FNGRenegade

Mithlean and Mithras - Thaos So lets first look at the team, this is fully buffed I forgot these so I went back to the auto save which means right as the fight starts for Trail of Iron: Mithlean - Level 12 Paladin Mithras - Level 12 Chanter Dighan - Level 12 Priest Mirrah - Level 12 Druid Aloth - Level 12 Wizard Kiara - Level 12 Cipher As you can see some people aren't wearing helmets or even boots. That because at a certain point I always make the mistake of evaluating new loot vs what people already use. I think oh this helmet isn't that great and drop it into the stash to later sell it, completely forgetting someone else might have use of it. It's a habit I'll need to break. Anyway we started off by grabbing a statue with Mithlean and Mithras while dropping some fodder around Thaos (where would I have learned that move?). We set up our buffs and got to work on the Headsman (since most of the dps spawned closest to him) and quickly got quite overhelmed with the amount of area damage coming in. We quickly lost Dighan and Aloth and in my wisdom I didn't have any way of reviving fallen teammates other then the chanter chant which requires 5 phrases. So we regrouped, dropped a moonwell and topped everyone up and in the meantime killed the Headsman. Finally Mithras was done chanting and could revive our other 2 team members after which this was a walk in the park. Upscaled Thaos did have some more tricks up his sleeve compared to the runs that I saw described here earlier but it's just a few higher level spells. The AoE damage caught us off guard at the start of the fight or this would have gone down without knock outs. After the statues were down Thaos was a joke. Actually even with the statues up Thaos was stunned pretty much half the fight thanks to Avenging and Relentless Storms. It's just the opening volley that was very very painfull. And.... Fin

Mithlean and Mithras - Act II and Act III We cleared Cliaban Rilag, not really any threaths here just walked through with auto attacks and the occasional storm from Mirrah or Amplified Wave from Kiara. Afterwards we cleared up the rest of act II which by now felt more like a chore them some actual gameplay so there is not much I can say about this then next time I will be finishing this before starting WM1 in earnest (although I might pick up a companion or two there quickly). Afterwards we took your advice and scaled up act three to immediatly land us in a huge fight with the 4th bounty of the first 4. This guy was packing 3 Ogre druids and was a healer himself so took a bit to take down and the fight was a good indication of what would come with the upscaling. However he still went down relatively easy once I know I needed to take him serious. So the tank wall, Avening Storm and Amplified Wave (omg this ability is disgusting) took them down in relative ease. We turned it in and decided to do some more bounties since we were very close to level 11. This one was even easier, Aloth started us off with a slicken from stealth which meant we had plenty of time to setup and Kiara got off a HUGE Packleader which charmed and dominated half the field (3 hits 1 graze as you see below) to our cause. Followed some big fights in the first area with a lot of primordials and andara's which were quite challenging untijl we found our perfect opening. A volley of arquebusses from stealth while Mirrah drops a Tanglefoot between and Aloth a Chill fog. Then by the time they reach us Kiara drops an Amplified Wave and when they get up from that the group is already halved. Of course when we got through all the talking in Elm Wood we knew what we needed to do and that was try on the sky dragon! The fight started off really smooth and I pointed the dragon away from the team. I first focussed the adds down so that we were alone with the beast. I was having real trouble making a dent though, over 130 in most defences (the screenshot it's stunned) with fort even going near 150 and my accuracy didn't get much higher then 85 on most characters. That's when i hovered over the accuracy.... Oh wait Terrified -20 lets do something about that. Suddenly I was making a dent with Kiara, Aloth and the tanks however Mirrah and Dighan were barely hitting with their spells getting % on screen sub 10%. Thats when i found out the cone for the breath is pretty much 180 degrees and half my party still got hit. So we repositioned and continued with Aloth being the real hero with all his buffs he reached 128 accuracy which with marking weapons and coordinating attacks got him up to 140+. Finally the dragon fell. I was kind of tired at this point and I wanted to reach Thaos ASAP so that I wouldn't over level that much more, it was getting late so I rushed through the rest of the act.

I do have to say Mental Binding has been the most used ability the past few hours. Not just for crowd control but it's also a reliable way to lower an enemy's defenses if they need to be focused down. If not for the fact that Pact Leader and Amplified Wave are even more powerful I'd still call it my most used ability across all characters.

Does anyone like Durance? Not even a little, and to answer my own question as soon as I enter elmshore I got a popup so I have scaled it up.

It was unintended indeed, is this scaling an option you get prompted for? Or is this something i'd have to set in the options cause I'm definitely interested. Never gotten this far though so anything beyond getting to act 3 will be blind. I used Aloth, a hireling priest and a ranger.

I indeed got the feeling our approach was very similar in setting up a kill box using the environment and tanks and then blasting away. In my previous party this is where my high int barbarian came in great and a 3rd member of the wall and someone who could put out disgusting numbers of AoE damage with Carnage. I'm also afraid doing more content now that I might have left some area's of the game for too late. I'm not running through the act 2 main quest and I am barely doing anything but auto attacking everything down. I'm afraid that level 10 pushing on level 11 is way to high for this content. I think you guys are finishing up your game by now is it not?

I really need to find a way to better manage my screenshots. I keep pasting them in the same paint instance so its easier to save but sometimes it offsets it a bit for reasons I'm unable to determine so you can see every screenshot from a certain point as the left side of the Galvino's screenshot behind it. some of the other ambush fight ones were even worse. Any tips on how to manage screenshots and notes during these types of runs? Because I'm finding it takes me a lot of time to manage which is not bad I like making the posts but fiddling with screenshots for 15 minutes every time could be better.

Mithlean and Mithras - Paths, WM1 This will be a big update and I've made notes while playing this time so hopefully a little more concise. We start off in the Paths wanting to get at least to level 4 to get persistence. We left it off at the Zolla fight since I dreaded this but it turned out to be a complete walk in the park using a combination you will see a lot more later. Tanks up front, chill fog infront of them and Mirrah and Dighan right behind the tanks casting one of the storm spells and a beacon for damage. In the meantime Kiara controlls the important targets (druids in this case) while Aloth goes to town with minor blights. Below a screenshot of the tactic along with a GIANT world maw cast by Mirrah, I also love this spell amazing damage and whatever survives is usually prone for 5 to 10 seconds. We cleared until the Drake which went down using the same tactic. I was however starting to get a little annoyed since Mithras kept running out of health and causing us to rest every two fights. So i decided to make some changes for him which helped a lot. Then we decided we wanted to go a little more chilly so we went to White March. The ogres were quite easy again with the same tactic as above. A little bit more messy though because those cannoneers can hurt. I cleared most of the forest as well but the Lagufaeth were too annoying without any decent paralyze resistance, so I decided I need to get some more levels so my priest gets the protection spell. Great xp to be found doing the last bounty I had access to so we went for the Xaurip bounty, I can never remember his name. We pulled them back to the bridge in Valewood and that worked out amazingly using our now standard tactic. I cannot believe I ever played without a druid, these storm spells are just so insane. We also did the Yenwood battle buying the mercenaries since we had over 40k gold anyway. This made it 100% trivial and I didn't even cast many spells just clicking targets I wanted to die. This gave us some more levels but not yet paralyze immunity, what we did collect along the way however were 4 different rings with the supress affliction use per rest. This game me more then enough confidence to at least fight the Lagufaeth that you need for the battery (not doing the hotsprings yet). So we went back to the ogre cave and went in the long way to avoid killing ogres and striking a deal with the Matron. We then cleared the cave for the finding ore quest, cleared the caravan and the bounty which was very easy. Finally we grabbed stormcaller for Kiara and moved to Galvino's lab which we breezed through.... Until... I got complacent, as you can see in this paragraph I'm talking about 30-60 minutes of doing things that were really easy. So we charged headlong into the biggest group of constructs in the lab, completly forgetting those had 4 or 5 of those self destruct ones. Which promptly blew up and promptly downed Mithlean, Dighan and Mirrah about halfway into the fight. I just stared at the screen paused for a bit thinking like.... well what character is next but I wasn't giving up yet of course. We had five constructs left so we got to work, Mithras tanking, Aloth doing the damage and Kiara switching between controlling the ranged constructs and using Pain Block on Mithras to keep him alive. As you can see though Mithras his health is real low, the downside of a chanter tank I'm noticing. He goes down as well with three constructs left against my two most squishy guys. Now Kiara has enough damage with stormcaller to be able to control two of them at a time barring any catastrophic misses on the paralyze. And luckily Aloths Veils were still available and he still has some defensive buffs and a staff summon or 2. So with my wizard tank and Cipher crowd controller we managed to save ourselves from our complacency. As soon as the rest of the party stood up they congratulated Kiara, Aloth had done his fair share too but Kiara had noticed that the party was beginning to have second thoughts about her presence and she even saw them talking to a burly guy at the inn yesterday with the conversation quickly dying down when she joined the table. Mithlean and Mithras realized they had undervalued Kiara in their past adventures and they vowed to not make a mistake like this again. So the party headed off to the battery, now as you guys most likely know the battery defenders are a bloody joke. So they melted to the usual tactic and I wont mention much more about them. The spirits however are a different case, especially the ambush in the foundry which started out with our usual tactic and went fine. However then Mithlean decided she was done with it and charged into the middle of the spirits after Mithras ran out of health. This meant our frontline was gone some of the spirits rushed Aloth and Kiara who were now free game and went down quickly as well. This left just Mithlean, Dighan and Mirrah to finish up. Which was not bad they had plenty of healing to not be at risk, but these battery sirens have a lot of defences so it took a looooong time to whittle the last three down. As you can see though I messed up the screenshot gain overlapping it. This was even worse on the other screenshots of this fight which sucks because I made about 5 or 6 since I knew it was going to be a though fight. The big fight at the end was a giant let down for the group. They were quite tense leading up to it and got into their positions, tanks on the outside with summons to block the constructs and the rest inside to quickly overwhelm the spirits. However when the fight started a quick Avenging and Returning Storm and some beacons made sure the fight lasted a short time and most of the enemies were stunned for the entire duration not even getting a cast or attack off. Just look at those stuns. The fight was over and our team got some well deserved durgan upgrades. I'll post a status of the crew next time since I'm kind of typed out at the moment. I'll also try to make sure I don't mess up half the screenshots again.

I do have to take a little bit of my criticism of Kiara back, as you will see in the upcoming report she and her unlimited per encounter abilities came in clutch saving me from some fights gone sour. I've also tried playing her more focussed as kind of a baby sitter of dangerous enemies. Being able to permenatly lock down for example 2 Battery Sirens with paralyzes while doing damage with stormcaller is actually quite worth it. I think I was taking a wrong approach with her in trying to focus down dangerous targets by debuffing and damaging them. But controlling the danger enemies while helping reduce the frontline, which reduces the risk of walkby's on our tanks is actually quite nice. As to melee vs ranged, I might try a melee Cipher in another run although I am really missing my barbarian from last run so might have to bring her back. Besides that I have to say that a druid and priest combo backline of casters might be a little too overpowered for me even, the white forge battle for example was trivialized by the use of avenging storm + beacon. This killed the spirits before they even got an action off while keeping the constructs stunned as well. I think we took maybe 40 or 50 damage total during this entire fight.

That dragon fight looked tense indeed Alesia, I haven't really faced a dragon yet in this game either so if I get that far I'd have to seriously consider if I want to or if I'd rather not risk it. Although knowing myself I'm just going to risk it anyway. It's kind of what I like about these runs not knowing before you start the fight if you can make it. Jez Watt is also making me itch for a solo run but I doubt that's a good idea before i completely learn the game.

Mithlean Hearth Orlan Paladin - Defiance Bay, Dyrford, Bounties Note: I completely messed up three of the screen shots by somehow overlapping them with others while editing them for size. So they are a big small and missing the bottom half of the screen, I'll try be more careful next time. We left off our squad thinking to go back to Defiance Bay to get some more gear and levels before we go back to the paths. So we started off to the Compass first to talk to a Crucible knight before returning to the city to save their keep from their own creations. This was another wake up call because do those forge guardians hurt with their AoE spam. We had to regroup after the first fight downed half our team but we did come up with a better strategy during it. Leave them fighting the knights themselves and take some time to buff up. Especially Aloth is clutch here with DAOM and Minor blights he cuts through them like a hot knife through butter. After this we did the forgotten, which was a lot easier then I remember but I also landed an insane confusion that got rid of 60% of the enemies so that surely helped. Finally we went to Dyrford where we wrestled some spiders and an ogre and grabbed a dragon egg. All the fights were easy and nothing to write home about, the ogre fight is very easy with a druid who can charm all the bears. Now at this part of the story I do something really clever, I go out drinking with some friends and upon getting back since I'm not tired I decide to go tackle some bounties, those are some good xp. So we head off to the Black Meadow and unsurprisingly being tried and slightly drunk is a great way to nearly end a run. The fight started out decent with the summons bearing the brunt while we whittled down the adds. But I wasn't really paying much attention to the endurance of my team which landed Mithras on the ground very quickly. As the fight continued Mirrah and Dighan joined him at death's door and we had just Mithlean, Aloth and Kiara left vs the big guy and a troll. Mithlean managed to kill the dweller right before going down and by the skin of my teeth I managed to tank the last troll with Aloth under buffs and take him down with Echtoplasmic Echo from Kiara. Unfortunatly this screenshot I messed up but Aloth had about 12 endurance left and Kiara about 30. You'd say such a close call would deter me from going on and just going to sleep but as I stated I wasn't in the best state of mind so this obvious success spurred me on towards the next bounty Sir Clydel. Luckily for me nearly losing the run did wake/sober me up quite a bit and the next to fights actually went really well with not one person even coming close to death. First that band of bandits on the road at Magran's, which was odd since I remember them dropping a good item but I didn't really find any afterwards. The summons again stalled the fight while i buffed, confused and charmed to make some extra friends during the fight. The tanks held the rest and Aloth ripped them up with blights. And finally the bounty itself, the easiest one in my opinion. I managed to nuke the wizard down with Aloth and our ranged squad with arbalests before he even got a spell off. This made the fight a lot easier, my tactic at the moment is again have the summons stall while we buff and take out high priority targets (wizards, priests) after which the rest is usually easy cleanup. Luckily after this I was smart enough to go to bed because those Xaurips and their drakes would have almost certainly spelled my doom I think. But lets look at the state of the party as it stands now, this time i'll screenshot the abilities and talents and I'll note down any noteworthy items: Mithlean - Level 7 Paladin: Notable Items: Company Captains Cap, Boots of Zealous Command, Belt of the Royal Deadfire Cannoneer, Shame or Glory, Outworn Buckler, Oaken Scarab Figurine Mithras Level 7 Chanter: Noteable Items: The Pilgrim's Lasting Vigil, Shod-in-Faith, Fulvano's Amulet, Measured Restraint, Larder Door, Obsidian lamp figurine Dighan Level 7 Priest: Noteable Items: Sanguine Plate (not sure about this yet), Gloves of manipulation, Dead man's stand Mirrah Level 7 Druid: Noteable Items: Aru-Brekr, Torc of Falcon's Eyes, Fulvano's Gloves, One-Eyed Molina's Gold-Fingered Spike Flinger Aloth Level 7 Wizard: Noteable Items: Fine Robe, Unwavering Resolve, Gyrd Haewanes Stenes (fully soulbound) Kiara Level 7 Cipher: Noteable Items: Footpad's Hood, Fine Robe, Mourning Gloves, Bartender's Ring, Binding Rope, Fine War Bow I have a question though, is there any thing I might be missing with Cipher? She is my most min/maxed stat character with great accuracy etc, but I'm thoroughly underwhelmed by her in every fight. Aloth does more then double her damage output, charms etc are nice but it's one target and Aloth's confusion does just as well usually and is AoE. And on top of that Aloth is able to defend himself, I'm really missing my Carnage Firebrand barbarian from last run and I really feel Kiara is not pulling her weight. I might get her a stormcaller soon but I'm not sure that would convince me otherwise. Second question, I most likely won't do it this run but what are your thoughts on replacing party members if they aren't performing. I mean in my fantasy of the party I only really care about Mithlean and Mithras since their are my MCs and brother and sister. I see the rest as hired help turned friends over a long time working together, but not so close that they don't also notice Kiara is struggling.

It's the holiday season, and I'm something other than poor. I'd happily gift you a copy. If others would like to contribute, they'd be welcome to (absolutely zero obligation, though!) Best, A. I know I picked it up for about 30 bucks including all DLCs about four weeks ago in the steam autumn sale. So I assume that Serge is right and if you wait a week or 2 it will be discounted again on steam in the Chrismas Sale. Either way I'd be happy to contribute as well if needed.

My follow up update will be very short, not because I died luckily but I ran into a lot of ogres on level 3 and had to use every resource to kill the guys. That made me rethink my plan to push on further because I'm 99% sure the named Ogre a little further on would have no doubt been too much to handle, the tanks are ok with healing but they just run out of health (not endurance) before I can down all the ogres. That and the fact it's getting kind of late made me just say lets call it here tomorrow is a new day where I can focus on some more side quests in Defiance Bay and maybe Drywood before I get back into the thick of things in the paths. I have followed your advice and most people are equipped with at least some endurance potions and things like eldritch aim for when I need to land something clutch.

Adventures of Mithlean - Caed Nua, Defiance Bay and a few levels of the Endless Paths So I know I said I'd post some inventory pictures at the start of this story, however of course starting up the game I completely forgot about this as soon as I loaded my save, what can I say I wanted to continue. So there will be a brief bit of action and then the promised inventory pictures. We left our heroes having just cleared Readric's hold and seeing what the castle looked like Mithlean thought that it would be a good idea to get a hold of her own (who can blaim a girl really?). So we headed of to Caed Nua, where we met Kana and parked him in limbo with Eder and that crazy priest. After very very very carefully pulling the first group of shades and phantoms back to the entrance way that we could block we cleared the rest of the area with no real trouble and we went inside for the real challenge. For this fight I decided to clog up the stairway as much as possible while focus firing the phantoms as they approach to get rid of at least one or two before the actual engagement. Mirrah summoned some extra blights to help clog the holes in the line formed by Mithlean and Mithras and Aloth sent some Minoletta's Minor Missles towards the closest phantom followed by some arrows from Kiara which cleaned him up, in the meantime Dighan gave us some extra protection in the form of some buffs to our DR followed by Consecrating the ground below the party. By the time the phantoms reached us Kiara had build up some focus so she quickly dropped a Soul Shock while Aloth blasted a seond phantom with the missles combined with arbalest fire from Mirrah. This meant that even before meeting our frontline we managed to drop two of the dangerous foes. After this some AoE in the form of Soul Shock and Arcane Assault along with some focus fire took down the rest of the spirits in a Caed Nua fight that has never been so clean for me. The spiders on the way to Maerwald were not noteworthy and quickly dispatched and Maerward was downed by Mithlean chugging a potion of Bulwark Against the Elements (see I am using consumables!) and blocking the door while the rest unloaded on poor guy standing on some very chilly ground provided by Aloth. After this an uneventful travel to Defiance Bay where I grabbed the figuring for the beetles quickly, ousted a imposter mage out of a svef dealers home and cleared the catacombs for the locket and main quest. The sporelings fight for the hood while normally a big challenge went quite apart from a big positioning mistake from me that cost Kiara and Mirrah their lives as one of the trolls charged in and hugged them tight. Pictures would have done this fight better but unfortunatly I forgot. I swear I will be better about this later and even in this post since I'm typing up half now and adding screenshots of the inventory before I forget and will add a second part right after. We went back to Caed Nua because they had a letter for us and quickly met with the Chancellor and Marshall since someone was trying to take our keep away!!! This is where we stand now with our party: Mithlean Notable Items: Whispers of Yenwood, Outworn Buckler and Company Captain's Cap Mithras Notable Items: Oaken Scarab Figurine Mirrah Notable Items: Fine Arbalest, Ring of Overseeing Dighan Notable Items: Gloves of Manipulation and a Fine Crossbow Aloth Notable Items: Gyrd Haewanes Stenes Kiara Notable Items: Fine War Bow, Bartender's ring, Fulvano's Gloves As you see nothing crazy yet and as Jaheiras Witness said indeed my back line is indeed very fragile and doesn't like being the centre of attention. Although things like Mirror Images and Psychovampiric Shield does help a little bit. Anyway, onwards and upwards! We talk to the Knights of the Crucible who would like us to find a animancer for them so we set off, stopping by the Halls of Revealed Mysteries to also pick up a task from there. We end up at a house in Ondra's Gift that is crawling with unsavory types. We block the door and clean them up in short order getting the research the knights were looking for along with some goodies. While here we also look for a lost father and his son, sadly the son tried to defend the honor of a lady of the night and didn't survive the tale. Finally we talked to a merchant who gave us a task (we met a curiously loud woman outside) and we found a chest for a sailor which was not gained easily. I can't recall this fight posing much of a problem but they quickly swarmed us and Mithlean especially took some big hits at the start as you can see. I immediately deployed the buffs i'd been holding back thinking I wouldn't need them. I quickly Consecrated the ground, cast natures vigor, dropped a confusion on the frontline and switched Kiara to a hatchet and shield since she was jumped by two of the scoundrels. It however didn't help as Kiara quickly hit the dirt. However the confusion did break up their ranks sufficiently to help our battered frontline out. Aloth was swarmed soon after as the thugs completly ignored that tanks. Luckily I still had an ace up my sleeve as 3 beetles and 3 shadows appears around the robbers. This combined with some great invokes of White worms which exploded for a nice amount of damage with so many corpses saved my run from an early end to a ragged band of bandits. Well that was certainly clarifying as to the extreme risk if 4 bandits get into my back line. Luckily the duo of Mithlean and Mithras managed to keep the bandits off of Dighan and Mirrah. Next time I won't save my spells and underestimate the enemy especially rogues which can teleport past my tanks need some defensive buffs on my back line. We took the chest (I'm an honest paladin no opening it) and our wounds on Aloth and Kiara and went back to the sailor hopefully a lot wiser. From here we talked to the poor boy's mother, luckily we were able to convince his father to come back and tell her the tale himself. Finally we went to the crucible knights to give them the research. And do some shopping with their blacksmith Shod-In-Faith for Mithras and we hit level 4 for our hirelings of the party very nice since it gave our casters access to third level spells. We headed back to the Goose and Fox to deliver a package for the odd merchant in Ondra's gift but found some people there that didnt like this very much. I decided not to take her up on her offer to kill the merchant, not wanting to get involved in this squable of clearly two sides both on the wrong side of the law. I got my payment from the merchant and left the two parties to deal with each other. Afterwards i headed towards my keep to start exploring the first few levels of the paths. Which we will do in a few hours because first I gotta go past my barber and run another quick errand. To be continued later on.

Yes I'm noticing this challenge as well. It's also indeed the main reason for the plate armor and the gloves of manipulation although those 2 are the only times I've chosen to do that. I'm actually a little worried since my other two half runs i at least had a third melee (2h barb or DW fighter to pick some some stragglers if required). But this allows me some more tactical challenge and I'm even keeping one persons action queue open to have an option in case the back line gets charged. Keep someone ready to at least paralyze, charm, or just stuck the oncoming threat. I also see a lot of scroll uses in your adventures, I'm notoriously bad at using consumables like that and only have lore on Aloth. It seems I might wanna spread it out a little more and spend some time investing in some consumables for tougher fights. Something I'll have to look into because I'm always one of those people that finish the game with 30+ potions of don't get stunned in my inventory, while nearly dying and ending the run 20 times already because i didn't use them in case I need them later.

Hi all, I've been reading up on these and it seems like a lot of tense and fun adventures. I was always an avid reader of the BGT no reload challenges and even participated in some but never posted about them since I ussually get bored at or just after spellhold because I feel the party becomes too overpowered and 80% of the content doesn't really pose a challenge anymore even with SCSII and I really don't feel like playing for an hour just to get to a fight that is challenging. It's still on my bucket list to finish at some point, but since I have limited time ussually (hopefully some more in this holiday month) I'd rather spend my time on games that challenge me. However I haven't felt that way with PoE yet mostly becaues I just don't know it well enough. I've played up until halfway through act II and completed WMI, however I've reloaded much with that party which made the experience feel less fun. So I decided after reading a bit of this thread why not follow suit with a no reload challenge. Since I've not yet finished the game or even gotten past level 8 orso and I'm playing on Path of the Damned I will turn on maim before death, I am however playing Trail of Iron because that limited my natural instinct to just reload. I have started the run already and I've neglected to take screenshots when I started so the introductions will be screenshots taken at the end of the progress described in this post. So first the settings i.) Version I have no clue about the exact version, where do you find this? It's the latest version on steam. ii.) Difficulty Level Path of the Damned iii.) Settings (specifically: Maim Before Death- On/Off; Injuries On/Off; Expert Mode On/Off) Main Before Death - On, Injuries - On, Expert Mode - Off, Trail of Iron - On iv.) Mods (if any) No mods although I have modded Aloths stat's I love his personality but I wanted a little more of an edge for PotD Now to meet the team: Mithlean (the MC) - A Paladin Tank: Mithras - A Chanter Tank: Mirrah - Our druid: Dighan- Our priest of Eothas: Aloth- Our Wizard: Kiara- Our Chiper: The story so far: Started off pretty normal, started collecting all the loot in the camp and selling it there for the high return on the items. I wanted cash fast so I could hire my party since I had a lot of custom party members. The prologue went pretty well although a little slower I'm used to since Mithlean doesn't really do the best damage her job being mainly to be a wall between the bad guys and our party of heroes. After waking up next to the bodies of my short lived friends I headed straight to town to grab Aloth and some quests, however while exploring the town and picking up quests Mithlean hit level 3 which was my queue to hire my helpers, since if that is done right after leveling it reduces the experience gap between Mithlean and Aloth and the rest. This is a bit of a power move I guess but I also like to think of the party as equals and them leveling up at different times ussually distrubs my image of the party so much that in baldurs gate I IEmod my party's xp down to the lowest value when I collect my last party member depending on the class they still level differently but somehow it makes more sense to me, I'm weird like that. After sorting out the miller and killing a moon godlike in cold blood for some plate (sacrifices have to be made), I headed off to meet Durance (parked in my stronghold later with Eder for the occasional quest or supplicant) and fight the paladins and get some loot. Then I headed over to the blacksmith's stash which was my first harder fight. Luckily with some charm from Kiara and some Confusion at the hands of Aloth we managed to turn the mellee fighters against the bandit leader which allowed my squadron of arbalests and crossbows in the hands of my backline to pepper the two archers with bolts to make quick work of them. Unfortunatly during that time the charmed bandit broke free and proceeded to immediatly take his revenge on Kiara who required a quick Withdraw from Dighan after the first blow landed her at 4 endurance left. But after this quick scare we were easily able to clean up the rest of the group. After sorting this out we were unfortunatly still not level 4 which is really the minimum I wanna tackle Cuad at since it means my hirelings are even still level 2. So instead we went to the compass to make a potion for a friend of ours who was with child. The Xaurips nearly downed my Chanter when I tried setting up the fight by pulling back to a managable chokepoint. I forgot about the skirmishers paralyse and he got a hit on Mithras while running back to the party which was quite far away. Rushing back to his aid we managed to get another clutch withdraw off however that did mean we didn't have much of a frontline left to actually manage all the little buggers. Instead Aloth spammed the area between us and the approaching foe with chill fogs which slowed them down and whittled down the smaller Xaurips before they even reached us. Mithlean pickup up the champions and Kiara unloading her stored up focus to spam some aoe damage helped kill the rest of the smaller ones which left only the high priest. Dighan and Mirrah introduced it to the pointy side of some arbalest bolts which left it also taking a dirt nap. After this it was some easy cleanup, and a well deserved rest because this fight was very taxing on our spell slots due to me completely messing up the skirmisher paralyse. I need to refocus a bit if I don't want to end this run by not taking these fights serious enough. The sporelings actually went a lot smoother then normally, I managed to pull one seperately and build up a lot of focus on it with Kiara which allowed me a lot of quick aoe when the other three came up which ended the fight quickly. Without support the 2 big ones really don't do anything so are just cleanup. This finally got me to level 4 and I had a little deviation planned, I saw by the time that in a day we would have a gloves of manipulation spawned in Readrics hold, now normally I save it for later but I thought the opportunity was worth exploring so I went ahead anyway. We went up on the north side and quickly dispatched the soldier and archer. We went inside and put on some priest robes to blend and went looking for the head priest since we were told he could get us an "audience" with Readric and the gloves are in his bedroom. We promised the priest to save his friend in the dungeon which went smoothly and we were in an out of the bedroom with the gloves of manipulation ready to bail and head to get ourselves a castle. Or were we, you know if you pull Readric and his friends to the "secret" entrance room you can really chokepoint them there with your tanks while the rest peppers them. Normally I do this a little later and a little better equiped, however I have faith in my tanks with double healing backup and chill fogs to get it done. So Mithlean ran out and shot an arrow (not even near the closest guard) before running back to join her friends. Mithlean and Mithras were side by side forming a wall while Aloth covered the ground in ice and Mirrah covered the air in stinging bugs. In the meantime Kiara and Dighan peppered the archmages with bolts and stuns (in the case of Kiara) while Dighan and Mirrah threw in heals when required. It took quite a while to finish everyone up but noone was ever in danger of dying and the tactic worked really well. This also kind of worries me though because of this keeps being this easy I might just get complacent again. After this Kolsc came and I took the screenshots you see above. Next post I'll be sure to include inventory pictures at the start. I'll also include more action pictures, however I only decided to post this after I was already done with all of it so there aren't any of this. If you guys have any feedback on the post or the play, feel free!