Green town in the desert

I had another quest to do from Sanamar, but since I skipped Al-Arqas initially, I figured that now is a good time to make up for it.

Al-Arqas is often confused with Samsur, and for good reason: it's the same damn idea. Oasis valley surrounded by mountains and deserts. I only get this one screenshot, because there's not much of anything worth seeing here. Turbine must have known this, since they placed the outposts such that you don't have to go more than two buildings into town at any point in the starter quests. The outposts are north and west, and the roads intersect at the north end of the town, right about where you can find the explorer society rep. I try  north first, following a trail marked out by rods in the sand. The Gharun'dum lands use these when the sands make actual roads impractical.

General chat is rather active tonight, and between people throwing crass insults at each other, I get the skinny from the questgiver:

I happen to remember that this quest doesn't involve a dungeon. Instead, you just head to a nearby bunker. So my initial reaction is "Man, how lazy is this woman?" I mean, level eleven mage and she can't take some newbie drudges? What is she, a burden mule? As it turns out, however, she has good reason to leave this to the professionals. Just like in Nanto, the spawn maps have been updated around the quest, so that I wind up facing level 20 skeletons and armoredillos on the way to this drudge hideout. Having walked through Sanamar with few problems, I'm overconfident and try to get some quick action. That was stupid on my part. Soon I'm chugging potions like a maniac to stay alive. It doesn't work, and I get an express trip back to the lifestone.

I don't know who to be angry at: Turbine for screwing up the spawn maps, or myself for charging in like Leeroy Jenkins and getting clobberized. (I had Lugain gems and forgot to use them, so the scale tips toward it being my fault.) On the return trip, I play a bit more reasonably. After carefully retrieving my corpse, I take the long way around to find the drudge camp. I avoid most of the high-level spawns, but unfortunately I can't avoid this one:

Way out of my league, and he's camped out right by the bunker I need to get to. While I'm trying to figure a way to sneak past him, he aggros on me. I duke it out with him a bit before confirming I'm hopelessly outclassed and switching tactics to running the eff away. I duck in the bunker hoping that he'll get stuck on the walls, but no dice. So now my gear knight is getting chased around an tiny underground room by a shadow while drudges take cheap shots at me like some kind of Derethian Tom & Jerry short. Finally, I manage to snatch the quest item from the ground and escape back upstairs and out of the bunker. This time, the Shadow does get hung up on the walls, and I /lifestone before anything else goes wrong.

The kicker? The quest item is an ordinary Drudge Charm, no different from the dozens or so I've turned in to collectors thus far in the game. Eff this quest.

Outpost number two is home to a questgiver in an improbably huge house, who has a more mundane, if overdone, task for me: retrieve an item of sentimental value from a nearby dungeon. As before, it's the overland journey which is the real problem. If you go straight to the dungeon, you encounter only drudges, but veer too far off the path and you have 20ish Armoredillos and Rifts. Fortunately, I manage to avoid drawing aggro from anything too much for me.

The Unfinished Temple dungeon is fairly straightforward. Drudges and weak Shreths, but good use of multiple levels. The action is below average, however, and a nostalgia trip in the form of a 10-year old meme invading the chat channel is more entertaining.

I find the knife she wants and return it, only to find she's pulling the same crap Ercel did back in Lytelthorpe:

So now not only am I getting sent to retrieve pointless crap, I'm being the butt of stupid pranks from the questgivers.

Anyway, in addition to the usual rewards, both of the outpost questgivers give me a recommendation letter to the explorer society rep in town. He's been looking for someone to fetch a very rare and obscure liquor from a nearby dungeon and gives me a key to... gosh, this sounds familiar. It sounds even more familiar when I get up on the cliffs around town and see the path to the dungeon:

Despite the desert setting, Al-Arqas is one of the big "Green Towns" of Dereth. Everything's made of recycled material.

Anyway, the Abandoned Shops are a highlight. Drudges everywhere, but the architecture is fairly good, and more importantly it looks like it was once a marketplace: all stalls and shops stocked with their goods. If anything it looks a little too impressive. The drudge occupants have uncharacteristically left everything in it's place, including the foodstuffs which should, by all rights, be rotten by now.

The Distillery Ambrosia is close to the entrance, but with lockpicks, you can go further down into the depths in search of more treasure. In addition to the chests, I find an especially interesting room which seems like a chapel of sorts:

But while the dungeon is nice, I have very little of interest to say about the quest. Bash drudges, grab item, receive reward. Same as always. So I head back, tag the questgiver, and move on.

If I seem to be particularly ornery with Al-Arqas, and with Sanamar for that matter, it's not entirely the game's fault. I've been doing newbie quests like this for weeks, and while it's provided some great moments, it's getting old. This is the last newb town I have to deal with, and thank god for that. I'm ready for something with a little more substance.