O_Bruce
Habitué
- Messages
- 523
The Allmighty Trio and the Wyrm's Tooth
Let's start from the good things about this place: it is pretty cool (no pun intended) vibe/lore wise. The frozen museum, aside from the really neat visuals, has interesting lore tied to a dwarven god and the architect who insisted on building the temple-museum here, instead in the lower Dorn Deep. Also, the Wym's Tooth may or may be not named after a great dragon that died and became part of Joril's caves.*
That's it for the good things. Unfortunately, at this point usually the game starts to become monotonous and repetitive, and with my current challenge room, that repetivenes is joined with pure tedium. Because normally, wast majority of enemy encounters there are uninspired, they are just standing on the map and attack your party when they're in view, and that's it. Nothing interesting for the most part. With my party item limitations, I have 3 characters that are weaker than they should be due to not using any magical items, which they have found plenty useful ones through their career. So, fights are monotonus, repetitive and I have to spend more time on mending wounds between fights with excessive amount of healing potions - because what else can I buy with all the money from magic items that were sold?
So please excuse me, as I will mostly rush describing this part of the game.
1. I fought my way through the area to return to Kuldahar and sell items/restock with potions.
2. I have done everything there was to do within frozen museum, and killed ice salamanders, took a badge from Kerish (turns out the salamanders aren't immune to normal weapons, so I used up Enchanted Weapons for nothing), freed the slaves, informed Vera about it and learned how to fix the destroyed bridge.
Also, what's the point of a warm room in the northern-west corner of the museum? It serves and does nothing to ice salamanders, even if the game directly tells you taht warm places make it impossible for ice salamanders to live in (hence the slaves are safe). I would have expected the room to serve some funciton, maybe to weaken she salamanders, but no. It doesn't even negate their ice auras.
(There's even a piece of visual storytelling here, with ice salamander lying dead just before the room!)
3. Frost Giants in the cave were mostly dealt with summons serving as a shield, as pre-buffed party takes them out from the distance. Because of an accident, I started ocassionally to take advantage of the bridge outside of caverns, due to tedium I was experiencing. Joril was however defeated in straight-up battle. It wasn't very memorable though. I got his badge, and that's what matters(this sounds like he's a gym leader in Pokemon game or something).
4. I've also dealt with small wyrms. They were not interesting at all, just another enemies that walk up to you and hit really hard. Functionally, there's not much difference between them and frost giants - they are both powerful up close and require buffs on party, summons to distract them, debuffs on them and plenty of healing for mostly Dabb.
5. Clearing of eastern part of caverns for Gavin went well and I actually liked the initial yeti ambush, since they targeted Lim also, and so needed special attention.
6. After dealing with yetis and trolls, the last thing to do was Kontik and her knights. This is the only interesting encounter in the whole chapter and most difficult fight at that.
Despite mix of elemetals and monster summoning as a way of distraction, the buffed up Allmighty Trio only managed to take out one out of 4 or 5 knights. Kontik was hurt, but not slain, and Dabb had several knights attacking him. A bit of a tactical retreat was needed, then distraciton with demi-shadow monsters, so that the party could run away and regroup. Not wanting to just go to rest, I used some "unfair" tactics, like web off screen and ranged attacks, traps, luring out the knights one by one and kiting them. It wasn't pretty, but at that point, I didn't care.
Kontik was last, she couldn't do much by herself
7. After looting the place (and finding some level 6 arcane scrolls, like Chain Lightning, as well as pure water), the party went back to the civilization to sell and restock once more, before getting back, preparing themselves for Lower Dorn's Deep.
*Given how huge the skeleton of the wyrm is (is this actually lore-accurate in DnD?), I wonder why Tarrasque is supposed to be an ultimate beast in Dungeon and Dragons, and not an ancient and oversized dragon of sorts - after all, its in my opinion fitting for an actual dragon to be an ultimate challenge for, well, Dungeon and Dragons.
Let's start from the good things about this place: it is pretty cool (no pun intended) vibe/lore wise. The frozen museum, aside from the really neat visuals, has interesting lore tied to a dwarven god and the architect who insisted on building the temple-museum here, instead in the lower Dorn Deep. Also, the Wym's Tooth may or may be not named after a great dragon that died and became part of Joril's caves.*
That's it for the good things. Unfortunately, at this point usually the game starts to become monotonous and repetitive, and with my current challenge room, that repetivenes is joined with pure tedium. Because normally, wast majority of enemy encounters there are uninspired, they are just standing on the map and attack your party when they're in view, and that's it. Nothing interesting for the most part. With my party item limitations, I have 3 characters that are weaker than they should be due to not using any magical items, which they have found plenty useful ones through their career. So, fights are monotonus, repetitive and I have to spend more time on mending wounds between fights with excessive amount of healing potions - because what else can I buy with all the money from magic items that were sold?
So please excuse me, as I will mostly rush describing this part of the game.
1. I fought my way through the area to return to Kuldahar and sell items/restock with potions.
2. I have done everything there was to do within frozen museum, and killed ice salamanders, took a badge from Kerish (turns out the salamanders aren't immune to normal weapons, so I used up Enchanted Weapons for nothing), freed the slaves, informed Vera about it and learned how to fix the destroyed bridge.
Also, what's the point of a warm room in the northern-west corner of the museum? It serves and does nothing to ice salamanders, even if the game directly tells you taht warm places make it impossible for ice salamanders to live in (hence the slaves are safe). I would have expected the room to serve some funciton, maybe to weaken she salamanders, but no. It doesn't even negate their ice auras.
(There's even a piece of visual storytelling here, with ice salamander lying dead just before the room!)
3. Frost Giants in the cave were mostly dealt with summons serving as a shield, as pre-buffed party takes them out from the distance. Because of an accident, I started ocassionally to take advantage of the bridge outside of caverns, due to tedium I was experiencing. Joril was however defeated in straight-up battle. It wasn't very memorable though. I got his badge, and that's what matters
4. I've also dealt with small wyrms. They were not interesting at all, just another enemies that walk up to you and hit really hard. Functionally, there's not much difference between them and frost giants - they are both powerful up close and require buffs on party, summons to distract them, debuffs on them and plenty of healing for mostly Dabb.
5. Clearing of eastern part of caverns for Gavin went well and I actually liked the initial yeti ambush, since they targeted Lim also, and so needed special attention.
6. After dealing with yetis and trolls, the last thing to do was Kontik and her knights. This is the only interesting encounter in the whole chapter and most difficult fight at that.
Despite mix of elemetals and monster summoning as a way of distraction, the buffed up Allmighty Trio only managed to take out one out of 4 or 5 knights. Kontik was hurt, but not slain, and Dabb had several knights attacking him. A bit of a tactical retreat was needed, then distraciton with demi-shadow monsters, so that the party could run away and regroup. Not wanting to just go to rest, I used some "unfair" tactics, like web off screen and ranged attacks, traps, luring out the knights one by one and kiting them. It wasn't pretty, but at that point, I didn't care.
Kontik was last, she couldn't do much by herself
7. After looting the place (and finding some level 6 arcane scrolls, like Chain Lightning, as well as pure water), the party went back to the civilization to sell and restock once more, before getting back, preparing themselves for Lower Dorn's Deep.
*Given how huge the skeleton of the wyrm is (is this actually lore-accurate in DnD?), I wonder why Tarrasque is supposed to be an ultimate beast in Dungeon and Dragons, and not an ancient and oversized dragon of sorts - after all, its in my opinion fitting for an actual dragon to be an ultimate challenge for, well, Dungeon and Dragons.
