Seek Black to the North

So, off to Zhentil Keep to get rid of the second-to-last sigil. As I recall, it might be possible to get rid of the sigil before seeing any combat, but I haven't gone that route in ages. Nowadays, when Olive appears in Zhentil Keep, I just keep going towards the temple and fight all the guards there. The fights aren't very hard and, as always, they give some more experience, as well as let one loot the temple treasure.

Meeting Dexam for the first time, Fzoul got killed and the sigil disappeared. Anyone else get the feeling that the sigil removal just happens, without much input from the party itself?

Dexam's cave isn't too bad. I noticed it's not a good idea to stay in the main hall where Dexam's troops are fighting Fzoul's because the party gets caught in the crossfire way too much. But elsewhere in the caves resting is usually possible, though there might be random encounters every now and then. There is one place with treasure and a partial map of the cave. The treasure isn't really worth a detour but it's not like it takes much out of the party, so I went and got it.

One thing I noticed the last time I was playing is that the Dexam battle doesn't happen in a specific square but when the party leaves a specific square. Since that square happens to be in front of a room, I'm now going into the room for the battle because the enemies are much better positioned for fireballing there. Eugene was hit pretty much immediately by the medusa's gaze, so I was reduced to five characters for the rest of the fight and the rest of the cave running.

There is an underhanded way of winning in battle against creatures like medusas and beholders (dragons too) that have nasty special abilities and not nearly as powerful melee attacks. Namely, a character that acts before them runs next to them and then moves away. The creature takes a melee attack of opportunity (or whatever it is called), which forfeits its actual turn, so it cannot use the special abilities. A hasted fighter-type with light armor can disable a lot of enemies this way, especially since it's possible to hit Esc to cancel the movement without cancelling the lost turns of the enemies (doesn't cancel the damage either, but the point is that the melee damage is much less than getting hit with the special abilities). This does feel like cheating to me, so I try to limit its use, but occasionally I do use it (like this time against Dexam).

After finishing Dexam's cave, everyone except Andreas leveled up. Janna's dual classing activated, giving her some magic user spells. In this game, an 8th level magic user is still a combat power and as a dual ranger she can cast spells wearing armor, so I gave her some combat spells, but I'm also preparing by having her memorize caster-range protection spells. Later on, she'll probably just have as many protection spells as is reasonable and then some combat spells for the cases where maximal damage is not needed.