Into the Wilderness

For Curse, I have so far been writing only about completing the quests, but after defeating the second “master”, there is an option to search areas around towns, which gets the party into a cave or ruins or something with monsters to look for. From what I've seen of them, there seems to be some kind of special thing that you can do in each of these, in addition to the random encounters.

The reason I haven't been writing about doing these places is that I just don't see much point in doing them, so usually I just run through the main quests without bothering to get sidetracked. This time, I've had a couple of times where a character has been close to the next level after a quest, so I've searched around Phlan and Hillsfar, running around in the place until that character has enough XP. So, after Zhentil Keep, I went and got enough XP for Andreas to level up too, and now his dual classing activated too (though 8th-level fighter isn't a very useful addition for a paladin).

One place that I find interesting is the Tower of Oxam at Dagger Falls. That feels more like a properly-designed quest than a random cave. And of course, that has one of the classic battles, against the Beholder Corps. I have never even tried to win this battle for real; after the first time I've just stayed away. Apparently using the Dust of Disappearance is a useful thing to do, but I've never used the Dust either, in any battle. Maybe I should save my current game for a later attempt in that battle.