One step forward, two steps back...

I had a rough time this week, but nowhere near as rough as I would have had I not acted like an idiot.

Bellig Tower

It started off well enough. My first job was Bellig Tower, a dungeon that held a Hammer of Lightning. Bellig Tower is interesting because it's actually inside a large mountain, and thus mostly vertical. As usual, this means creatures dropping down from upper levels to savage you. I was literally under attack from half a dozen Silt Lurkers before even fully materializing in the dungeon. That took a few Stamina potions, but fortunately I was able to handle it and get out before the spawn timer went off. The dungeon was mostly divided between Silt Lurkers and Copper/Granite Golems. The Copper Golems are good for me, since I've been collecting Mnemosynes and need the hearts. Unfortunately, my lockpicking is still fairly low,  so when I get to carving later I ruin nearly all of them.

As I climb higher, I encounter the occasional stronger lurker or undead. This culminates in a battle with a Revenant (actually a buffed zombie) and his pet Jungle Reaver in a library near the top. I thought this guy had the hammer, but I don't find it on his corpse, so I move on figuring that I have to be near the end. Well, yes and no. The dungeon itself ends, but the exit portal takes me out onto the mountaintops, which is cool as hell. I take a minute to indulge my passion for panoramic screenshots.

Note the tower below me on the right. Not sure what's up with that, but I have a feeling I'll be back here eventually. Anyway, a series of portals takes me from mountaintop to mountaintop across the range, ending finally in a gate into another dungeon, which takes me down through a bunch of Copper Golems. I'm running low on stamina potions and worry about having to turn back, but in the second most ridiculous Deus Ex Machina you'll be seeing in this post, I encounter a merchant who just happens to be selling potions.

So, I come out of the dungeon with a number of Copper Hearts and a Pyreal Mote, but surprisingly, no hammer. I check the wiki, and figure out that "Revenant" had it after all. I didn't notice because I was looking for a Blue Magical Glow rather than a Purple Electric Glow. Idiot Maneuver #2 there, #1 being not boosting my lockpicking before trying to carve the hearts.

However, I liked the Bellig Tower. It's a unique layout, two vertical dungeons connected by an aboveground path along the mountaintops, and the difficulty level is about right for a 40+ character. With the exception of having to dodge around some higher-level drops on the mountaintops.

Castle of Baron Nuvillus 

This is another one of those aboveground beat 'em up quests. Essentially, a castle full of skeletons and a boss skeleton wearing a crown that I need. At first, it goes swimmingly. I roam the perimeter a bit, testing my strength against the skeletons around the edges. Nothing too special: Mi Krau-Li's Jitte makes swift work of them. So I'm feeling pretty confident, but inside turns out to be a different story:

Yes, those are acid weapons, and they sting like hell. To make matters worse, the enemies also have life magic, and vuln me against acid. After dying to a hoard of Bone Lords, I decide on a different strategy: rush in, ignore the guards, head right for the boss and clobberize him. This gets me killed again, though on the bright side there's this awesome moment where I escape pursuit by jumping to the roof of a barracks house:

I wait there for aggro to drop, but it makes no difference. You can't really do an assassin-style takedown on this boss because he's in a small room with two guards bodyblocking the door, one of them a HARD Fleshless Warrior. I try anyway, and die again. This makes it obvious that the quest is out of my league at this point, so I decide to move on to the Dansha-Ki quest. Unfortunately, I'm immediately stymied in that quest by the need for a Golden Tumerok Insignia, which drops on certain high-level Tumeroks. I check the wiki, which recommends hunting Tumerok Taskmasters, but I have a better idea...

Tumerok Banners Quest

I had planned this to be the capstone of my Facility Hub career, but hey, I need experience and an Insignia, so why not? The quest is a grind-heavy one, so I'll spare you the details. Basically, you beat up Tumeroks in one of six Training Camp dungeons until you've collected the right combination of Banner, Haft, and Crest, put them all together, then trade it in to an NPC at Cragstone for experience and an Assault Weapon. Banners and Hafts are simple enough to find, but the Crests are dropped only by Tumerok Controllers, and the drop rate is sufficiently low that I wind up camping the spawns. This is the kind of old-school MMO design that reminds players why we switched schools, but at least the respawn timer is fast in AC. 

Overall, the quest is simple but boring. The only really interesting thing about the dungeons is that they wait about a minute after you portal in to start spawning. It has a neat effect: you drop in, find the place empty, set out into the depths, and just as you're thinking "Huh, this'll be easy," BAM! enemies all around.

Well, there is one other interesting thing about the Training Camp Dungeons. I go through two of them without finding any insignias at all, but then I hit the Mask Camp:

Shit be abnormal, dude. Someone should take a look at the loot tables there. Or not. I mean, I don't have a problem with an easy place to farm insignias.

In any event, with an Assault Weapon and the needed insignia, I hit the next quest:

Dansha Ki's Rescue (Aboveground Quest)

This quest is a little more complex than most. Long story short: Dansha Ki has been captured by the Tumeroks around Dryreach, and we have to jump through some hoops to rescue her. I tried this quest the last time I was in Dereth, and while I don't remember much about it, I do remember that it was buggy as hell, involving NPCs with randomized locations that often don't spawn. It's been cleaned up a lot since then, and everything is in a static location nowadays. First you need to give Dansha's sister Yu-Vou a Gold Tumerok Insignia to prove your mettle. This flags you to talk to Dansha Ki herself, who you find locked up in a house literally about 10 seconds away. This has the somewhat absurd result that it's quite possible to get the skinny from Yu-Vou, head out looking for an insignia, stumble across Dansha by accident, and then be annoyed when she won't help you help her until you've appeased her sister.

Anyway, when Dansha-Ki finally talks to me, I get told to haul it north and bring back her backpack, which contains spell components which she can use to teleport out. Immediately thereafter, a Tumerok Guard spawns and attacks me. The fight is short, thanks to my spiffy new Assault Staff, and conveniently he has a key on him.

The key opens the door of a tower to the north. Unsurprisingly, Tumeroks guard it, but they're not a big threat either. I would recognize if not for the fact that it was late and I was low on potions and impatient. Regular readers will recall that this usually means disaster. This time I get lucky, though. I run immediately to the tower door, ignoring the guards. I unlock the door and bolt up the stairs, past a Tumerok Priest midway up, to the top of the tower where I find Dansha Ki's pack. It works, unfortunately it goes down so fast I don't have time to grab a screen. I return the pack and Dansha Ki recalls out. Her ring is impressively good:

This is where I lose it all for being a moron: I log for the night and the next day, feeling confident, I head back to Nuvillus' castle... and prove to be overconfident. The first time through, I get up to the Baron, actually kill him, and then get killed myself due to lack of potions before I can loot the Bone Crown from his corpse. Angry and impatient, I head back again several times trying to rush past the guards and retrieve the crown or my corpse before decay gets it. All told, I die three times in the castle and, in a moment of extreme dramatic irony, drop the Assault Staff and Dansha Ki's Ring, thus negating an entire evening's worth of questing. I ragequit for my own good, calm down, and come back a few hours later, patiently going through the quests again to get my gear back.

The idiocy doesn't stop there, though: I gather a bunch of insignias in the Mask Camp again, then accidentally turn them all in to the collector and don't have one to run Dansha Ki again. So I head to the Serpent Camp, deciding I might as well get the other Finesse Assault Weapon, but I put the banner together wrong and get a useless-to-me Cestus. Adding to my ire, not a single Insignia dropped in the Serpent Camp.  Not one. Resigning myself to taking the longass haul to the Mask Clan again, I stop by Holtburg to grab a new set of Lugian Gems. As it turns out, I hit the other Deus Ex Machina I referred to above: I portal in to Holtburg just as someone is dropping useless-to-him Gold Tumerok Insignias by the lifestone. No kidding, look:

Uh, thanks, random GTI Fairy!

I sign off now having recovered everything I lost due to my dumbass maneuvers. I've come out of the ordeal with two valuable lessons:

1) Trying to do something you couldn't do with 0 vitae is just digging yourself deeper.
2) As Frodo Baggins once said, "Shortcuts make long delays."

I'll take another crack at Baron Nuvillus next time, but not before doing something else first; something that'll hopefully improve my chances at least a little more.

My current stats:

Yes, the girl likes big sticks. Preferably one in each hand. ~_^

Incidentally, in all that running around I've found a Covenant Breastplate. I'm not using it just yet, since I don't have a girth to go with it, but it gives me an idea. I haven't been using any magic to this point, and I wonder if I can make it to high levels without it. If so, I can untrain Life (I'll keep Item, if only for the portal spells), and put those points into Cooking/Alchemy or specializing my Defense skills. Thoughts, commentators?