Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 33): The Pit of Moander (Part 4) - The Pit of Moander completed!
Well, let's go find the treasure Alias mentioned, and then get out of here!
We head towards the altar, only to have something block our path!
At this point, even though slugs aren't particularly dangerous, we choose to evade them.
We head behind the altar and use "SEARCH"
That's nice!
Not bad at all.
There are a couple of magic items as well, but only one that's important.
It basically will raise her pick locks by a few percentage points, but even that's helpful.
There is also a cleric scroll with some particularly useless spells on it (really,
sticks to snakes?)
That's a bit helpful, as it seems to show the way out. We know the general area of where the exit is, but this gives us some useful detail. Kind of weird that this map is behind the altar though. Surely all the cultists would already know this. Maybe it was supposed to be given to a visitor who they later decided to sacrifice?
At this point, I decide to try to rest. It's dangerous, and we might be interrupted, but there will be a fairly tough battle to get out, and we may run into some random encounters along the way.
We luck out, and are able to complete our rest. As we're still sitting in the place we found the treasure, these games sometimes allow uninterrupted rest in a set encounter location. PoR did, but I'm not sure if that's the case here. Whatever the reason, we're able to heal up and memorize spells before we attempt our breakout.
After a quick save, we move out from behind the altar and head back south to the stairway to the upper level.
And... somehow we make it without any issues! I've done this many times before, and it always seems that there's a random encounter or two at least, but, nope, all the way to the stairs without harm!
Up we go!
We head north along the corridor, and then turn left.
We can see from the map we found behind the altar that we need to go through the door and then through a few more rooms to the exit.
We enter the first room, and...
It's a random encounter, but luckily the easiest type. No cultists slinging spells or shambling mounds with all their headaches...
Bragir is going to take the most efficient route in getting rid of them...
Bragir used
fireball against vegepygmies. It's super effective!
As you can see, after that, there's not many left to deal with...
And, luckily, things align perfectly for Buffy to end this fight in a most satisfying manner...
That problem dealt with, we go through a couple more rooms...
Evade again. No need to fight the slugs - they don't give much XP and have no treasure.
After that, we head north into the final room before the exit. But, of course, the way is blocked.
I have no idea what that battle cry means or signifies.
Cultists, vegepygmies, and five shambling mounds. We need to clear out those cultists quickly before they can cast any spells, and then deal with the shambling mounds. The vegepygmies will almost certainly all go down as collateral damage as we take care of the rest.
And how best to deal with large numbers of cultists so they can't cast spells?
Both Bragir and Brin start casting. Brin goes first...
Then Bragir.
Well, that's certainly cleared out things a bit (other than the shamblers, who are annoyingly immune to fire damage)
However, they aren't immune to cold damage!
First Bragir...
Then Brin...
It's not much, but it does wear them down a bit. And by this point all the cultists have been taken down by spells or by my melee all lined up there. Now that we don't have to worry about being randomly held, time to focus on the shambling mounds!
Bragir begins sniping shambling mounds with
magic missile now that party members are getting mixed in with the remaining foes...
And Brin moves up to start using the
wand of defoliation.
Bragir snipes one with another
magic missile...
And then Bant takes the last one out...
Nice! Our way out is secured! And we got a decent amount of XP!
Nothing exciting in terms of treasure. They all have magical ring mail like before, but that's just too heavy to carry around.
And we came out of the battle in pretty good shape! Bant and Alias were both engulfed by shambling mounds for a short time, and Alias definitely took some damage - but she's about to level! So she'll be back to max HP again once we level her up.
And so we head out the exit...
She gets her level and dips.
Thanks for the help, both of you! Even if you weren't optimized, you were still both light-years better than your old friend Akabar...
And... Yûlash is now inaccessible to us, just like Tilverton. For some reason, the designers really hated the idea of characters re-exploring old places.
Time to camp and rest!
We have several characters so close to gaining a level! But that will have to wait until we move on to the next section of the game, as we move north to visit the infamous city of Zhentil Keep itself!
Map of the Pit of Moander from the cluebook:
Also, I will be out of town on vacation starting later this week. So I'll won't be posting further here until after I get back in two weeks. Sorry, but Zhentil Keep will have to wait a short time, but the party will be visiting there as soon as possible afterwards!
(Also, glad I re-read this after posting, as I completely forgot to re-order the party now that Alias and Dragonbait are gone. Went back and did a quick party order adjustment. Much better than forgetting about it, and then starting up next time and getting into a battle with Buffy in the front when she wouldn't need to be!)
