The Lone Badger fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Dec 11, 2017

On that bitter note, we've exhausted his current conversation options. We'll find out exactly what he wants from travelling with us when we meet the Watcher at Caed Nua. Still plenty of things to wrap up before then, I'm afraid.



But we'll at least leave the Vale soon, I promise. Just one more errand to pick up in the local smithy. It looks like it's owned by someone going through rough times.

Anyway. With nothing else left to do, we take the south exit of the Vale; we can't head to the Compass or the Black Meadow without heading through a place called Magran's Fork first, so that's where we go.

Name makes sense. Here's the fork in the road; the statue is of the Goddess Magran. Homeless man calling for us I got nothing for, though.

If anything, the statue's flames behind him burn even brighter.



So our new smelly, angry hobo companion is a Priest. Of Magran, specifically, despite the fact he spent half the conversation insulting her. Durance is a fan of relationships based on mutual antagonism. Anyway; not sure if Priests are the

class in Pillars but they're very useful for what they provide. Their spells cover buffs, granting immunities, and providing healing when they can find the time, along with a smattering of damage and area trap magic; some of their spells can be covered by scroll consumables, but that means a whole lot of scroll crafting as you'll want something from the Priest suite in practically every fight in the game.



Durance's Mig and Con isn't very useful for most Priest builds but they don't hurt and the fact we'll be casting a lot of support buffs means his low Per isn't as bad as you'd think. Int means those buffs will last long enough for our purposes.



Priests can cast a certain amount of spells per-rest like a Wizard. They have a smaller overall spell list, but in return they learn all their spells when they reach a new tier and don't have to equip a subset of them to cast. Durance has access to the first and second tier of spells after we level him up; some of the stand-outs at level 1 include Blessing, which improves the party's Accuracy and damage, Prayer Against Fear, their first status affliction immunity (and one that's common throughout the entire game), Holy Meditation which provides a Will bonus and basically makes your party immune to interruption for the duration of the effect, and Armour of Faith which provides 4 Damage Reduction- useful early on but falls off when everyone starts hitting as hard as the bears did. The second level of spells gives him Consecrated Ground, which creates a circle of constant regeneration freeing him up from casting multiple curing spells, Iconic Projection which does a line-based Freeze damage attack that also heals your party (more so than Restore Light Endurance, a spell that takes just as long to cast and comes at the same level), and Suppress Affliction which temporarily… suppresses afflictions; very useful until you get the full suite of status immunity-granting spells.

He also gets Repulsing Seal, a spell that puts a pulsing seal on the floor that knocks anyone (including your party) who enters it prone. What the game doesn't tell you is this counts as a trap, and thus its accuracy scales with Mechanics. Durance is going to be our first designated lock-picker. Go figure.

Even in that long run-down I'm skipping over some good spells. Priests are great! I did a Path of the Damned run without a priest. I don't recommend it unless you love the crafting menu and/or hate yourself.



For his Talent choice, we're going with Inspiring Radiance. Along with their per-rest spells Priests get a once per encounter ability called Holy Radiance that cures allies and hurts 'Vessel' type enemies (anything with a soul unnaturally bound to it- undead, golems, those poor kids Edér mentioned earlier, etc). The Talent adds a +10 Accuracy buff to the party to all that. Always be stacking Accuracy.



North of the goddess statue is a traveller who is much, much less intense than Durance.

He did! He heard a couple of wolves. Which were something to worry about when we were solo; not so much now. The map has plenty of packs of them and apart from grinding away at our overall health they're not worth noting.



Healing potions aren't going to rock our world but free's free.



There's a ruined tower to the south with a single Will-O'-Wisp inside. They're spirits that can inflict a nasty confusion status, but this one misses Mathilda and goes down fast. You don't need special weapons to hit ghost and spirits in Pillars unlike other games of its type, though they do tend to have high Deflection.



We take a quick rest anyway to refresh some spells and bring back some sunlight to the area. We can see something waiting for us to the south; some hired mercenaries and a woman holding a grimoire and wand.

So much for conversation. The woman is a Wizard. Like in every RPG since the dawn of time, there's one primary strategy here: kill the mage before they can do anything. The Paladins are beefy but don't do much on their own other than run interference.



Durance's Blessing covers half the god drat screen and it's not even at its maximum range. Use Priests!



After they're dead, we find the grimoire on her body (with the spells equipped she might've used if we had let her) and a letter that just raises further questions. Whoever Q is, they don't like Kolsc and they need people for something. So: probably Raedric's fault, somehow.



There's something here other than wolves and kidnappers to fight; a single Forest Troll. Trolls regenerate Endurance like Fighters, but other than being hardy don't have anything special going for them.



There's another corpse at the south west end of the map, behind the Forest Troll. With another letter that mentions that Fulvano guy, like the one back in the Valewood on the body with the magic gloves.



I don't think it's superstition if the item is actually magic.



With that, the Fork's done, and the southern exit to the map takes us to the Anslög's Compass to look for that baby medicine for Aufra. I don't think anything in the game explains who or what Anslög is/was, or why the area's named for it, but hey, we're not cartographers.

.



It's some xaurips, this time. The only real problem here is making sure to block their path to the fishers; the villagers can die in a single attack. They're not as threatening to us.



Not that we get anything in return other than gratitude. The dwarf woman got the final hit off, though, so fair play to her.



A few more xaurip fights down south, there's a cave entrance. This one isn't full of bears.



Just a collection of plant monsters. Dank Spores are a pain; their spit attack has a chance to confuse your characters, making them either stand around uselessly or attack an ally. Thankfully, they have a weakness; they're plants. They can't really move. The sporelings, who looks like little mushroom people, haven't gotten that particular memo and will happily follow us round the bend where we can slaughter them without being bothered by their 'parents'.



With the sporelings out of the way, the Dank Spores manage to confuse Durance, who also happens to be the only character who can cure confusion, but eh, it's a graze. They have enough Endurance to last a while but aren't much of a threat without backup.



There's some secret treasure in the back in what looks like a collection of skulls. Fine weapons are straight upgrades over their normal counterparts, adding extra damage and accuracy. There's five tiers of each weapon in the game: normal, Fine, Exceptional, Superb, and Legendary, each providing a bigger bonus. As the Wand is a ranged weapon and works with Aloth's Blast, he gets to use it for now.



Outside the cave, some sand hides a letter talking about the guy who got half-eaten by wolves. We already found the gloves, but it's supposed to be a hint that there's something left up in the Valewood if you missed it.



Further south is a recent- as of this update- addition to the game, as a tie-in of sorts to Pillars II.

: "BUY THE SEQUEL."

Ponamu sells good stuff, most of it related to the Deadfire, plus some Fine equipment (including a pistol, robbing the Disappointer of the niche of being an early upgradable magic gun). We're not going to be buying any of it, partly because it's way too strong for the point of the game he's available and partly because it's out of our price range. But we'll come back to him before the game's over.



Our actual goal is further down south past the skulls. The midwife set up a nice little place for herself. The xaurip really ties the décor together.

On the way to the northeast, there's another Fulvano letter inside the eye socket of some sort of lizard skull. He's 2 for 2 for dead apprentices at this point.



We find the Xaurips who have been so angry at poor Tana. They've got a full set of party roles- Skirmishers are rogues with a paralysis poison, Champions are big beefy fighters and Priests are, well, priests, though this one doesn't do anything much but fail at hitting anyone with a fear-inducing spell. Other than the Champion they don't have much Endurance and fall fast.



Though they do get a paralysis off on Edér and thanks to the lowered defences really tank his Endurance and overall Health. We'll have to rest before the next map.



...Fulvano might not have been the explorer he thought he was but even so, that's a hell of a run of bad luck. Thanks for the tip off about Black Meadow, at least, we'll make good use of it.



The undead that the two fishers mentioned are hanging out down the south-eastern corner. Guls (sigh) are the Pillars variant of Ghouls; each of their attack sickens their enemies, but they aren't accurate enough to trouble Edér or Mathilda, and they count as Vessels for Durance's Radiance.



Boots, Black Meadow. Already on it. First, though, we gotta report our glorious victory over half a dozen tiny lizard people to Ranga waiting by her cauldron.

And we've done what we can. Here, at least. Heading back to Magran's Fork, we take the east road to the Black Meadow to search for the blacksmith's delivery.

I mostly like the soundtrack, but there's a definite lack of different wilderness themes.



There's a skeleton of what is suspiciously dragon-like with a few gems hidden in its eye socket nearby.



We find the wagon along the path south, and further up…



The culprits.



Don't blame your lookout, you were staring right in our direction and we barely have any ranks in Stealth.



The bandits don't have a mage but they do have some archers; Chill Fog basically renders them unable to hit apart from a starting bolt on our Fighter. That's fine, though; Edér can take it.



I have no idea what this references. Some kickstarter thing? Turtle Rock Studios? Their cool bandit gang acronym?

Mysterious letters aside, their deaths did give us enough XP to get level 4 and another Talent choice. Mathilda grabs Intense Flames that adds another 25% damage (fire this time) to her Flames of Devotion; Edér grabs Hold the Line which adds +1 to the number of targets that he can engage (I'm much more willing to throw a Talent at that than one of his class-specific abilities). Aloth grabs Bewildering Spectacle as an extra 2nd level/tier spell that confuses enemies; for his Talent, Aspirant's Mark which grants him a weaker version of a Druid spell capable of lowering enemy Deflection and Reflex. Durance takes the Talent Prestidigitator Missiles which gives him a weaker once per encounter version of one of Aloth's damage spells for some quick burst damage. Every class has a weaker version of one of their abilities as a Talent choice for other classes to pick up; these ones I've found to be more early game choices. Eventually, both he and Aloth will have enough spell casts per rest that I'll respecialise these into something else but neither of them are there yet. They currently can only cast 6 real spells before needing a nap.



We have the smithy's stuff. No sign of the delivery crew; we can safely assume the bandits happened to them, if they're not some of the lootable bodies that litter the wilderness around Gilded Vale. The other letter is interesting; we should remember if we ever find ourselves in a place called the Gift.



We're done with sidequests, but while we're here we may as well finish the map. To the north-east are Forest Lurkers, a type of walking plant monster. They're annoying this early on as every attack they make has a chance to apply Stuck, a lesser form of Paralysis where you can attack but not move. They have enough reach that they can sometimes attack you outside of your own attack radius, leading us to sometimes being eternally stuck just out of range. They also hit hard, so Edér's going to be taking most of their ire.



Which he does with gusto. Blind isn't in their list of immunities and Chill Fog does its job, but a few hits still get through; enough that Edér drops for half a second because I didn't want to waste a spell cast on healing with Durance. His starting armour gives him something called Second Chance, however, which gives him a single self-resuscitation after running out of Endurance in a fight. He lasts long enough for everyone else to eat through the HP of the Lurkers.



There's a shrine to the god of the hunt beyond; hard to say if the Lurkers were guarding it from the unworthy or just happened to be in the area. There's not much to do here at the moment but grab some hidden items, another Fine Wand and a scroll for a fire spell.



Down near the exit towards Caed Nua we get yet another vision of torture victims. We really need to get this Watcher stuff sorted out. Eventually.



Most of the rest of the map is full of roving packs of Forest Trolls, but there's a new enemy to the southwest that are the results of the 'Salvation' Edér mentioned; Wichts, which I would guess is a play on 'wight' rather than 'witch. They're the Hollowborn children granted animal souls turned into feral abominations after they reach puberty.



They're technically not people, they're animal souls wearing people's skin at this point, but still; fighting them isn't great. Morally, anyway, combat wise they're a bit of a joke. They count as Vessels, and their bodies being barely out of childhood Durance's Radiance destroys most of their tiny endurance pools. Hope you have a better life next reincarnation, kids. Or… dog souls. I don't really know how exactly it works. Current circumstances suggest neither do the animancers.



Fulvano's final disciple can be found nearby. Didn't even have time to write a letter before being torn apart by the results of the world's most ill-advised medical experiment.



Which leaves us with most of the wilderness areas near the Vale done (we can't go to that city to the south yet). Caed Nua is unlocked, but we have to head back to the village to turn in these quests and should probably investigate the closed-off Eothas temple while we're there. And then there's the Esternwood, which leads directly to Raedric's keep. It's high time someone paid the lord a visit.

AnEndcat fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Jan 19, 2018

AnEndcat fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Dec 11, 2017