A man's got to know his limitations.

The night turned out to be harder than I expected, and I'm beginning to question if the Finesse template is viable. The drudge hideout was not so bad, being mainly a mix of weak Drudge Robbers and slightly stronger slaves and servants. My goal was three stolen bags of grain and the head of the drudge leader. You can see one of the bags in the background here:

Some weird mojo is working on those bags: They're almost half as tall as a human being, but weigh only 10 burden units. Not that I'm complaining. With my strength this low, I can't exactly handle heavy quest items. In any case, the dungeon is fairly unremarkable. A brief, mostly-linear crawl ending with a fight against a renamed Drudge Slave:

There were also a few chests with higher-tier loot. I'm starting to get a little annoyed by this. Newbie dungeons seem to enjoy taunting me with badass-looking gear that requires 100 points more Arcane Lore than I could possibly have at this point. At least it's worth good money. Adding insult to injury, Alfrin's reaction to my turning in his much-needed seeds is distinctly bored. But, hey, exp is exp, so I boost my Strength some more and set out for my next objective: Holtburg's Lost Light Key. Like in Yaraq, the dungeon is not easy to find since the Barkeep no longer sells the rumor. But I remember that the dungeon is somewhere in the muddy area along the river. I get a rather good scenery shot along the way:

Just over my shoulder you can see a puff of light blue that I though was a landmark for the dungeon. In fact, it's a woodsman selling house decorations, but the dungeon is within sight of his little shop. Inside it appears to at first be another brown drudge dungeon, but after a few rooms things get interesting:

Armoredillos. Worse: just like the shreth from last time, they're breeding. I kill the first batch of three, but take significant damage doing so. Having learned my lesson from last time, I crack open my Lugian gems before moving on. The dungeon is well-decorated, with lots of bookshelves and tables, (I think the lore has it being an Empyrean library,) but the layout is a real pain. Large rooms are connected by tunnels that twist and branch confusingly. Brown drudges are everywhere, which is good for me because it means good exp and Gold Letters. Killing one, I'm surprised to hear a low, deep gong sound. I found a rare!

Not bad. I put it in my backpack, leaving the decision of whether to keep it for myself or sell it in the trade channel for later.

Deeper in the dungeon, the drudges thin out in favor of more substantial enemies. A Limestone Golem proves a poor match for my daggers, thanks to the closed door between us. The Jade Gromnies are a bigger problem, but fortunately my Lugian gems keep me relatively safe. Behind a locked door I find a tunnel leading down, with a warning that I decide to heed for now:

This is the point at which the limitations of this template start to really bug me. Quite aside from the fact that I can carry so little loot, my weapons are also nowhere near as strong. You'll remember that when playing Elderwulf, I noted that the shield meant taking more damage, since without the offhand weapon I couldn't kill enemies as fast. Kalixia dual wields, but Finesse is much weaker than Heavy, so the same principle applies. There is, however, a compensating factor in the form of Multi-strike. I find a dagger with this property in the dungeon, and I'm somewhat surprised when it double-strikes at minimum power. I was under the impression that this only happened at near full power. Of course, Heavy weapons have multi-strike too, so... I should probably post on the forums to get some confirmation about this.

Despite guzzling a lot more potions than I'd like, I eventually manage to find the key. I didn't get a screen, but I think it was on a Swamp Rat. However, I get a feeling that there's more to this dungeon, so after /lifestoning to sell loot and restock on supplies, I head back in. I nearly get killed on the second run, because my Lugian gem buffs expired. Being an idiot, I didn't notice this until I had chugged 2/3rds of my potion stash. I thought I was just having bad rolls. But I manage to clear pretty much everything but the off-limits area.

The third run takes me down into said area, and I'm somewhat disappointed to find that it contains only low-level Undead.

Granted, Undead have War Magic, but they also fall pretty quickly to even Kalixia's less-than-optimal offense. It's nowhere near as challenging as the gromnies and armoredillos I had to fight to get to this point. On the plus side, there are a lot of sarcophagi down here, which would be good... if I could actually carry the loot.

But, I clear the area successfully, and declare the dungeon itself done. Before logging for the night, I take a side-trip to Shoushi to turn in a Armoredillo Spine I picked up:

Uh... 60 Speed? Really? Needless to say, I toss this to the provisioner for a few extra pyreals.

Overall, a less-then-steller day. While I did find a Rare and a bunch of Gold Letters, I was greatly disappointed in Kalixia's performance. I'll spend a few more days on her, but I don't think the possibility of greater power at high levels is worth putting up with this much tedium. I'm a "play for today" kind of person, you see.