Getting out of Town

The first task in Curse is by far the easiest. I think there are only four mandatory combats and those are all against regular humans. Of course, as with anything else in these games, it's better to fight more than just the minimum.

I didn't run quite straight to the training hall in the sewers after getting into the thieves' guild. Maybe I should have; Andreas and Janna both had too much XP when I first got there. On the other hand, I didn't have the energy to go back all the way to the thieves' guild so I looted that completely before entering the sewers.

The training hall makes for a nice base of operations. It's worth it to clean out the sewers because there's a lot of XP to be had. Andreas and Janna both managed to get a few levels before the main fight. The sewer fights were also a lot tougher than any of the Fire Knife fights. Especially that one room with a large number of otyughs proved to be quite a challenge, but I managed with very few casualties. Janna, due to her low hit points, is all the time in danger, but there was a Girdle of the Dwarves somewhere in this first task, which increased her constitution and HP, so she's no longer quite so weak.

The hideout fights are not really interesting at all and there's very little treasure to be found. Looking around, one can get enough journal entries to figure out that one of the bond creators is indeed Tyranthraxus, but well, it's not like the journal entries are ever necessary to complete these games. The final fight is nothing for a party that's gone through Pool of Radiance; even a fifth-level party that starts in Curse makes short work of the Fire Knives. Unlike in the other tasks, it takes winning the fight before the sigil disappears: