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The Cursed: Trickster in the Hills

September 16, 2019, 4:49 am
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[Part of the Cursed story line]

Returning to Athkatla to sell loot from the temple the team find the Planar Sphere under attack by a group of magic hating mercs! Unlucky for them, the friendly guardian golem patrols into them and wipes them out, their employer suffering a similar fate soon after.

Anomen then suggests to investigate an ogre problem at the Windspear Hills, so they go and sure enough encounter the oddly well spoken brutes. Upon slaying them however, it turns out the ogres were paladins - one of whom was ex-ally Ajantis!

Sorry dude, you looked like an ogre.

A passerby offers shelter for the party and warns them that they are being targetted by the local trickster Lord Jierdan Firkraag, the same person who told Anomen about the ogre problem. As if on queue, a bunch of orc mercenaries working for Firkraag then show up and attack. While they are easily beaten, they do manage to abduct the good samaritan's boy in the chaos.

A lone messenger then appears issuing a challenge for the team to rescue the boy at the "battle ground" in the North East. They accept.

Insight: For some reason enemies respawn quickly in this area. Be prepared.
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Neverwinter Online: Tales of the Old - Dread Vault

September 17, 2019, 5:15 am
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Tales of the Old is an interesting event that revives some of the previously removed dungeons with some updated foes and challenges, all to earn tales currency to buy rewards. Unlike normal runs you are limited on time, unable to use consumables (no heal pots), and have a party wide total deaths limit for starters (because you can make it harder).

I don't have any problems with that, though death is annoying due to the run distance from the campfire but I think that mainly stems from dungeon design - and one of my main gripes about lengthy dungeons.

In Dread Vault your team must work your way down a lengthy cavern to ultimately fight an elder brain. Unfortunately the whole journey is just move forward, kill trash, repeat over and over for more than 10 minutes. Even without the enemies it will take a decent amount of time just to walk from point A to point B.

Prepare for more of the same thing!

While some players like Syncaine enjoy massive instances dungeons, I personally find them to be fucking boring. Sure you have mini bosses before the main villain but that makes what, 20% of the dungeon interesting? And then you are expected to run the entire dungeon over and over? That just reeks of dumb design and I'm starting to see why Cryptic removed it in the first place.

The only place massive dungeons have in MMOs is if they are not instanced at all, so that you are able to randomly encounter other players and not the automatons that are the NPCs. They did this right in the general Undermountain zones.

Meanwhile instanced content works best when it gets right to the point. Tiamat, Demogorgon, and Baphomet (my favorite) all drop you right into the boss fight itself. I'd much prefer a similar event centered on those, though obviously "Tales of the Old" wouldn't be a suitable title.

Better still, just hold a Boss Rush event with the option of soloing. There are enough bosses and mini-bosses in the game to pick from now to make that happen. Anyway, Tales of Old - thumbs up. Dread Vault - also thumbs up, but only for the boss fights. The rest of it is just a waste of time.
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The Cursed: Anomen the Coward

September 18, 2019, 5:10 am
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[Part of the Cursed story line]

The "battle ground" turns out to be a dungeon with a massive entrance. While the orcs and hobgoblin defenders are easy enough to beat, the second floor has stone golems and an undead horde including vamps, mummies and wraiths!

This is doubly annoying since Anomen, who is supposed to be front lining, always defaults to using a sling like the coward he is. It's a tough fight and many mord-swords and blade spiders are used but the team prevails, though now severely injured and level drained.

One of the most useless paladins in history.

They have no choice to return to the city where Anomen receives the bad news that his sister was recently murdered and worse, there is no evidence to arrest the prime suspect. Rasaad convinces him to stay true to his path and believe in justice - letting go of vengeance. Yoshimo scoffs at this, saying he'd never let his own kin down so badly. It does sound pretty cowardly.

Insight: This is what the pregenerated NPCs have over your own "silent" party members: banter. And it is terrific.
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The Cursed: Windspear Dungeon

September 19, 2019, 4:46 am
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[Part of the Cursed story line]

The team returns to the Windspear Dungeon and enters the maze section filled with traps and false doors. While Yoshimo easily clears those, less easy are the wandering beholder and djinn.

A competing adventuring group also gets cloud-mord-sworded before the team runs into a wolfwere pack. Unlike on that island, these ones are much easier to put down.

Beyond them are golems, including a large golem which is only defeated by tanking mord-swords and Lu Linqi's +4 magic halberd. Another is defeated through door way cheese (too big to pass). At the end of that marathon they find the kidnapped boy and release him from bondage.

Good thing those doorways are sturdy!

All that's left is to go downstairs and to face Firkraag himself... in his lair. Turns out Firkraag is a red dragon!

Insight: I think there's a time limit to rescue the kid. If there isn't, Anomen certainly whines enough to hurry you along.
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The Cursed: Firkraag

September 20, 2019, 5:51 am
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[Part of the Cursed story line]

The red dragon is a dangerous foe, easily knocking back enemies with ease. The mord-swords and sword spiders still do their work while the mages and Yoshimo pepper it from afar.

Firkraag doesn't like this in the least and squishes the spiders and Yoshimo into paste. He also devours Rasaad and chews him into little gibs before finally being put down by Lu Lingqi. Anomen some how survived by bravely running away, the stench of urine and shit all over him.

It's like Lu Lingqi went super saiyan in this fight!

Fortunately there is some good loot, including a +5 two handed sword... that no one can use. Damn it! The team returns to Trademeet to sell stuff and while there recruit werewolf druid, Cernd, and that halfling they freed from the shade lord, Mazzy Fentan, into the party.

Insight: Firkraag lets you prepare before battle, so do it wisely. Fear protection spells probably would be useful in hindsight!
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The Cursed: Statue Dance

September 21, 2019, 5:01 am
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[Part of the Cursed story line]

The team follows Mazzy's suggestion to visit the Watcher's Keep next as she heard the Knights of the Vigil were asking for aid. Upon reaching it, they learn that the massive fortress is to keep something in, not out, and the wards are failing... much like with the shade lord.

The knights stress that the imprisoned one must not be killed though, which is very strange. Provided with a holy symbol to grant access and a scroll to repair the seals, the party enters from the roof to work their way down.

Halls of statues always activate paranoia!

Shadows and spirits on the first floor are easily dealt with, but the old statues that come to life trick poses some really tough enemies who can take numerous mord-sword blows. Neera accidentally solves this by summoning a demon, which destroys all the statues before turning on the party.

Fortunately it's very weak by then and is easily slain!

Insight: It's official, combat in this game is much less fun than BG1. So many enemies have resistances and immunities, you'll be micro managing the swapping of weapons and using spell slots to breach or pierce magic shields instead of doing fun explody stuff. Such is high level D&D I suppose... bad high level D&D.
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Today I Smiled: I forgot to post about Eurovision 2019!

September 21, 2019, 11:36 pm
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Ah the perils of having lots of content prepared in advance. This one got quite buried and only now, months after the event do I remember that I wrote about it at all!

If you missed it, don't know about it, or just want to relive it - the Eurovision stage was lit this year up by musical acts of all sorts, including a quite bad one by Madonna. She might not look it but she's getting too old for this. It was a very weak performance.

Hatari won the award for weirdness this year!

This year the contestants had belters, awesome dancers, a guy in the shower, a giant chair, a singing dentist (who can't sing), a mandatory stripper act, bondage crew"arts group" Hatari (singing "Hate will Prevail!"), a sand artist, and Australia's Kate Miller-Heidke flying around on a pole. She should have won!

Of equal winning material was Sweden's John Lundvik, but as usual my picks never do well. Other acts I quite enjoyed were "Spirit in the Sky" from Norway, and the "S!sters" from Germany who deserved to place better than they did.

As a final bonus link: here's Kate Miller-Heidke with the same song again - but this time just with piano. I prefer it to her stage performance!
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The Cursed: Level 2 Respite

September 23, 2019, 4:57 am
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[Part of the Cursed story line]

With the statues down the team takes the portal to level 2, which is a set of elemental themed libraries and laboratories around a caged chromatic demon, who happens to have the key to the next level. He asks the party to free him in exchange.

Easier said than done, for after battling kuo-toa, spiders, spirits and desert trolls the team is in pretty bad shape. Fortunately there's a portal out so they use that and return to the city to unload and recover.

This fan art is pretty accurate.

While Mazzy gets herself into a duel with an ogre (which she wins easily), Cernd discovers that the wife he left behind two years ago was with child at the time. Said child now lives with some douche bag noble, who possibly also killed Cernd's ex-wife but there's no proof. Anomen feels his pain but says the law must be followed. Cernd disagrees.

Insight: Level 2 is another place riddled with traps and again I find myself with no thief to detect or disarm them. :/
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Neverwinter Online Uprising: In Space, there is NOTHING

September 24, 2019, 5:05 am
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Uprising shouldn't even be called a mod, that's how shamefully shit it is.

The only good thing are the beautiful Stardock zones, which seems to be a plugin to an otherwise Undermountain focused war that heavily reuses previous environments. Apart from that, it's basically a non-event that doesn't even have a graphical representation of campaign progress and leads to a general feeling of not actually achieving anything.

At least everyone can breathe in space!

This is mainly due to the poor setup that immediately throws players into a grind even worse than the Heart of Fire. I should mention there's a new playable race, the Gith, and a new and supposedly really tough trial at the end.  While those don't interest me, hopefully they are fantastic for the people that do - otherwise this whole thing was just a big waste of resources. If they're lousy too then I have to wonder, why do people keep paying for this garbage?
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The Cursed: Lich's Apprentice

September 25, 2019, 4:53 am
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[Part of the Cursed story line]

Having found the douche bag noble who has his son, Cernd and company are quickly forced into battle since the noble is actually apprenticing for a lich!? It is an easy victory, and the lich - who was just watching, is quite pleased by the result as the noble was a lousy apprentice.

The lich then teleports away, leaving the toddler with Cernd. The werewolf druid is at a loss for what to do and finally decides to leave the team to take the kid back to the grove where he will be safe.

Ironically they replace him with Nalia the noble, whose keep they previously saved. This thief/mage isn't that shabby, and even survives a short foray into the sewers to destroy a small illithid hideout.

I imagine they'll explain this plot in Baldur's Gate 3!

Confident with her abilities, Catharina decides to lead the squad back to the Watcher's Keep.

Insight: There are actually a LOT of liches resting underneath the city, but I'm doing my best to avoid them as they are difficult combats.
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Evil Overlord: How to Fix the World. Evilly!

September 26, 2019, 4:56 am
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Warning: Dark rage post ahead!

Everywhere you turn these days there are people protesting things - most recently stuff in Hong Kong, Brexit, and climate changers.

This is mainly dealing with the last group, who at least have a solid goal in mind, unlike Brexit. LOL. Just want to say, what's the point in voting if your vote has no point right? NICE ONE BRITAIN! No one should vote there ever again coz you've proven it just DOESN'T MATTER!

Regular people don't actually have any say. Either the people who voted to leave (and won) are ignored or the masses protesting this decision (who lost because they... didn't vote? Voted incorrectly? Stupidly believed politicians/evil overlord?) are ignored. UTTER GOVERMENT FAIL.

Better yet, each time the EU agrees to delay the "result" also makes the whole lot of them look like spineless limp dicks who don't have the balls to actually cut ties. HAHAHAHAAH! "Oh, please come back Britain, we can't function without youuu!"WHAT WORTHLESS LOSERS!

Back to the climate changers - how do they propose we fix stuff? Save the trees, eat less meat, go green. Hell, make half the planet green (as long as it's your half and not mine right)? Those are all weak sauce solutions.

The main problem isn't emissions or sciency shit they spew. The main problem is people. Or to be politically correct: "OVERPEOPLIZATION". Yes, that's a word (a made up word, but its still a word). You want to have less of all those sciency shit problems? The solution is to have LESS PEOPLE. How? EASY!

KILL THEM!

Start with the old - a mandated death day of I dunno. 80 years. No too generous. 45... no, 40 years. Yes. Perfect!

Then go the Nazi route. Kill those who are unproductive to society. Those who are inefficient.  Any who are different. Any who are the same. In the end you'll just be killing almost everyone anyway so the order doesn't matter.

To get behind the whole recycling thing, there should be no more cremations or funerals either. Everyone should just EAT CORPSES! Trust the Evil Overlord when he says THEY ARE DELICIOUS! Hey, we already do that now, people are just another form of protein.

All because you want to save the PLANET right? Because the PLANET is more important than PEOPLE'S HAPPINESS? "Oh noes," they say "but we want all the peoples to live. Their pets too because of CUTE! Anything cute or sentient surely doesn't count towards carbon pollution! We just want everyone to live UNHAPPILLY!"

Now the EVIL OVERLORD is sad because the world's space programs aren't advanced enough to send these double-standard crazies off to the sun. Or, you know, colonize a new planet.

Obviously there will be no killings as above, just the killings that happen when people begin warring over dwindling farmable territory. Or food. Or passable internet connections. Warhammer 40K was right all along.

"Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war."

Oh well, future problems for future people. As San Goku wisely once said "Fuck it, Gohan can deal with it."

Now lets all feel better by watching footage of the "peaceful"Hong Kong protests. Oh so peaceful. Even the gangsters are peaceful! Can you feel the peace? THE PEACE BEING SHAREDAMONG ALL THE PEOPLE!?!?!

Ironically, this is the perfect time for them to SAVE THE PLANET! They just have to START THE KILLING! I mean, they're almost there or in the government's case, possibly already there but doing it all hush hush and making people vanish which is silly. Evil Overlord would just kill all who disagree as public entertainment and be done with it. None of this pussy footing around.

What, you think another country will actually step into it? It certainly won't be the limp dick "please come back Britain" EU. What about a USA led Trump? Unlikely if he wants to get re-elected. Even so, its still a win for the climate changers! Remember, LESS PEOPLE MORE PLANET!

>>> experiment end <<<

So, this stemmed from a post (the Seven Questions) to see if I can make people feel something from a post. Let me know if it worked! Did I manage to trigger anyone? It was certainly rage inducing to write so I don't think I want to do that again any time soon. :P
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The Cursed: Elemental Demon

September 27, 2019, 3:00 am
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[Part of the Cursed story line]

Nalia is a great asset as she disarms the traps on level 2 of the Watcher's Keep and assists the team in clearing out each of the elemental laboratories. This turns out to be easy when using the opposite environments against each guardian.

Yeah, pink magic is the opposite of... um... something.

Having assembled the key for the chromatic demon, they let him out to get the key for the portal down. Of course the demon decides to attack first, shifting into the various elemental forms they already faced. This is a long fight and towards the end, Anomen the coward has a morale break and turns around to flee.

The demon makes him pay for this mistake by beheading him before the rest of the party can destroy it. With one person down and exhausted from the fight they head back to the city to regroup.

Insight: The chromatic demon is immune to all damage save for the one weakness per shapeshift.
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The Cursed: A Tempting Maze

September 28, 2019, 4:49 am
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[Part of the Cursed story line]

To replace Anomen, Lu Lingqi begrudgingly asks Haer'Dalis (who has a clear crush on her) to join the team. The bard has an odd set of skills, but the most surprising is his fame. Almost everyone in town recognizes him.

The team returns to the Watcher's Keep and descends to Level 3, which is a bastard of a maze made of little rooms, some being magic dead zones. It's also filled with powerful, warring demons making it a slog to get through.

Aren't succubi horny little devils?

A room of succubi lustfully offer passage to the end of the maze for the prize of a kiss and Catharina agrees - getting level drained in the process. The succubi don't lie, but only after they leave do the team discover they don't have the key down, and must now go through the maze in reverse!

Insight: And that's what I get for trying to skip the level. Lol.
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The Cursed: Gambling with Many Things

September 29, 2019, 5:24 am
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[Part of the Cursed story line]

Near the portal down, which the party cannot activate, is a demon and his lackeys. Fortunately this demon knows Haer'Dalis and wants to gamble with the team with his deck of many things.


Catharina agrees to the game, winning the first two rounds and getting a nice sword and a scroll of "Wish" while only suffering minor curses but on the third round the demon wins, having bargained with the holy icon that grants freedom from the keep.

Catharina honors the deal and the demon and entourage leave. Thankfully he throws the icon back after stepping through his portal, giving the party the chance to escape - if they can find the way out of the damned maze.

Unfortunately she's not smart enough to just Wish them out.

Insight: The Wish spell here is more combat oriented, which seems to be a really bad time to summon a djinn and carefully word something.
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September 2019 Review

September 30, 2019, 4:42 am
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It feels good to clear out more back log stuff, and now that the weather is getting warmer perhaps the board game section will start moving along too. New for this post - I've also decided to put where I'm sourcing these games just to prove you don't need to spend any money to have a back log!

For some of this month I also tried eat vegetarian to help with the weight loss. Not super effective, but I was surprised at how delicious some dishes were. Might integrate those ones into my other usual carnivore meals.

    End 2019 with less weight (+1 kg from last month, running total: +6 kg)
    Complete web comic chapter 1 (remembering what Juris said, see below)
    Make board game prototype (no progress)
    Clean the roof (no progress) 
   
Juris, who is in fact a writer by night, has previously told me why I'm not getting anywhere with my comic planning: I don't have an ending. In addition to that, I'm trying to try still be historically accurate with guild events but that isn't really the project I want to do.

His suggestion (from long ago which I tried to foolishly ignore) was to make a story that happens to have Dragonarm in it, rather than tell the Dragonarm history (again). This will make for a wildly different set of events, but lets see if it goes any smoother than before.

BACKLOG
Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt [gift] (done)
Enderal [free on Steam]
Borderlands 2 [gift]
Icewind Dale [gift] (done)
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice [gift]
Neverwinter Online: Uprising [free to play] (2/2)
+LEGO Batman [free from Epic Games]
+LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes [free from Epic Games]
+LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham [free from Epic Games]
+Try Shroud of the Avatar [free on Steam]
+Try No More Room in Hell? [free on Steam]
+Everything [free from Epic Games]

Board games:
Zombicide: Black Plague Campaign (10/11)
London Dread Campaign (1/4)
Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage (0/13)

BLOG STATS

One Year Ago

I finished the Masters of Eador story as well as two TV series: the Originals and Versailles.

Five Years Ago

I discussed the opposing devils of Grinding vs Idleness, clearly inspired by my getting burnt out by all those Neverwinter Online dragons. I also was self diagnosing to see if I had video game addiction. Definitely probably!

Also, I was entertained by Mr.TVCow's youtube channel! Totally forgot about that guy. It's time for a revisit I think! :)

Most Viewed Posts last Month
The Cursed: Another Detour
The Cursed: Iron Shortage
Neverwinter Online: The New Workshop is STUPID

Hmm, same as last time? That's interesting. I'm curious how they are retaining that position. Maybe the counter is just broken? If they're still the same next month I might just ditch this section.

Top 3 Search Terms last Month
site:blogspot.com assassin's creed odyssey language:en
forest commando
site:blogspot.com how are the vegas golden knights so good? it's their first season and they hardly have any great players. language:en

Impressed an ice hockey search came up here, seeing as I don't post anything hockey related... Also that assassin's creed odyssey search is around 33 times more than the others.
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The Cursed: Keep to Yourself

October 1, 2019, 4:42 am
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[Part of the Cursed story line]

Looking for an exit the team run into a powerful wraith demon, and only thanks to Neera's chaos orb do the team manage to take it and it's allies down. Unfortunately Haer'Dalis is killed in this battle as his minute meteors are reflected back to him by the wraith's shield.

Mazzy can do that too!

One member down and wandering this place of demons really blows so Catharina switches tactics. The team are now just gonna run. Run like hell. Using invisibility and haste, this actually works - somehow getting past rooms and rooms of enemies until they find themselves back at the start.

Exhausted and again one person down they return to Athkatla to regroup. During their rest Catharina suddenly realized... "Shouldn't we be rescuing Imoen?"

Insight: Haer'Dalis is a strange cat. He's weak, but actually good at everything if you can micromanage him. Too bad, I hate micromanagement.
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The Cursed: Guild Wars

October 2, 2019, 4:49 am
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[Part of the Cursed story line]

After the *cough* slight *cough* distraction of other quests, Catharina and company finally return to the now obviously Shadow Thief thug to pay the fee, which has been lowered by 25%, to rescue Imoen.

This payment earns the team a meeting with the Shadow Thief leader who wants the team to help him first with the ongoing guild war before he enacts the daring rescue.

To save him some time, they inform him that he is up against a guild of vampires based in the graveyard district. He gives them some stakes and assistance in the form of the gnome artificer Jan Jensen, who the team previously thought was a turnip vendor and instructs them to wipe those vampires out.

Jan does keep going on about turnips...

There's not much choice, but vampires suck anyway so Catharina agrees.

Insight: I think you can break the game if you kill the Shadow Thieves at this point so better not do that.
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The Cursed: Onwards to Insanity!

October 3, 2019, 4:42 am
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[Part of the Cursed story line]

Assaulting the vamp nest proves to be easy with summons, and more than a few are staked in the process. Bodhi herself comes near death before flying away as a bat... an immortal bat who resisted magic spells and weapons.

Pity none of them are this cool.

To keep their end of the bargain the Shadow Thieves have tracked down Imoen to the island asylum of Spellhold and have already arranged a ship there. Apparently that's the extent of their "help" as the party have to do the heavy lifting themselves!

Neera is very uncomfortable about visiting an asylum specifically for mages so she is dismissed and Elisabeth rejoins the team in her place. Upon arrival at Spellhold's adjacent pirate town, the team is ambushed by vampires thanks to the cowardice of their ship's captain who quickly runs away.

He must be related to Anomen.

Insight: Remember to visit the temple for restoration if any of your team get drained. Suddenly not being able to cast high level spells and having reduced max hit points is not ideal.
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Today I Smiled: Elevator Ladies

October 4, 2019, 2:57 am
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I joined two random ladies (I'll call them Blondie and Spunky) waiting in the elevator today. They were clearly good friends, sharing a story and laughs. I am positioned near the buttons while the two of them are behind me, checking themselves out in the elevator mirror. On the ride up there was a short lull in their conversation broken by this...

Blondie [loudly]: My bum is soooo sore.

I smile to myself in the awkward silence that follows, knowing only Spunky can see the side of my face. A side wards glance confirms she's smiling too.

Blondie [stammers]: ... from exercising!

The elevator doors open at my floor and I step out, still grinning. As soon as I get out of view, Spunky cracks up and laughs hysterically. Blondie ends up laughing too as the elevator doors close again. It's addictive.

Thanks for the laugh ladies!
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The Cursed: Soul Taker

October 5, 2019, 5:06 am
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[Part of the Cursed story line]

The vampires are easily killed, as are the pirate scum of the town whom Catharina couldn't help but mess with. They then advance on to Spellhold itself and run into the "new" manager, Irenicus!

He wears metal armor in exactly one spot only. Lol.

Knocked out in this unexpected encounter, Catharina awakens in another experimental chamber where Irenicus rips out her soul to take for his own. Somehow Catharina survives this, so Irenicus then leaves them to be taken care of by his sister, Bodhi!

Fortunately Bodhi is a moron and opts to throw the team, fully armed, into the lowest basement of the asylum so she can play a game of cat and mouse before killing them. Imoen is here, also lacking a soul, and feels like she is dying.

Insight: I hate getting KO'ed by cutscene. People really need a way to avoid that as it is bad design: rail roading.
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