Now, if you've been following this blog for a while, you may remember how I complain about how games these days hold your hand and expect you to "brute force" your way through every encounter, never requiring you (or even allowing you) to considering alternatives that don't require killing everything in sight?

This ain't one of 'em.

...

Now, it could be that Arnika Road was designed to teach players the importance of fleeing from bad odds. And it may be that they had some flaw in their encounter-scaling logic that overdid it at level 5. And it could be that the designers deliberately made Arnika Road a speed-bump in the game.

While I couldn't see much of it in my flight to the nearly abandoned city, I really only noticed one "interesting" feature of this area (besides some items sprinkled across the landscape): a building with an impenetrable barred door. I can totally understand the reason why the door was barred, considering the threat level of the creatures roaming the road. And now I'm very curious as to what is inside. That's exploration for you. You get teased by seeing something you can't quite reach, and wonder what lay beyond.​