Into the Wild ...for Real This Time

The city area of Phlan is clear (again, except for the two that get done at the end), so it's time to go do some tasks in the surrounding areas. Mostly, they are boring, with one or two set-piece battles, or sometimes not even that. The nomads and lizardmen I've never liked all that much. With the lizardmen, there's even not that much to do, and with the nomads, fighting kobold hordes at this level is mostly an annoyance. Yarash's pyramid isn't very interesting, either, but it's good to do before going to see the lizardmen (I've always done it like that, so I don't know how things would turn out without the password).

The kobold cave is a nice and hard task. I went in through the large entrance, killed the wyvern there, and had the drunk kobold just outside the wyvern's cave take me to the king's throne room. That's the easy way to avoid all the random encounters in the cave, at least before leaving.

Now both of my magic-users were sixth level and both also had one fireball on a scroll, so I used two fireballs per fight, and it was pretty easy. Also, my fighters were both seventh level, so they got three attacks in two rounds, which fells trolls very nicely, especially with a two-handed sword that Andreas is carrying. In the last fight in the king's quarters, I used a wand of lightning on the trolls that were nice enough to arrange themselves into a straight line. Saving potions of extra healing is useful, though, since you never know when one of the group is knocked out and one cleric doesn't have that many healing spells.

Earlier in the buccaneer base, I'd always just grabbed the child and run, but then I found out how to get to see the commander, and it's worth it to kill the commander. It's an easy fight: just keep lobbing stinking clouds and hold persons at the commander until he goes helpless. The buccaneer guards are nothing.

The Zhentil outpost was a big puzzle on my first time. I just wandered around the base, getting into random fights, not having any clue what's going on. And then the main forces attacked and all became clear. It's worth it to save the spells for the two battles with the dwarf's and the commander's forces. Fireballs make short work of the forces themselves, and hold person and stinking cloud are good against the special opponents.

One nice thing about stinking cloud on the PC version: it actually stays there, forcing anyone in its area to save every round. On the C-64 it was just an immediate effect that was either coughing or nauseous.

Now there's only Stojanow Gate and Valjevo Castle itself. That is going to have to wait, though; I've already spent way too much time on this.