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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Demetrios1453" data-source="post: 9296585" data-attributes="member: 6801060">Pool of Radiance (Part 26): Kovel Mansion (Part 2)We continue to explore the labyrinthine Kovel Mansion. We are now in the southeastern quadrant, and as we enter one room:[ATTACH=full]352950[/ATTACH]Buffy is able to successfully disarm it. We move forward, and find something interesting on the far side of the room[ATTACH=full]352951[/ATTACH]We have Buffy search these for traps. She will look at "A" first.[ATTACH=full]352952[/ATTACH]Buffy picks the lock.[ATTACH=full]352953[/ATTACH]And here are those journal entries. The thieves here have apparently been gathering intelligence on the city leaders:[ATTACH=full]352954[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]352955[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]352956[/ATTACH]Hmmmm. Interesting info on Cadorna. The info on Eberhard (who is basically the mayor) is far less important in the long run.Time to check out cabinet "B"[ATTACH=full]352957[/ATTACH] ...ver." This is one of the ones I kept having to attempt over and over to catch as much of the text before it quickly disappeared by going to the next screen, and this is the best I could do. The screen it kept going to was:[ATTACH=full]352958[/ATTACH]15 bags of silver doesn't end up being much on the XP scale. Let's take a look at cabinet "C".[ATTACH=full]352959[/ATTACH]This one is trapped. No worry, Buffy will take care of it![ATTACH=full]352960[/ATTACH]Well... oops.  Hopefully this one will be worth it.[ATTACH=full]352961[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]352962[/ATTACH]OK, not bad at all!And even better, that was enough XP to allow some characters to level up![ATTACH=full]352963[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]352964[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]352965[/ATTACH](Maybe she'll set off a few less traps now).[ATTACH=full]352966[/ATTACH]Not too many good spells too choose from, so Bragir will take invisibility, which is at least semi-usefulBut, wait, shouldn't Brin be leveling up as well, since she's the same multiclass as Bragir? Well, the game says it splits XP evenly, but if there's any remainder after the split, a point goes to each character in the order that they are listed on the party screen. So Baroness Bella will slowly build up a bit of extra XP over time, while Brin will slowly fall a bit behind. Just looking at the GBC screen a bit above, you can see her XP bar is just barely short of reaching the level. She is, in fact, just 18 XP shy of leveling up:[ATTACH=full]352967[/ATTACH]It's not a huge deal now, but it does add up fairly significantly over the course of going through a connected series of games. I tend to even out XP via the editor at the start of each game just to keep it fair between everyone.All the cabinets examined and emptied, we leave this room and head south. The door to it is also trapped:[ATTACH=full]352968[/ATTACH]Buffy disarms it successfully. We go to the southeastern corner of the room:[ATTACH=full]352969[/ATTACH]Enjoy that screenshot. It literally took me about 15 attempts to get it before it disappeared. I swear the stupid game sped up the word "average", since I clicked to take the screenshot over and over again with what I thought was time to spare, but each time it was already on the next screen. And what is the party's reward for all my frustration?[ATTACH=full]352970[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]352971[/ATTACH]That's darn near useless. I'll pick up one of the fine tapestries to see if it's worth dragging back to a shop.[ATTACH=full]352972[/ATTACH]LOL Even a single one overloads a character.[ATTACH=full]352973[/ATTACH]Nah, they can just stay there and rot.After having turned down the game speed to its slowest setting in my attempts to get the screenshot, I move it back up.  Here's what that looks like:[ATTACH=full]352974[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]352975[/ATTACH]I usually play on speed 1, which is nice and fast, especially during combat. "0" will make things go by so quickly that combat becomes confusing since it's hard to work out which foe just moved before it's off moving the next one. I've moved it down to "3" for this playthrough, since it allows me to get some good in-combat screenshots, although it's still a bit too fast from time to time for that and I will just barely miss what I wanted to record. I'm moving it here because any random combat I would get into would be at a crawl if I kept it at "9" simply because I wanted to record text. This means I'm saving a lot so I can backtrack if I do miss some text, but that's a huge problem.Anyway, more exploring the southeastern rooms. A room or two over, and...[ATTACH=full]352976[/ATTACH]...stop and attack you." Yet another one that I couldn't get a good screenshot despite several attempts.Another battle begins:[ATTACH=full]352977[/ATTACH]They're nothing but 1st-level thieves, so I don't even waste a spell on them.[ATTACH=full]352978[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]352979[/ATTACH]OK, we've taken them out. I'm sure we've managed to stop the beating in time![ATTACH=full]352980[/ATTACH]Uh, well, thanks. We try to clean the blood from the papers.[ATTACH=full]352981[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]352982[/ATTACH]More thief intelligence, apparently. Some actual useful info here, about the Boss and his lair. Surely he's not a metallic dragon! That would be laughable!With nothing else to see here, we leave this room, and head toward the south-central part of the mansion.[ATTACH=full]352983[/ATTACH]Ouch! We apparently still have at least one thief to kill to reach the amount needed to clear the block.We go through this room and into a smaller room on the southern edge of the mansion.[ATTACH=full]352984[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]352985[/ATTACH]Hmm, that list of rumors we just found said something about a maze inside the castle walls...We move out of that room, and find further info back in the room we just came from (which is actually the room we were ambushed in near the start).[ATTACH=full]353138[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]352986[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]352987[/ATTACH]We've met Bishop Braccio; Von Urslingen is another of the town's leaders, but one we've had no contact with as of yet.Our next area of exploration is the southwestern section of the mansion. Shortly after entering that area:[ATTACH=full]352988[/ATTACH]Finally! Caught him! We deal with him quickly enough.[ATTACH=full]352989[/ATTACH]And, finally, that's enough XP for Brin to level up (even the 10 or so 1st-level thieves earlier didn't provide quite enough)[ATTACH=full]352990[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]352991[/ATTACH]Brin chooses mirror image, which is definitely the best choice available for her. She does need to get enlarge soon, though, as it will become very helpful in the next game, since at that point my magic-users' caster levels will be high enough to get targets to 19 STR, and even higher, when casting it.We're nearing the image limit, so I'll end this post here. We'll continue exploring the mansion in the next post!</blockquote>

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