D&D General Demetrios1453 Plays the Gold Box Games
- Thread starter Demetrios1453
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Thomas Shey
Legend
Given the amount of work that looked like it took between the screenshots and everything, I'm surprised they kept it up as long as they did.
Demetrios1453
Legend
I plan to get back to it the week after next. Just been a busy few weeks since late August
Demetrios1453
Legend
And we're back! After a bit of a hiatus...
Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 19): The Cave of the Dracolich (Part 6) - Cave of the Dracolich completed!
After chasing the drow to the passage that leads to their city and getting denied access, it's time to rest up a bit.
After that, we move back to the main corridor and continue on, in a winding manner, towards the southeastern portion of the caverns. With no random patrols left, it's quick and easy for a bit, until we run into our next set encounter.
Three salamanders and four drow aren't a huge challenge, as long as we quickly deal with the cleric at the bottom.
Bragir moves towards that end of the battle anyway, for a particular reason...
And while Bragir is casting, Akbar gets in his available cold spell as well.
Bragir gets the cone of cold off...
And Akbar casts his ice storm...
16 damage is reasonably good for a 3d10 spell, and the foes start to go down.
With just the drow left, we quickly take them out. Buffy tries, but fails, at a final backstab.
And that's enough to level up Akbar!
He's definitely come quite far from being useless when we first met him! Obviously not optimized, but at least reasonably useful by giving us a few extra spells!
After defeating this group of guards, the game very subtly hints we might want to rest and buff up.
Which we do (and Akbar has new spell slots from leveling up anyway).
Rested up, we begin to cast our buff spells...
Yeah, it's definitely time to throw away a year of our lives to cast haste. Although, again, Baroness Bella is the only one that really needs to worry about aging, and we're nowhere near where that might become a problem.
Fully buffed, the characters look like this:
And we go through the door into the final room of the caverns...
A dracolich! Who would have guessed? Everyone thought the name "Cave of the Dracolich" was just symbolic, or some sort of tourist trap thing!
Obviously, we don't surrender.
As we start the battle, the effects of the haste spell get spelled out for us (which is odd, since other effects are shown as you cast the spell in the buffing stage)
One thing to remember is that 1e dragons, including dracoliches, aren't anywhere near as powerful as they were in 2e and beyond.
The -6 AC is tough, but 66 HP is pretty wimpy, actually. But buffed up, we should be able to get past that AC fairly easily and start whittling away at those HP.
Oddly enough, dracoliches in this series are actually susceptible to fireball spells (although they are resistant or even immune to many other spells). We won't look this gift horse in the mouth, and Bragir gets ready to cast!
Well, even after a save, that knocked him down quite a bit! But, oops, that was centered in such a way that Brother Baltor was in the radius, and he took some damage.
But, hasted and otherwise buffed, this is melee's time to shine. Bant's 3 attacks every 2 rounds turns into 3 attacks a round, and he just bashes away at the dracolich, and quickly brings him down. Brin, in the middle of casting another fireball spell, is a bit miffed. But everyone is happy that the dracolich is gone before it could use its breath weapon.
Some very nice XP!
No one leveled, but Baroness Bella is just this close to doing so. Also, Brother Baltor is the only one who took any damage at all, and that from the errant fireball.
She's barely over 1200 XP away.
Surprisingly, the dracolich has no treasure.
We rest up and head across the room to the exit of the cave system.
And that's it for the Cave of the Dracolich! Next time, we start our exploration of the Wizard's Tower!
(And sorry about the delay; I'll try to post a bit more regularly from here on out!)
Map of the Cave:
Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 19): The Cave of the Dracolich (Part 6) - Cave of the Dracolich completed!
After chasing the drow to the passage that leads to their city and getting denied access, it's time to rest up a bit.
After that, we move back to the main corridor and continue on, in a winding manner, towards the southeastern portion of the caverns. With no random patrols left, it's quick and easy for a bit, until we run into our next set encounter.
Three salamanders and four drow aren't a huge challenge, as long as we quickly deal with the cleric at the bottom.
Bragir moves towards that end of the battle anyway, for a particular reason...
And while Bragir is casting, Akbar gets in his available cold spell as well.
Bragir gets the cone of cold off...
And Akbar casts his ice storm...
16 damage is reasonably good for a 3d10 spell, and the foes start to go down.
With just the drow left, we quickly take them out. Buffy tries, but fails, at a final backstab.
And that's enough to level up Akbar!
He's definitely come quite far from being useless when we first met him! Obviously not optimized, but at least reasonably useful by giving us a few extra spells!
After defeating this group of guards, the game very subtly hints we might want to rest and buff up.
Which we do (and Akbar has new spell slots from leveling up anyway).
Rested up, we begin to cast our buff spells...
Yeah, it's definitely time to throw away a year of our lives to cast haste. Although, again, Baroness Bella is the only one that really needs to worry about aging, and we're nowhere near where that might become a problem.
Fully buffed, the characters look like this:
And we go through the door into the final room of the caverns...
A dracolich! Who would have guessed? Everyone thought the name "Cave of the Dracolich" was just symbolic, or some sort of tourist trap thing!
Obviously, we don't surrender.
As we start the battle, the effects of the haste spell get spelled out for us (which is odd, since other effects are shown as you cast the spell in the buffing stage)
One thing to remember is that 1e dragons, including dracoliches, aren't anywhere near as powerful as they were in 2e and beyond.
The -6 AC is tough, but 66 HP is pretty wimpy, actually. But buffed up, we should be able to get past that AC fairly easily and start whittling away at those HP.
Oddly enough, dracoliches in this series are actually susceptible to fireball spells (although they are resistant or even immune to many other spells). We won't look this gift horse in the mouth, and Bragir gets ready to cast!
Well, even after a save, that knocked him down quite a bit! But, oops, that was centered in such a way that Brother Baltor was in the radius, and he took some damage.
But, hasted and otherwise buffed, this is melee's time to shine. Bant's 3 attacks every 2 rounds turns into 3 attacks a round, and he just bashes away at the dracolich, and quickly brings him down. Brin, in the middle of casting another fireball spell, is a bit miffed. But everyone is happy that the dracolich is gone before it could use its breath weapon.
Some very nice XP!
No one leveled, but Baroness Bella is just this close to doing so. Also, Brother Baltor is the only one who took any damage at all, and that from the errant fireball.
She's barely over 1200 XP away.
Surprisingly, the dracolich has no treasure.
We rest up and head across the room to the exit of the cave system.
And that's it for the Cave of the Dracolich! Next time, we start our exploration of the Wizard's Tower!
(And sorry about the delay; I'll try to post a bit more regularly from here on out!)
Map of the Cave:
W'rkncacnter
Hero
WELCOME BACK
Demetrios1453
Legend
Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 20): Dracandros' Tower (Part 1)
After a quick rest, we leave the caves, and enter the next area, blinking in the sudden sunlight.
I mean, with just a glance, how are we to know it's mystically protected, or just new or well-maintained? But we don't have time to investigate closely, since...
Must we?
I guess we must.
Um, that's not good.
(I do like the picture, showing the size of the dragon compared to the wizard. But the top of the tower must be pretty sturdy to be able to hold a bunch of dragons of that size!)
Uh... what?
Well, thank goodness for that, although we (and Elminster) are being framed here. Hopefully the dragons aren't particularly stupid and fail to notice that (a) we took the dragon down in one blow, and (b) there's no body.
So, no, the dragons aren't that stupid.
(And the mention of Mistinarperadnacles Hai Draco is a reference to the novel, were Alias and her friends subdue a red dragon by that name).
But the good news is, we've been released from another bond!
And away it goes! Two down, three to go!
"Attack dragons" or "Flee" will set 15 black dragons on the party, which is actually doable with the potion of protection from dragon breath. But it's long and tedious, and definitely not 100% guaranteed to work, so we don't choose that. We decide to "Parlay with the Dragons" and choose "Nice"
("Attack Wizard" basically gets you the same thing, but with a different text and the dragons flying off.)
Dracandros, finding to his dislike that dragons are actually smart enough to see through his (pretty stupid IMHO) plan, runs off.
An efreet, two drow warriors, and a drow mage. Not too tough, as long as we deal with the mage quickly. Brin does damage with an arrow, he runs up to the front line, and is taken down by Brother Baltor.
I try to position Buffy for some backstabs...
But they just end up being regular attacks. No matter, she takes two foes down anyway.
Not bad. But the main thing is that Baroness Bella, who was just a hair away from leveling previously, has gotten that hair and a bit more!
Of real interest here is that she's finally reached the level where she can cast cleric spells. Nothing exciting, but she can memorize some spells that Brother Baltor has been memorizing, allowing the latter to expand a bit when it comes to memorizing his spells.
Very nice - we can always retreat up here whenever we're in need of rest. Thankfully, the dragons never return.
So, I'll have Baroness Bella memorize bless, which will free up a slot for Brother Baltor to memorize another cure light wounds to speed up the Fix process.
We rest up... and then buff up. Something tells us that we'll be in immediate danger once we walk down those steps...
Baroness Bella gets to cast that bless spell right away!
I only buff up a bit, since the threat, while bad, shouldn't require us to cast our more powerful buffs like haste.
And down the steps we go...
It's only a single drow, but as you can see, he's got a very low AC and a lot of hit points! He's also using a symbol of pain which gives us -4 to hit. Beyond that, and unknown to us, he's just drank a potion of stone giant strength and a potion of speed. Although in most cases it's good that the game doesn't utilize the 1e potion mixing rules, it would have been really funny here if they did, and the drow had exploded or something.
We start the fight. I try to position Buffy so she can get a backstab in (as her attacking from behind will help negate the penalties from the symbol)...
But that doesn't go very well. My melee just don't hit him enough, and when Brother Baltor actually does, there's not a spot for Buffy to get directly opposite him. Meanwhile, while Buffy is futilely trying to get a backstab in, the drow just focuses in on her, and quickly drops her.
As you can see, he's also done significant damage to Baroness Bella, and we've only gotten him down to just above half his hit points. Clearly, this isn't going well, so a reload is in order (and I saved just back up on the roof, thankfully - you learn to save a lot in these games!)
OK, so maybe we should fully buff, including haste. I don't need things like mirror image as it's unlikely my ranged will get hit, but I buff up with everything else I have.
That's better. OK, Round 2!
Everyone ages a year. Everyone besides Baroness Bella is like, "Whatever."
We'll try this as well. Given his drow magic resistance, it's a long shot, but if it works, it will end the battle pretty much immediately.
It doesn't work. However, as you can see, the haste spell is allowing us to whittle away at his hit points with twice as many melee attacks.
We try again.
Again it doesn't work.
But this time, I do successfully get Buffy into position, and...
And that takes him down!
Although he did do quite a bit of damage again. He focused on Buffy as before, but Bant was the real target of his wrath, as you can see!
But that's fine. Safety is just back up the steps, and we can heal that up quickly.
For a single foe, that's a lot! Hopefully he had some good stuff!
Indeed he did!
Other than the fact that the longsword is only temporary, since it will evaporate once we leave this zone, that's quite a haul! Our only good armor we've received so far is, as you can see, the banded +1, and we haven't gotten any magical shields at all! And even though it's temporary, that +5 for the longsword will be very handy until then!
I let Baroness Bella keep the plate and the sword, and pass on her magical banded mail to Bant and the magical shield to Brother Baltor.
That plate is just so much better than anything else we have that it drops her AC significantly, and there's not much I can do to even it up among my front line at the moment given the few magical armor/shields we've received thus far. But, everyone up front has improved, and that's the most important thing!
We head back up the stairs to rest and heal up before we explore the tower further...
And we'll end it there for now. We've got five floors to explore, so we've barely scratched the surface of this area!
After a quick rest, we leave the caves, and enter the next area, blinking in the sudden sunlight.
I mean, with just a glance, how are we to know it's mystically protected, or just new or well-maintained? But we don't have time to investigate closely, since...
Must we?
I guess we must.
Um, that's not good.
(I do like the picture, showing the size of the dragon compared to the wizard. But the top of the tower must be pretty sturdy to be able to hold a bunch of dragons of that size!)
Uh... what?
Well, thank goodness for that, although we (and Elminster) are being framed here. Hopefully the dragons aren't particularly stupid and fail to notice that (a) we took the dragon down in one blow, and (b) there's no body.
So, no, the dragons aren't that stupid.
(And the mention of Mistinarperadnacles Hai Draco is a reference to the novel, were Alias and her friends subdue a red dragon by that name).
But the good news is, we've been released from another bond!
And away it goes! Two down, three to go!
"Attack dragons" or "Flee" will set 15 black dragons on the party, which is actually doable with the potion of protection from dragon breath. But it's long and tedious, and definitely not 100% guaranteed to work, so we don't choose that. We decide to "Parlay with the Dragons" and choose "Nice"
("Attack Wizard" basically gets you the same thing, but with a different text and the dragons flying off.)
Dracandros, finding to his dislike that dragons are actually smart enough to see through his (pretty stupid IMHO) plan, runs off.
An efreet, two drow warriors, and a drow mage. Not too tough, as long as we deal with the mage quickly. Brin does damage with an arrow, he runs up to the front line, and is taken down by Brother Baltor.
I try to position Buffy for some backstabs...
But they just end up being regular attacks. No matter, she takes two foes down anyway.
Not bad. But the main thing is that Baroness Bella, who was just a hair away from leveling previously, has gotten that hair and a bit more!
Of real interest here is that she's finally reached the level where she can cast cleric spells. Nothing exciting, but she can memorize some spells that Brother Baltor has been memorizing, allowing the latter to expand a bit when it comes to memorizing his spells.
Very nice - we can always retreat up here whenever we're in need of rest. Thankfully, the dragons never return.
So, I'll have Baroness Bella memorize bless, which will free up a slot for Brother Baltor to memorize another cure light wounds to speed up the Fix process.
We rest up... and then buff up. Something tells us that we'll be in immediate danger once we walk down those steps...
Baroness Bella gets to cast that bless spell right away!
I only buff up a bit, since the threat, while bad, shouldn't require us to cast our more powerful buffs like haste.
And down the steps we go...
It's only a single drow, but as you can see, he's got a very low AC and a lot of hit points! He's also using a symbol of pain which gives us -4 to hit. Beyond that, and unknown to us, he's just drank a potion of stone giant strength and a potion of speed. Although in most cases it's good that the game doesn't utilize the 1e potion mixing rules, it would have been really funny here if they did, and the drow had exploded or something.
We start the fight. I try to position Buffy so she can get a backstab in (as her attacking from behind will help negate the penalties from the symbol)...
But that doesn't go very well. My melee just don't hit him enough, and when Brother Baltor actually does, there's not a spot for Buffy to get directly opposite him. Meanwhile, while Buffy is futilely trying to get a backstab in, the drow just focuses in on her, and quickly drops her.
As you can see, he's also done significant damage to Baroness Bella, and we've only gotten him down to just above half his hit points. Clearly, this isn't going well, so a reload is in order (and I saved just back up on the roof, thankfully - you learn to save a lot in these games!)
OK, so maybe we should fully buff, including haste. I don't need things like mirror image as it's unlikely my ranged will get hit, but I buff up with everything else I have.
That's better. OK, Round 2!
Everyone ages a year. Everyone besides Baroness Bella is like, "Whatever."
We'll try this as well. Given his drow magic resistance, it's a long shot, but if it works, it will end the battle pretty much immediately.
It doesn't work. However, as you can see, the haste spell is allowing us to whittle away at his hit points with twice as many melee attacks.
We try again.
Again it doesn't work.
But this time, I do successfully get Buffy into position, and...
And that takes him down!
Although he did do quite a bit of damage again. He focused on Buffy as before, but Bant was the real target of his wrath, as you can see!
But that's fine. Safety is just back up the steps, and we can heal that up quickly.
For a single foe, that's a lot! Hopefully he had some good stuff!
Indeed he did!
Other than the fact that the longsword is only temporary, since it will evaporate once we leave this zone, that's quite a haul! Our only good armor we've received so far is, as you can see, the banded +1, and we haven't gotten any magical shields at all! And even though it's temporary, that +5 for the longsword will be very handy until then!
I let Baroness Bella keep the plate and the sword, and pass on her magical banded mail to Bant and the magical shield to Brother Baltor.
That plate is just so much better than anything else we have that it drops her AC significantly, and there's not much I can do to even it up among my front line at the moment given the few magical armor/shields we've received thus far. But, everyone up front has improved, and that's the most important thing!
We head back up the stairs to rest and heal up before we explore the tower further...
And we'll end it there for now. We've got five floors to explore, so we've barely scratched the surface of this area!
Demetrios1453
Legend
Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 21): Dracandros' Tower (Part 2)
After our rest, we head back down the steps, turn left, and then proceed through the door directly in front of us (the main passage continues to the left again).
Someone's let their pets loose for us to deal with, it seems.
Four wyverns. 1e poison insta-kills, remember, so if they get a lucky shot in, it could have unpleasant results...
Well, we have ways to deal with large groups of creatures...
Not bad! That will bring down their hit points nicely! Bragir follows suit...
And that takes down the three in this picture. The remaining wyvern has gone through the doorway to the south in a futile attempt to outflank us (AI creatures tend to do that a lot in this series).
So I'll send my melee down there. They can't quite make it to the wyvern, so I'll set them to "Guard" at the doorway so they'll get a free shot as the wyvern moves to them.
With the expected results...
With nothing exciting in the room besides rotting wyvern carcasses, we head back out to the corridor. A few steps beyond the door to the wyvern room, we reach a dead end with two doorways, and a rather interesting sign.
Intriguing. We'll send Baroness Bella in.
Baroness Bella goes through the door...
Oh how fun! A test to control a sphere of annihilation!
The test begins...
Well, that's not good... and also very unexpected. The game used to be bugged where if you had a character without magic-user levels attempt the test, the opposing wizard would always lose. Basically, the sphere always moved towards the opponent, and the encounter would be over quickly. However, this appears to have been fixed in the current version, much to my (and Baroness Bella's) dismay!
Well, that's better!
But it turned out to be a real tug-'o-war between us, although it tended to stay closer to the opposing wizard more often than not. I didn't screenshot the competition in detail, as it just went back and forth, moving closer and further. But eventually...
And then immediately afterwards...
And that's the end of that competition...
We like it when chests contain valuables!
Well, that's a pretty impressive amount of XP! Let's see what the treasures are!
Um... That's way too much coin to carry. We'll take the gems and jewelry, but leave the rest behind. Thanks for the XP though! As for the non-monetary treasure...
Padded armor is useless in all cases, even magical. The sword and the cleric scroll are low-level, and the magic user scroll is...
So nothing too exciting, other than lots of XP.
We head out the door, and immediately run into a patrol...
Only three though. This won't be too tough of a fight.
Knowing that they are immune to non-magical weapons, and having no magical arrows at the moment, we'll just launch some spells instead.
Meanwhile, the melee are just carving through them, and the battle is quickly done.
And with that, we move through the other door in the corridor and soon reach the steps heading down to the next level.
We take them and head downwards from Level 4 to Level 3. At the bottom, we see a familiar face, much to our dismay...
Yeah, we've beaten your twin before, so that's going to be a "No" on giving up treasure.
Well, that was easier than expected!
(It might have been better for the game to have the illusion first and the actual drow fighter second so parties would think the second was an illusion as well and unknowingly attack, but this works as well).
Having cleared Level 4, the exploration of Level 3 awaits! We'll pick up there next time...
After our rest, we head back down the steps, turn left, and then proceed through the door directly in front of us (the main passage continues to the left again).
Someone's let their pets loose for us to deal with, it seems.
Four wyverns. 1e poison insta-kills, remember, so if they get a lucky shot in, it could have unpleasant results...
Well, we have ways to deal with large groups of creatures...
Not bad! That will bring down their hit points nicely! Bragir follows suit...
And that takes down the three in this picture. The remaining wyvern has gone through the doorway to the south in a futile attempt to outflank us (AI creatures tend to do that a lot in this series).
So I'll send my melee down there. They can't quite make it to the wyvern, so I'll set them to "Guard" at the doorway so they'll get a free shot as the wyvern moves to them.
With the expected results...
With nothing exciting in the room besides rotting wyvern carcasses, we head back out to the corridor. A few steps beyond the door to the wyvern room, we reach a dead end with two doorways, and a rather interesting sign.
Intriguing. We'll send Baroness Bella in.
Baroness Bella goes through the door...
Oh how fun! A test to control a sphere of annihilation!
The test begins...
Well, that's not good... and also very unexpected. The game used to be bugged where if you had a character without magic-user levels attempt the test, the opposing wizard would always lose. Basically, the sphere always moved towards the opponent, and the encounter would be over quickly. However, this appears to have been fixed in the current version, much to my (and Baroness Bella's) dismay!
Well, that's better!
But it turned out to be a real tug-'o-war between us, although it tended to stay closer to the opposing wizard more often than not. I didn't screenshot the competition in detail, as it just went back and forth, moving closer and further. But eventually...
And then immediately afterwards...
And that's the end of that competition...
We like it when chests contain valuables!
Well, that's a pretty impressive amount of XP! Let's see what the treasures are!
Um... That's way too much coin to carry. We'll take the gems and jewelry, but leave the rest behind. Thanks for the XP though! As for the non-monetary treasure...
Padded armor is useless in all cases, even magical. The sword and the cleric scroll are low-level, and the magic user scroll is...
So nothing too exciting, other than lots of XP.
We head out the door, and immediately run into a patrol...
Only three though. This won't be too tough of a fight.
Knowing that they are immune to non-magical weapons, and having no magical arrows at the moment, we'll just launch some spells instead.
Meanwhile, the melee are just carving through them, and the battle is quickly done.
And with that, we move through the other door in the corridor and soon reach the steps heading down to the next level.
We take them and head downwards from Level 4 to Level 3. At the bottom, we see a familiar face, much to our dismay...
Yeah, we've beaten your twin before, so that's going to be a "No" on giving up treasure.
Well, that was easier than expected!
(It might have been better for the game to have the illusion first and the actual drow fighter second so parties would think the second was an illusion as well and unknowingly attack, but this works as well).
Having cleared Level 4, the exploration of Level 3 awaits! We'll pick up there next time...
Demetrios1453
Legend
Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 22): Dracandros' Tower (Part 3)
We continue to explore Level 3. We make a turn to the right, go up a hall and through a door, and turn right again. At the end of that hallway...
That's an odd combo for a wizard's tower. He's obviously hired a lot of drow, but how to you handle owlbears as part of a patrol? Well, wizards can, and do, do strange things...
That's a good number of owlbears!
And there's a drow cleric up top. We'll need to pay special attention to him!
Brin opens our salvo...
That will hopefully take care of the owlbears and also hopefully get through the drow magic resistance.
Got the fighter, but not the clerics. Only one of the owlbears makes its save, though.
Well, Brother Baltor tries a different tactic...
It gets the fighter! (He's having a very bad day, in drow terms)
But not the cleric...
One owlbear uses its hug attack on Buffy, which basically makes her unable to do anything this round.
Bragir just goes the old fashioned route, and shoots arrows at the cleric, which injures him and keeps him from casting spells this round; thankfully, the cleric rolled poorly for their initiative, or we would have been in serious danger of them getting a hold person off. As a result of the damage, he moves forward and goes into melee. This usually is what we want, but the closest combatant is Akabar, and with his terrible AC, he's pretty much inevitably hit...
It's now the start of the next round, and Akabar goes early on...
And actually scores a hit with his magic missiles!
The cleric soon drops, and Baroness Bella soon takes out the last owlbear in the upper area of the map, making things much easier for our backline group. We now concentrate on the two owlbears and the two drow fighters remaining. One owlbear is just walking back and forth along the wall to the south, futilely trying to find a way through to the party while ignoring the perfectly good door to its right.
Eventually, we take care of the drow and the owlbear in the main area of combat, and then go into the room below to take care of the final owlbear, stuck in a corner still trying to find a way through...
Not bad XP!
Nothing but useless drow gear, although we will take the arrows for our archers, as they've used quite a number of them since we left Hap village!
We're a bit hurt, but only Akabar is somewhat worrisome due to his low total HP. We could retreat to the roof to heal, but instead, will just have Brother Baltor cast a healing spell instead.
It helps... a bit.
We decide to continue forward anyway. The steps to level 2 are just around the corner (there's really not much of interest in level 3, actually).
However, as soon as we turn the corner...
Well, that was poor timing. Luckily, it's just a single efreet.
And a handful of drow. Only the drow wizard up in the corner is of any real concern.
We focus on the wizard, and as he has pretty minimal hit points and a bad AC, he doesn't last very long at all.
Next we concentrate on the efreet...
And then the drow...
That was far less messier of a battle than the one just down the hallway!
And decent XP again. Unfortunately, like usual, nothing but useless drow gear (which will evaporate once we leave this area, and not able to be sold to vendors), and a few arrows which we again pick up to keep our archers in good shape.
And we've reached the stairs down to Level 2. Do we continue on, or do we go back up to the roof and rest? As this is a good stopping point, I'll end the post here.
We continue to explore Level 3. We make a turn to the right, go up a hall and through a door, and turn right again. At the end of that hallway...
That's an odd combo for a wizard's tower. He's obviously hired a lot of drow, but how to you handle owlbears as part of a patrol? Well, wizards can, and do, do strange things...
That's a good number of owlbears!
And there's a drow cleric up top. We'll need to pay special attention to him!
Brin opens our salvo...
That will hopefully take care of the owlbears and also hopefully get through the drow magic resistance.
Got the fighter, but not the clerics. Only one of the owlbears makes its save, though.
Well, Brother Baltor tries a different tactic...
It gets the fighter! (He's having a very bad day, in drow terms)
But not the cleric...
One owlbear uses its hug attack on Buffy, which basically makes her unable to do anything this round.
Bragir just goes the old fashioned route, and shoots arrows at the cleric, which injures him and keeps him from casting spells this round; thankfully, the cleric rolled poorly for their initiative, or we would have been in serious danger of them getting a hold person off. As a result of the damage, he moves forward and goes into melee. This usually is what we want, but the closest combatant is Akabar, and with his terrible AC, he's pretty much inevitably hit...
It's now the start of the next round, and Akabar goes early on...
And actually scores a hit with his magic missiles!
The cleric soon drops, and Baroness Bella soon takes out the last owlbear in the upper area of the map, making things much easier for our backline group. We now concentrate on the two owlbears and the two drow fighters remaining. One owlbear is just walking back and forth along the wall to the south, futilely trying to find a way through to the party while ignoring the perfectly good door to its right.
Eventually, we take care of the drow and the owlbear in the main area of combat, and then go into the room below to take care of the final owlbear, stuck in a corner still trying to find a way through...
Not bad XP!
Nothing but useless drow gear, although we will take the arrows for our archers, as they've used quite a number of them since we left Hap village!
We're a bit hurt, but only Akabar is somewhat worrisome due to his low total HP. We could retreat to the roof to heal, but instead, will just have Brother Baltor cast a healing spell instead.
It helps... a bit.
We decide to continue forward anyway. The steps to level 2 are just around the corner (there's really not much of interest in level 3, actually).
However, as soon as we turn the corner...
Well, that was poor timing. Luckily, it's just a single efreet.
And a handful of drow. Only the drow wizard up in the corner is of any real concern.
We focus on the wizard, and as he has pretty minimal hit points and a bad AC, he doesn't last very long at all.
Next we concentrate on the efreet...
And then the drow...
That was far less messier of a battle than the one just down the hallway!
And decent XP again. Unfortunately, like usual, nothing but useless drow gear (which will evaporate once we leave this area, and not able to be sold to vendors), and a few arrows which we again pick up to keep our archers in good shape.
And we've reached the stairs down to Level 2. Do we continue on, or do we go back up to the roof and rest? As this is a good stopping point, I'll end the post here.
Demetrios1453
Legend
Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 23): Dracandros' Tower (Part 4)
We decide to go on down to Level 2!
At the foot of the stairs, we find something interesting!
Sure, why not? What's the likelihood of it being a trap?
But just in case it's some sort of magical trap, we'll have Bragir pick it up.
Well, darn.
Actually, this is pretty unfair, as the possibility to actually avoid the explosive runes is only around 15% even for magic-users, who have the best chance of noticing them. It's even more annoying in a little bit, since there's a warning on the paper about something ahead. Alas, said warning is now ash.
We've got more important things to worry about at the moment though...
Ouch, ouch.
And Akabar's dying.
Brother Baltor has this under control, though!
And Akabar is back up, but definitely the worse for wear...
Well, time to make a break back to the roof. We definitely need to heal up now!
Back up to level 3. Hopefully, we won't run into many patrols as we head up!
We almost immediately bump into a patrol. Thankfully, it's just salamanders, and, other than their immunity to fire and non-magical weapons (and we have plenty of cold spells and magical weapons), they aren't too hard to deal with.
Three of them should go down pretty quickly! Brin starts casting a spell.
Then Bragir moves forward to catch them all in a cone of cold.
The salamander immediately hits him, and he loses his spell. If we had a bard, we'd be getting the sad trombone right now...
My melee have run up and started doing damage. Brin casts again...
And it drops (didn't get a screenshot, unfortunately). Everyone then gangs up on the remaining salamander...
And the battle is swiftly over.
We continue swiftly towards the stairs to level 4, but right as we reach them...
Ugh. Why can't this wizard let us invade and loot his tower in peace?
Luckily only three of them, but we'll need to concentrate on the cleric.
Brin damages him, so no spells from him this round!
My melee run down to them, and in short order Bant has removed the clerical threat.
And soon after, the battle is done.
But these battles are wearing the party down!
Up to level 4!
And yet another patrol!
This one has a wizard, so we concentrate on him.
And the battle is quickly done.
At least we're getting some decent XP out of all this. Akabar isn't terribly far from gaining another level!
That was likely the last random patrol if I counted right, so we make the stairs up to the roof, and to safety, with no further interruptions.
Yes, yes we do. We're pretty beaten up!
Ah, the sweet safety of the roof!
We heal up and memorize spells. It takes several applications of the "Fix" function to get everyone healed!
And we head back down, yet again...
We get back to level 2 without any random patrols, thankfully. We seem to have cleared them out for the moment.
We explore around level 2 for a bit, but eventually we run into an actual set encounter...
Owlbears again? They are so annoying with their "hug" attack that keeps those hugged from moving or doing most actions during their turns...
We have a long line of owlbears...
With a drow cleric at the end, in a hard-to-reach position at the moment.
My ranged concentrate on him at first, to ensure we don't have to deal with any nasty hold person spells!
That done, let's clear out some of these owlbears!
(That one made its save. Those that didn't took 30, and a few already wounded ones died.)
When his turn comes up again, he takes aim at the other side...
If he didn't have the HP and AC of a kitten, Akabar would be a really useful asset. You just have to keep him safe behind everyone for him to be effective and not... die.
In the meantime, the surviving owlbears have been happily spreading hugs among some of the characters, notably Buffy and Brin. Brin at least can take some countermeasures...
And down goes that owlbear. At this point, all that's left are a few drow (we've been hitting the cleric in the interim to keep him from casting spells), and soon they go down as well...
(He tried to run away. That didn't go well for him, as you can see)
And with that battle over, I've hit the image limit. Next time, we actually do things besides combat, and find some interesting items in the remaining rooms of level 2!
We decide to go on down to Level 2!
At the foot of the stairs, we find something interesting!
Sure, why not? What's the likelihood of it being a trap?
But just in case it's some sort of magical trap, we'll have Bragir pick it up.
Well, darn.
Actually, this is pretty unfair, as the possibility to actually avoid the explosive runes is only around 15% even for magic-users, who have the best chance of noticing them. It's even more annoying in a little bit, since there's a warning on the paper about something ahead. Alas, said warning is now ash.
We've got more important things to worry about at the moment though...
Ouch, ouch.
And Akabar's dying.
Brother Baltor has this under control, though!
And Akabar is back up, but definitely the worse for wear...
Well, time to make a break back to the roof. We definitely need to heal up now!
Back up to level 3. Hopefully, we won't run into many patrols as we head up!
We almost immediately bump into a patrol. Thankfully, it's just salamanders, and, other than their immunity to fire and non-magical weapons (and we have plenty of cold spells and magical weapons), they aren't too hard to deal with.
Three of them should go down pretty quickly! Brin starts casting a spell.
Then Bragir moves forward to catch them all in a cone of cold.
The salamander immediately hits him, and he loses his spell. If we had a bard, we'd be getting the sad trombone right now...
My melee have run up and started doing damage. Brin casts again...
And it drops (didn't get a screenshot, unfortunately). Everyone then gangs up on the remaining salamander...
And the battle is swiftly over.
We continue swiftly towards the stairs to level 4, but right as we reach them...
Ugh. Why can't this wizard let us invade and loot his tower in peace?
Luckily only three of them, but we'll need to concentrate on the cleric.
Brin damages him, so no spells from him this round!
My melee run down to them, and in short order Bant has removed the clerical threat.
And soon after, the battle is done.
But these battles are wearing the party down!
Up to level 4!
And yet another patrol!
This one has a wizard, so we concentrate on him.
And the battle is quickly done.
At least we're getting some decent XP out of all this. Akabar isn't terribly far from gaining another level!
That was likely the last random patrol if I counted right, so we make the stairs up to the roof, and to safety, with no further interruptions.
Yes, yes we do. We're pretty beaten up!
Ah, the sweet safety of the roof!
We heal up and memorize spells. It takes several applications of the "Fix" function to get everyone healed!
And we head back down, yet again...
We get back to level 2 without any random patrols, thankfully. We seem to have cleared them out for the moment.
We explore around level 2 for a bit, but eventually we run into an actual set encounter...
Owlbears again? They are so annoying with their "hug" attack that keeps those hugged from moving or doing most actions during their turns...
We have a long line of owlbears...
With a drow cleric at the end, in a hard-to-reach position at the moment.
My ranged concentrate on him at first, to ensure we don't have to deal with any nasty hold person spells!
That done, let's clear out some of these owlbears!
(That one made its save. Those that didn't took 30, and a few already wounded ones died.)
When his turn comes up again, he takes aim at the other side...
If he didn't have the HP and AC of a kitten, Akabar would be a really useful asset. You just have to keep him safe behind everyone for him to be effective and not... die.
In the meantime, the surviving owlbears have been happily spreading hugs among some of the characters, notably Buffy and Brin. Brin at least can take some countermeasures...
And down goes that owlbear. At this point, all that's left are a few drow (we've been hitting the cleric in the interim to keep him from casting spells), and soon they go down as well...
(He tried to run away. That didn't go well for him, as you can see)
And with that battle over, I've hit the image limit. Next time, we actually do things besides combat, and find some interesting items in the remaining rooms of level 2!
Demetrios1453
Legend
Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 24): Dracandros' Tower (Part 5)
That last battle again gave us some good XP:
We're still in relatively good shape, as Akabar moves steadily closer to leveling...
Done with the fighting, let's explore this level a bit...
We move forward through a door, then left, and then through yet another door.
That seems interesting, so yes we do.
Nothing bad has every happened to someone reaching into a murky pool, right?
Gross and sorta creepy, but let's see what it is.
It actually doesn't give us any further info on it, and that's it for that room.
(Hint: It's the black dragon egg that Silk asked us to get a while back. She actually asked for a black dragon heart, but she'll be OK with this)
That room explored, we head back out and go to the next door in the corridor...
Our choice here is to loot, and let the random encounters reset, or just ignore it and continue on. We decide to loot - that's more XP!
Let's see what we got:
The platinum is too heavy to carry around, so we'll just take the gems and jewelry.
Oh, interesting! Magical shields have been rare so far this game.
We'll give that to Bant...
That improves his AC by 1. All done here, we head back out the door, turn right, and right there are the stairs to level 1.
We head downwards... and to a nasty surprise!
Ouch again! And the irritating part is that the warning about this trap were destroyed by the explosive runes earlier. If you don't get extremely lucky there, there's no way to avoid taking damage twice as a result...
Buffy and, especially, Akabar are now in bad shape. Well, back up to the roof we go, I guess! And the fun part is that the random patrols have been reset, although they really haven't been that exceptionally challenging, thankfully...
And so we turn around and start heading back up again. We actually get to the steps back up to level 3 without incident!
But only one step into level 3, and we meet some foes...
Three salamanders aren't that hard for us. In fact, them being lined up makes it easy for when Brin casts a spell!
My melee get a few hits in while she's casting, and then she unleashes a good amount of damage!
All but one are dead quickly, and Akabar finishes it off...
I happened to be looking through inventory, and saw that I can give Buffy a useful ranged weapon when attacking salamanders, who are immune to non-magical weapon damage. That makes all my arrows useless, but...
Damage from a magical staff sling will hit them just fine...
We barely get around the corner when more salamanders appear...
Just three again, and, in order to save everyone's time, I'll just briefly run through any further patrol encounters, as we've seen them multiple times before (unless something different and exciting happens). In this case, their position didn't set them up well for cones of cold, so this time, Brin and Akabar just cast ice storm (Bragir is having poor luck with his initiative, it seems. Finally, Buffy, with her staff sling, gets the killing blow on the last one...
We head onward, but only manage to get through the door when yet another patrol appears...
Drow give it a bit of variety compared to the last two patrols, but they have a magic user with them that we will need to deal with quickly.
Brother Baltor tries something different...
That actually works!
He also got the fighter in front of the mage as well! So this battle goes quickly. We take down the actually dangerous, non-held fighters quickly, and soon the battle is done...
We continue on, go around the corner... and bump into another patrol right at the stairs up! That's 4 patrols so far just on this level!
Four drow, one of which is a mage. Not too hard, as long as we take out that magic user quickly!
Brin damages him with her bow, and he just runs up and gets taken right down...
And the battle is quickly over after that...
Up to level 4! And only one random patrol to take out before we exhaust them again...
We rapidly run into salamander again.
Pinned up against a wall, they are prime targets for a cone of cold...
And after they are killed or badly damaged, the last goes down quickly...
With that, we run through level 4 and make it to the stairs to the roof. Whew!
We rest up, heal, and memorize spells! Akabar is irritatingly close to leveling.
The good news is that we'll get that last sliver of XP soon enough. We'll head back down to level 1, which should be a quick and easy trip now that the patrols are cleared again. We'll pick up there next time!
(As I'll be traveling this week for Thanksgiving, I can't guarantee an update next Sunday. I'll do my best, but I might just not have the time)
That last battle again gave us some good XP:
We're still in relatively good shape, as Akabar moves steadily closer to leveling...
Done with the fighting, let's explore this level a bit...
We move forward through a door, then left, and then through yet another door.
That seems interesting, so yes we do.
Nothing bad has every happened to someone reaching into a murky pool, right?
Gross and sorta creepy, but let's see what it is.
It actually doesn't give us any further info on it, and that's it for that room.
(Hint: It's the black dragon egg that Silk asked us to get a while back. She actually asked for a black dragon heart, but she'll be OK with this)
That room explored, we head back out and go to the next door in the corridor...
Our choice here is to loot, and let the random encounters reset, or just ignore it and continue on. We decide to loot - that's more XP!
Let's see what we got:
The platinum is too heavy to carry around, so we'll just take the gems and jewelry.
Oh, interesting! Magical shields have been rare so far this game.
We'll give that to Bant...
That improves his AC by 1. All done here, we head back out the door, turn right, and right there are the stairs to level 1.
We head downwards... and to a nasty surprise!
Ouch again! And the irritating part is that the warning about this trap were destroyed by the explosive runes earlier. If you don't get extremely lucky there, there's no way to avoid taking damage twice as a result...
Buffy and, especially, Akabar are now in bad shape. Well, back up to the roof we go, I guess! And the fun part is that the random patrols have been reset, although they really haven't been that exceptionally challenging, thankfully...
And so we turn around and start heading back up again. We actually get to the steps back up to level 3 without incident!
But only one step into level 3, and we meet some foes...
Three salamanders aren't that hard for us. In fact, them being lined up makes it easy for when Brin casts a spell!
My melee get a few hits in while she's casting, and then she unleashes a good amount of damage!
All but one are dead quickly, and Akabar finishes it off...
I happened to be looking through inventory, and saw that I can give Buffy a useful ranged weapon when attacking salamanders, who are immune to non-magical weapon damage. That makes all my arrows useless, but...
Damage from a magical staff sling will hit them just fine...
We barely get around the corner when more salamanders appear...
Just three again, and, in order to save everyone's time, I'll just briefly run through any further patrol encounters, as we've seen them multiple times before (unless something different and exciting happens). In this case, their position didn't set them up well for cones of cold, so this time, Brin and Akabar just cast ice storm (Bragir is having poor luck with his initiative, it seems. Finally, Buffy, with her staff sling, gets the killing blow on the last one...
We head onward, but only manage to get through the door when yet another patrol appears...
Drow give it a bit of variety compared to the last two patrols, but they have a magic user with them that we will need to deal with quickly.
Brother Baltor tries something different...
That actually works!
He also got the fighter in front of the mage as well! So this battle goes quickly. We take down the actually dangerous, non-held fighters quickly, and soon the battle is done...
We continue on, go around the corner... and bump into another patrol right at the stairs up! That's 4 patrols so far just on this level!
Four drow, one of which is a mage. Not too hard, as long as we take out that magic user quickly!
Brin damages him with her bow, and he just runs up and gets taken right down...
And the battle is quickly over after that...
Up to level 4! And only one random patrol to take out before we exhaust them again...
We rapidly run into salamander again.
Pinned up against a wall, they are prime targets for a cone of cold...
And after they are killed or badly damaged, the last goes down quickly...
With that, we run through level 4 and make it to the stairs to the roof. Whew!
We rest up, heal, and memorize spells! Akabar is irritatingly close to leveling.
The good news is that we'll get that last sliver of XP soon enough. We'll head back down to level 1, which should be a quick and easy trip now that the patrols are cleared again. We'll pick up there next time!
(As I'll be traveling this week for Thanksgiving, I can't guarantee an update next Sunday. I'll do my best, but I might just not have the time)
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