upper end of the village were no match for Crusader Goquua, my Spectral Image's crowd control, and my icefury. After helping me to clear out a loop track, he sent me off to kill the Ancient Dragon of Rathe, who, if freed, will certainly destroy the droog village, so I went to do that.

Neither the impalers, desert braak nor Green Drakes presented any difficulty from this point, and I reached the dragon's lair without much fanfare.

Scorch on the other hand... Is the toughest, meanest bastard in this game. 20000 hp (and 260 for good measure) and a breath that takes 2/3 of my health in ONE USE? Nopety nope nope nope I'm noping out.

Luckily like all dragon breaths, it has a radius, and it doesn't hurt me if I'm outside. It doesn't hurt me that much, that is the key here. Second, the dragon is stationary. I worked out a routine where I could get in 1-2 icefuries between the dragon breaths, and from then on, it was only a matter of time until she croaked.

The hoard was junk, and I sold it.

The desert cave that came up next held some more braaks and some more green drakes, again, cannon fodder, just like the following green grassy area before the castle proper, with the return of skeleton mercenaries and rangers and skeleton krug dogs. These guys were WAY less threatening or tedious than they were back at Fort Kroth. There also were giant skeletons in a side-cave behind a waterfall, but they were no threat at range.

here were more skeleton mercenaries, rangers and giants on the way to Ehb, and there was also a side-maze, but Compa cleared them without difficulties. Then one more cutscene, hit level 58, and we are IN.

Next up: the Seck.

Castle Ehb was filled end to end with them, and as usual they were a bit tougher than the Droog I faced before.

There were Grunts with 1480hp took a good seven-eight salvos to kill (sometimes more because of missed shards), and needed only a bit of tempting to neutralize them.

Archers had a half-decent damage potential (with my armor on, it was only 30-40, manageable) with a good rate of fire (about four times as fast as the archers in diablo 2) and I needed to dodge 2-3 arrows of them for my spell to recharge. They needed footwork, and were easily the most time consuming enemies of the place.

   

Seck mages were... easy? Yes. they used a combat magic spell and it had a whole second of casting delay. The spell was Flame Blades, one of the less dangerous ones DPS-wise, had no AoE, and was a slow moving non-homing projectile instead of an instant hit or homing missile or something (yuck to them!).

There were also Mucosa Raiders (beefier cousins of dark mucosae, slow but fast at swinging, died in 5-6 salvos), and Ghosts (1600hp, almost no armor) who were fragile at four salvos each, and had yet another instant-hit attack that ate a quarter of my life. Needless to say I paid those ghosts extra attention to separate them from the other seck. (I was still a cheapskate and didn't use spectral image nearly enough)

But all in all this was a very easy area. I've even left the game at 120% speed and it made little difference. Clear the entrance, mess hall, get up on the walls, enter the citadel, clear the knight room, the chapel, the throne room (it was one heck of a place full of archers, a mage, several grunts, and had several side room with ghosts too. Interestingly it had a few armor stands that would be reusable when I reloaded the area (went back and forth between the dungeon merchant and the droog village).

Then it was up to the citadel roof, clear the parapet full of Punishers (Floating skulls, there were a few of them here than usual, but at no noticeable armor and 800-ish hp, they were no match for the possessed skulls of the hall of skulls. I also mastered my dodging skills at this point where they posed no threat, unless I was in tight quarters. And I still had spectral image to call upon.

Then it came to the elevator. This was the LAST possible stairs trap in this game, and since the elevator worked on a timer rather than user input, I would have to be extra careful handling the first few enemies, until I cleared enough retreat room to continue my routine microlooping and micrododging.

And the welcoming committee is one archer and two grunts? Wow.. tough. I tempt them back to the elevator, running a loop on the platform itself, then step off, ready to repeat the same maneuver towards the room they popped up in. This was dangerous, since I was going towards uncharted land, and anything else coming up could seriously endanger me.

However, as they were about to pursue me, this happened:

Yep, the elevator ride just started and they couldn't get off!. Now I had all the privacy I needed to deal with the archer, and clear myself some room until the two goons returned. A bit more and I had my first room secured, and that had enough space for me to keep looping as long as I liked, and from then on, it was routine cleanup, room by room. Clear the barracks, clear the larder, clear this, clear that.

Clear the seck elite guards who took another shot to kill, dealt slightly more damage per swing ("JUST DON'T STAND THERE TAKING IT YOU FOOL!" is what I say to everyone who had problems with them), clear the seck elite archers (I hates them, so much dodging required and spectral image still costs a lot of mana), clear the wraith archers who are like seck archers, use seck bows, take the same number of salvos to kill, but lack a lower body ), clear the terror wraiths, and we are at the last merchant of the game.

Oh, I also met the king, he was fine, and he gave me a key.

The merchant sold a better hat, and some junk spells (There isn't a spell stronger than Icefury for singleplayer / regular difficulty purposes). I bought ambivalence, which was a nice way to disable single targets for later disposal.

I also had so much gold, even when I sold only the cheapest items, that I started having problems with inventory space! So I decided to run a back and forth between the droog village and the dungeon merchant, in hopes of turning up a few items that will sap my gold supply enough to sell off more on my mules (I had five full mules by the time I reached him, so yes, this was a real issue :D ).

While doing so, I had ample opportunities to evaluate my gear. Up until now I played with two sets: One for high offense and high mana regeneration, consisting of two Organic Rings, (+1 NM), one ring of awareness (+1 INT), and one +53 mana ring, with the armor being Merik's Starlight Vesture, and both gloves and boots boosting my nature magic skill. This left little room for error while dodging, and was becoming hopeless against enemies like the ghosts or anything with quick or instant-hitting attacks/spells.

My other set was the high armor one. This included a Mechanized Suit (115 armor, 75 more than starlight vesture), two Sustained Rings (+13 armor each) and a Harsh spell book (11% magic resistance).

Gom, the final boss, was using magic attacks exclusively, and most problematic enemies up to this point were always unavoidable/instant hitting casters, so I started shopping for better defense. First, a Harsh Light Recondite Suit (149 armor, 11% magic resist) showed up, and then I found a Stern set of boots (5% magic resist). Together, with stacked Magic Armor and Frigid Armor on top, they bought my armor rating to a total of 309 and 27% magic resist, and to my satisfaction I found ghosts about half as threatening as they were before.

More importantly, they reduced my cash on hand to a manageable 7.5 million, so I could once again pick up the gold dropped by enemies, and sell off a bunch of junk.

Chapter eight, the Chamber of Stars

Once this was over (the ingame clock said this side-trip took an hour), the cleanup continued. Kill Swanny the mad jailer, nab the treasures in the Chamber of Stars (junk), ...

Chapter nine: Dungeon Siege.

clear the next set of rooms, clear the lava runners (high damage double projectiles, fragile), clear the lava imps (see sand runners), kill the Kell (2000ish hp, lost of nasty magic), some more wraiths, some this, some that, and we are at the lava caverns, having just hit level 62.

There were Drakes, Lava beasts, and another legion of seck, some more imps, runners, then their stronger versions, lava horrors (melee) and lava Mages (magic). Interestingly the mages were less dangerous because they only fired a single bolt instead of a pair, and thus dealt half damage than their "weaker" cousins. Maybe this was because of a design oversight, or maybe it was intentional, I don't know. What I know is that they were a breather compared to runners.

Through the bridges Compa went, between lava lakes, above lava rivers and fighting lava beasts, she hit level 63, and then I saw that the area was over. There were some Lava Spirits with powerful dual-firebolts, but Spectral Image and some micrododging saw an end to them.

Enter the Vault of Eternity, the final area.

I said a few times that the design of this game is impressive. After the early farmlands, crypts, undead, krug, spiders and the mines, the snowy landscape was truly breathtaking, and the ice caves were a decent way to continue that. Then once it was enough of that, the crystal caverns up it a notch, then the dark forest shows that indeed, there is more to the forests than what we've seen before the crypt, and the Dark/Eastern swamp just goes overboard with how vast it is with it's side-islands, murky pools and twisty paths.

You think that that's all, but then the goblins take the adventure through a whole different set of scenery, with their tesla coils, boiler rooms, gas lights and other machinery, and then the shorelines and temple ruins somehow manage to be different and more foreboding than the forests and grassy lands we've seen before. The Fury is one heck of a boss, with an appropriately difficult and different dungeon that again, shows us something new and unexpected, then the desert areas, with the droog and the whole trek up the canyon to the Cliffs of Fire really hammer just how vertical this game is.

Finally, Castle Ehb is an actual castle complete with castle-like scenery, and while it is a fairly linear dungeon, it IS also rather freeform when it comes to side-rooms, and the throne room is a damn nasty fight if one stumbles in without forethought. The castle dungeons are haunting, the undead enemies and other demons hint at the dark magics at work, and then the game AGAIN ups it by a notch when you find the hole in the wall to the lava caverns.

And then, when you thought you've seen it all (and believe me, when you go on a narrow khazad-dum style bridge above two lava rivers it IS impressive, no matter how few polygons are used to build it), then you come to the Vault of Eternity. This is where you go on spine-like bridges to floating rock platforms, around spiky pillars of tortured souls falling into the bottomless blackness below. It has to be seen to be believed, and luckily I have a screenshot for that too.

But there is another thing: This is the LAST area. Once these enemies are dead, then come hell or high water, there won't be anything left to do, but the boss. Once these enemies are dead, there won't be a single monster left in the world.

So obviously, Compa went ahead to make this wonderful, peaceful world a reality. Some quadscales (melee enemies, 4 shots) tried to hinder her, unsuccessfully.

Then some Black Drakes (more shots, minimal danger as long as I stepped back from the breath) came to try to stop me. They died too. Came lava horrors, Molten drakes, lava spirits, lava mages, and the Seck, but for our intrepid Nature Mage who went through the purgatory of fighting with nothing but Iceblast and Multispark for twenty levels, it was old hat. Tempt, dodge, run back to established killing zones, kill lure, repeat.

Then, after a few more islands, and hitting Level 64 in nature magic, we came to the Molten Steel Drake, the last miniboss of the game, and that's when I knew that this was it.

I glanced at the in-game timer, it hit 45 hours. The drake was dispatched (He was no grand vizier of chaos, sadly), and Compa dressed up for her last encounter. The Starlight Vesture has been permamently retired in the lava caves, but she now also equipped her Sustained Rings, and her Stern Boots. She also reorganized her spell books, off-loaded everything she wouldn't need on Flare, and stocked up on blues and rejuvenation potions. She wasn't a potion-aholic, but I didn't want to lose the final battle because I ran out.

Some seck elite guards and some seck high mages tried to stop me, but failed. (Oh I didn't tell about them? No surprises, they are just as terrible as the regular ones, but they have higher health. They took two more salvos to kill, five instead of three, no big deal.)

The moment I've been dreading since the Fury came at last.

GOM

"Pray, your god, is more merciful than I"

Gom is not THAT difficult. All his attack forms are spells, rated 180-200 ish average damage. He has level 96 in Melee and Combat magic too. That's about... level 100 combined (I don't want to look up the experience table to check his uber level, but I should be right). Damage calculation works the following way:

actual damage dealt = (nominal damage) x 2 x (attacker's level) / (defender's defense)

Nominal damage is ~ 200 that's 200x180/348 averaging 104 damage per hit, with 27% magic resist that's 75, about 10% of my health, and with 0.6-1 second casting delays, I should never be, ideally, in danger.

Of course, this doesn't take into account the option to be hit multiple times with a spell, similar to how Icefury works. His chief spells are Gom Force and, Gom Skull Rain. The first can be dodged by going AWAY from gom. The second requires dodging in any direction. I died once to Gom Force (it took me from full to zero in a moment too short to react to), then finished him off.

SUPER GOM

That took the fight to the second form of the boss. I made a save here, remembered to summon up my trusty Dark Zepheryl since I wouldn't need all of Gom's experience anyways, then the dance took off again.

In this form he has an ability to summon helpers. The summons last for 20 seconds, and are mostly lava horrors and mages and molten golems called Slags. For a good party, they can choose to AoE them down. For Compa, this meant running until their duration expired. I forgot to do this once, got cornered and mugged.

Then another time, I ate his Laser attack at the wrong time. It deals about... 6-8 times the nominal damage? The strategy for that was to switch to major heal and heal ASAP, and of course to keep my health topped in case he decides to laser me.

Third time (I think, I may have died to his skull rain or force too, I don't remember THAT part too well.) everything came together. I kept resummoning when my zepheryl died, I had an hour of orb of healing up, and I did counter his attacks with the right move, and even his 12000 health total had it's limits. My zepheryl did 20 damage, my icefury did 100 (on a full salvo), but with enough patience, Compa did it.

Conclusion

the Kingdom of Ehb campaign was finished by a SOLO nature mage who dealt 100% of the party damage (except, as listed otherwise, because of non-party npcs), multiple characters got recruited to move them to safer locations, but were left unused. I didn't even use them for buffing purposes. Several deaths happened, but with patience and refining my strategies, Compa succeeded in all occasions.

Except for that elevator trap in the desert where I had to run right into the droog village, yuck. Although, I think I could have done it with Zapper Glyph or Shockwave Glyph, or by sending up summons on the elevator.

Before this last session, when I played from the second half of the Lava Caves to the end, I had a dream. I just finished reading Ember's story, she made Duchess, then Sirian was wrapping up. His conclusion in my dream, after the massive, five and a half hour chaos sanctuary was "Don't do this to yourself. Allow Lightning, blizzard, blaze, anything from a staff, just don't do this to yourself."

This, of course, is my conclusion to the nature mage campaign. The first 12 hours comprised of me getting almost half the levels, and finishing almost HALF of the game content, while the rest, 33 hours were spent in a tough slog against massive monster hp totals with weak spells. Icefury was a godsend, and near the end, the 8-24 staff greatly increased my damage, but on the whole, the 20 hours between the traveler camp and Icefury were a hell.

Even now, almost a week after I finished (I finished on the 16th of august, it's the evening of the 22th when I'm finishing this report from the notes I composed.) I'm still wary of starting something like that, and I definitely DON'T want to play an archer, because if there's something slower than a nature mage, it's an archer.