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Podal Plaza

Reload.


Upon entering Podal Plaza we were asked to choose the way in which we shall handle the monsters here. Let's disguise ourselves.


We were interrogated by some hobgoblins. Elwro answered with a "sly" response. I hope they aren't smart enough to see through our lies.


You know, I can't believe that actually worked.


Sometimes monsters would let us go away without interrogating.



Let's talk with him first. Maybe he will have some information to offer?


Hmmmm... No, thanks. He said he would be there if we change our minds.


Uh, castle? What castle?





...The Boss will come here himself?


I wonder who's this Grishnak guy.


Fucking finally. I've spent way too much time looking for you.


So this is the "weapon of great power"?


I confess that it took me several reloads to figure out what exactly we were supposed to do here. First, we shall move in closer.


Meh. A Wand of Fear is certainly a nice thing to have, but it's definitely not what I'd call a "weapon of great power".



Let's just wait for the winner.




Well... That's it. We can now report back to the council. First off, though, let's explore around some more.


Sounds like a fun place.



Our hireling shall duel with him.



Flawless victory!


I'd have sent Magnus or Grunker if I knew the duel would give this much experience! Ah well...


He left us with a +2 longsword and a +1 chainmail.




We mixed with the monsters for fun.



We insult back, because this is what Codexian do when they are insulted.


Oh for fuck's sake this place is like General Discussion


Note that some of the monsters were actually on our side.


Clusterfuck ensues. We cast some spells to make things a bit less messy.


What a pointless battle.


At least it gave decent XP.


Having trolled everyone else in the bar to death, the went out of the bar with grin on their faces. Just another day inna life.


Look, a new proclaimation was posted when we were away!

More money. We are practically rolling in money now, though.



Valhingen Graveyard huh? I recall reading proclaimation regarding that place. We'll make sure to check it out.


The bishop of Tyr's temple wants to see us.


Where the hell is this Koval Mansion anyway?



Oh. You are talking about that one in Podal Plaza aren't you?


If you say so.



You know, he would be a really nice companion if we have control over what spell he casts.


Back to the Bane temple.


A couple ogres and some orcs. They were no match of us.


Piss easy.


The proclaimation posted on the walls of city hall has changed again.

Kobolds? This should be easy for us.



YES!!





The 2-handed sword goes to Magnus. The scrolls had Restoration, a level 7 (!) spell on them.


...Wait, what nomads?


We went back to the temple of Tyr to collect our reward. Turns out there were no actual reward. Well then, farewell, stupid-cleric-who-casts-hold-person-on-ogres.


We went back to Podal Plaza to clear that area, but I gave up after a few fights since it's too tedious and gives no real reward.


Bee gained another mage level, and so did Grunker. Bee's new spell is Knock. Grunker's new spell is Stinking Cloud.


There were two locked doors in Podal Plaza that we couldn't open before. Bee's Knock unlocks them immediately, though.



Inside the temple we found a priest of Ilmater who offers healing service and free resting.



I know, the last few updates (including this one) have been pretty boring. Hopefully things will get a bit more intersting in the next update, where we will explore the Textile Complex. Stay tuned!

DUNGEON MAPS

Podal Plaza:

You dropped Dirten?
You are supposed to bring him with you to the Temple of Bane on the other side of the river. Not sure how Bishop Bracchio of Tyr will react to this though.
The small shrine in Podol Plaza is not the Temple of Bane Dirten and Braccio was talking about.

Oh well, I can still get into that temple of Bane, right? RIGHT?

Right.

Textile Complex

Reload.


To the Textile Complex!


Haven't we fought the same kind of frogs two updates ago?




The fuck? I don't recall poison in AD&D being insta-kills!!

Reload.


Sleep works just fine on them, though.


I think the frogs we fought in Sokal Keep didn't managed to hit us even once. Guess we were just lucky.


Scorpions!


I didn't want them poisoning our bros, so I had Bee cast Stinking Cloud on them.


I love that spell.


We found a well which we could climb into. I decided to hold out for it for the time being, though.


Another new kind of enemy.


Our enemy were five ghouls plus a single wight. Procrastianna turned them away, and we won the battle easily.


Actually the ghouls managed to get away from us, but killing the wight along net us a decent amount of XP.


This area is where random encounters starts to get nasty. The frogs can insta-kill, ghouls can paralyze, wights can level drain and insta-kill and is immune to non-magical weapons.



There are also random encounters like this, which pits you against many weak (actually not that weak) monsters.


Would Stinking Cloud work on undeads? I don't think it would.


And it didn't.


Still, we won the fight without much trouble.


Shit. Apparently scorpions are poisonous too. Reload.

We encountered a group of hobgoblins as soon as we entered the southern part of the block.



Fight like this are piss easy compared to the undead hordes we have fought before.


Alright. Let's set out to explore around.



That's actually just a random encounter.



Hello there.


Stupid move. They didn't have a chance against us.



A single cast of Hold Person was all it takes to defeat them.


Uh... What? Haven't we found this parchment before?


Here we are in a barracks.


You didn't expect a barracks to be free of monsters, did you?


That's a lot of hobgoblins here. Thankfully we are long past the point where hobgoblins were still a threat.


Piss easy.


Huh? Let's check it out.


"Skullcrusher" sounds like the name of a boss. Actually I do believe there are about a thousand video game bosses named Skullcrusher out there; go figure.


I guess Skullcrusher has taken everything from his corpse before we came.


Yikes.




Most dungeon descriptions in this game are just flavour.



I... wasn't expecting to run into Grishnak this soon, to be honest.


I had Bee cast Stinking Cloud on Grishnak before she could do anything funny.


But she saved against the spell.


We won the fight nevertheless.


We took all the magical items as well as the brass key and the stone statuette.



More hobgoblin fights ensue. Didn't bother to take any screenshots, though.

He doesn't seem like a bad guy. Let's talk with him.





The brass key we found earlier should unlock the chains.







Ah, so Skullcrusher is a good guy? What a twist.


Holy shit, this dude is strong!



The game won't let us kill the hobgoblin children.


Oh, and the scrolls we found on Grishnak's body have some very nice spells on them.


I was hoping he would be a permanent party member!


The necklace we found on Grishnak's body was cursed; I'm glad I forgot to put it on. The potion identifies as a Potion of Healing.


Kezerilla is level 5 now. Not that it matters, mind you - she's still a useless piece of shit. Did you really expect a single classed thief to be anything else?



Boss fight!


Just a mundane ogre and some hobgoblins. How very underwhelming.


Well... we shall take it unopened. I doubt the stuff inside will be useful to us, anyway.


Time to finally check out the well!


Elwro will climb down.


Success!


Cardona be damned, YES!






I'll be damned. There's a LOT of stuff that are useful to us!


Farewell.


I wonder what does the Gauntlets of Ogre Power do...



That's some massive for Magnus right there!


Heh. Suckers.



We are already quite rich, but more money is always welcome.






Procratianna is level 5 now, too. That means she can cast level 3 cleric spells now!


DUNGEON MAPS

Textile:

Very nice!

Oh yeah! 18(00) strength baby!

IIRC, AD&D 1st ed - instakill, 2nd ed - not.

But that's what D&D is all about?! A terrible oversight

You mean, a neutral guy? *cringe* Also, did you know he can be found in SOZ (as in, the NWN2 expansion)? Fucker is hard to 'accidentally' kill and loot...

So, without a thief in the party you wouldn't have been able to duplicate the seal? Does anyone know this? (I'm wondering which party to create myself.)

Regarding poison, I repeat some sagely advice from another thread:

Poison is rather confusing. It doesn't actually kill right away even if it looks that way. A character who has been posioned can be revived with Neutralize Poison spell (only from a Temple in Pool) if the party brings him there before the poison kills him for good. Slow Poison will increase the time before the poison really kills, so it is a useful spell to have while exploring the slums. Out in the wilderness it is useless since it takes too long to reach a temple.
The advantage of Slow Poison is that Neutralize Poison is much cheaper than Raise Dead and it doesn't decrease CON.

Being drained by Wights is usually worse, since a Restoration (from scrolls) only restores one level, and if you have been drained several times before restoring you will lose levels permanently.

The guy will simply throw any non-thief out of the well with his ring without talking to them. So without a thief in the party your options are to loot the treasure and get caught or be a good boy and take it to Cadorna unopened.

It seemed to work alright on my last playthrough that I'd just cast restoration once per level they had lost. As far as I could tell all that was lost was the XP they had accumulated after reaching their current level. I think one char lost 4 levels in one fight in the graveyard and I got them all back using the scrolls.

Hmm...must work differently for PCs and NPCs, then. I remember Hero being drained some levels, but Restoration only working once and he permanantly losing some levels.

Yes, PCs can be restored fully with the scrolls in PoR, whereas the poison is pretty much an instakill. In CotAB you get Neutralize Poison making several fights much easier but in PoR you either need to haul ass to temple or just reload.

Too true, bro! Dialogue? Combat? Pah! I play RPGs to kill children and bake breads!

I didn't even play SoZ.

I never memorized Slow Poison, actually. Guess I'll have to from now on.

Library

Reload.


Here's the libraby of Old Phlan. This block contains nothing but a very large building: the library. We came to here a couple of updates ago, but couldn't get inside because the door was locked.


We open the front door with Bee's Knock spell.


These furniture are in surprisingly good shape. Guess the locked door has keeped monsters from getting in.



We could search the library, but more often than not we can't find anything useful.


Sometimes, however, we would luck out and find intersting books.

Another one:

We took it with us. The council will pay us for books like this.


Another library district.

I would comment on this if I'm not so tired. Typing is teh hard.


Yet another library district.


We shall approach it. What can possibly go wrong?


Would you like to have a talk with us?


I guess the answer is no.



I'd have acted more carefully if I know it's a basilisk. It had 31 HP at the start of battle but our hireling took it down to 16 with one lucky blow.


Thankfully, the basilisk botched up its initiative roll. Also, note that Magnus has done so much damage with a single blow that the basilisk was outright killed.





phat l00t!


The rhetoric district didn't have any useful books for us to take, and neither did this one.


An empty room.


We are now in the southern part of the library.



Of course! What kind of adventurers would we be if we don't take every valuable we see?






Yes!



I... thought there was only one jar.


Even more golden sheets, yeah.


We found Prosper cowering in some corner.



I must be crazy, for I picked yes at this question.


And at this one.


Ugh. I still don't know why I did that.


Let's search around a bit.






I bet this is a stat boosting book.



Maybe they'll have information for us.



Alright...



Turns out it's just a map of the Textile Complex, which we have already cleared.



The swamp has nothing of significance in it.


A ghost assaults on us when we were going to leave the library.



Spectres are powerful undeads with low AC and a shitton of HP. It can also drain two levels on a hit.


We took it out in one round.


Procrastianna uses the Restoration scrolls on Kezerilla to restore her levels.


Phew, that fucker was tough.


Back to the council!


More money.



They also paid us for the books.


And a new quest. Well, not exactly new since we read a proclaimation about this two updates ago.


Also, it was not until now that I discovered that while the Restoration scrolls did restore Kezerilla's lost level, she has suffered a major XP hit. Should have just reloaded.


I'm almost sure that this decision will come to bite us in the ass, but fuck, travelling with ONE useless fuck was painful enough.


The cloak we found on the basilisk's body turns out to be a Cloak of Displacement. Nice!


DUNGEON MAPS
Library:

Bah, you got so lucky with both of them. Oh, how many times I got killed by either the basilisk or especially the spectre.

I think losing Hit Points even if restoring all levels is a bug. You may want to fix that with a character editor. There is one here, but I haven't tried it, though.

As for the Manual you found, it's a Manual of Bodily Health. If a character Uses it from the Camp menu and then immediately Rests for 31 uninterrupted days it is supposed to permanently increase CON by 1. It worked fine in the Amiga version, but not so in the DOS version. In my experience it will work if you follow the above instructions, but you will not see a benefit right away. Last time I played I suddenly got a message about the CON increase when I was out exploring the wilderness.

It has worked for me nicely. Though once my charisma jumped to 99 as well, which was mighty funny.