Snake, snake, it's a snake!

After a promising start, my week slowed to a crawl. This wasn't entirely the game's fault, although I did have a run of unremarkable dungeons. I've been distracted by some other things and haven't had a lot of time to play recently. So, if this post seems a little unenthused.... well, you know why.

Arcanum Storehouse

Since I already did the pre-req for this quest, I decided to run it next. Basically, since I helped Nuhmidra out, I now get to help out her allies. The reward for doing so is a build-your-own magic necklace, albeit with somewhat dated enchantments. After the first room, the dungeon splits into three different sub-dungeons, each with a different base necklace inside. The harder the dungeon is, the better the necklace.

Dungeon design is so-so: square floors cut into compartments like some sort of Derethian cubicle farm, big pits in the center that the daring can jump into for a shortcut. The quest items are scattered around on the lower floors. As for the enemies: tons of Sclavus. Aside from the venture into Folthid Cellar, I don't remember fighting many Sclavus. If the ones around here are any indication, I'd like to avoid them in the future. They spam War Magic. The lower-level ones aren't so bad, but the hardest dungeon contains some real problematic ones. The room in the shot above allows me to fight with doors, negating their advantage of numbers. But those doors are only near the beginning, and I'm not sure how far down I'll have to go to find the necklace. So I take a chance and jump into the pit. Surviving the fall, I poke around a little and barge into a nest of a half-dozen or so Sclavus. Urk! Doubling back, I take another path and find the object I'm looking for. Not bothering to stick around and fight, I grab it and rush back to the exit portal on the lowest level.

So I get out with the highest-level necklae, unfortunately enchanting it requires Amulets I don't have, and before I can wear it I'll need a replacement for the Coordination V spell on my current necklace. I've got some ideas on both, but it might be a while before they come to fruition. So let's ease on down for now.

Tomb of the Dead

This redundantly-named dungeon is a bit of a walk from Tufa. The wiki warns me about spawn traps and lever puzzles, but not about the fact that you can't take two steps without another damn Risen Soldier spawning.

First, however, I portal in to Tufa and take a look around. At release, Tufa was a sleepy oasis town with little going on. That changed after the Shadow Spire attack. The same day Arwic was blown off the map, Tufa likewise went ker-blammo. The natural spring that was the reason for Tufa's existence (in theory, anyway), was turned into a waterfall, which you can just see on the right side of this shot. In the distance, note the charred ruins of a former house. Apparently, the shadows' objective was to destroy the Menhir ring buried underneath the town. They did a crappy job, as the ring is not only still there, but still attunes for the Menhir Rings quest. Unfortunately, the town itself has never been rebuilt, and to this day the bartender is hanging out by a small cooking fire, encouraging passers-by that his place will be rebuilt "next month".


Anyway, after a bit of sightseeing, I head out to the dungeon I came for. It does indeed have spawn traps, which spawn Risen soldiers. I fight them off easily, but the constant respawns from the traps gets annoying. Especially since they all spawn with missile weapons, meaning I have to charge them to distribute the smackdowns instead of them coming to me. Which in turn means that when they drop dead, I'm standing right atop the spawn trap and a single step respawns them again. Eventually, I get sick of this and just start running through the trapped rooms. In addition to the Alloy Whatsits, there's a number of pickable chests in the dungeon, which results in some valuable loot. Not worth the aggravation, though. In my opinion.

Northern Black Claw Dungeon

Surprised? Me too. I took a night to run the crafter quests, which had me heading to the Bandit Castle. The best route for this is to take the Mite Maze portal in the Facility Hub and take the Bandit Castle portal nearby. En route, however, I run into a group of Drudges led by a Northern Black Claw Raider. When he dies, a portal to this dungeon opens. What the hell, I've got time. The dungeon is not terribly remarkable, it's extremely linear and stocked with nothing but 50ish drudges, but it's a welcome change of pace from the rather tedious crafters quest. Speaking of which...

Crater Pathway

I have go through this cave to get to the Crater Village and meet one of the Journeyman Cooks. Last time I took the overland route, because I'd hear there was an exploration marker there. (There wasn't. Or if there was, I didn't find it.) Today I take this path. It's short and sweet, with a lot of long upward tunnels and low-level Zefirs. I tie to the portal at the end so that I don't have to go through the run from Neydissa again next week, but that may prove a moot point. The quests only earn me five points in each skill, and I'm not sure that's worth the tedium involved. Still, it is free experience.

Dungeon Binar

Ran this dungeon after picking up a rumor in Tufa. The description sounded similar to Daiklos, which was surprisingly enjoyable. Binar is indeed kinda similar -- good map and lots of chests -- but unlike Daiklos, the spawns haven't been updated since release. Hence, I spent some time beating up Skeletons and Rats, and loot the chests for some okay stuff. Not bad, but if you want to just grind chests and bash low-levels for awhile, you're better off going to Daiklos.

Short post today. Like I said, I was busy. But my next stop is Lin, which at a glance is looking to have quite a bit going on. Current stats: