DavesGaming

Aias

We headed down into the dungeons. The first level was filled with a variety beasts, some we’d seen here like Orogs. Others were more the stuff of myth, like minotaurs. They’d been caged, but were all released as we arrived.

Really, the first two levels were like this. Although we had a small puzzle to solve to eget below that.

The next level was just ooze and slim that had to be burned away.

But the bottom level was the escape, and was a fearsome test. It was mostly home to a tribe of something we learned were called Jackalweres. They weren’t the most fearsome combatants themselves, but they had nasty tricks, mainly involving magic use. This included Demon summoning and a number of dangerous allies.

This bottom level was a big puzzle to activate the exit gate. the last battle involved several summoners calling demons, it was a drawn out epic for us.

When we stepped through the gate, we found ourselves in the Castle’s throne room on the main floor. There’d been no way in we could find when we were actually on the main floor. Here we faced the specter of the Luremaster himself. He congratulated us for working our way through his puzzle, our last test involved putting him and the last defenders of the keep to rest.

Four days had elapsed since that Halfling trapped us in that dessert Castle. After a brief rest we hustled back to Hjollder so we could join the battle against an ancient Dragon.

*****

I’ve mentioned before I’m using SCS for the first time on this run. I’ve kept it on a low setting, so I’m pretty much playing at standard Core difficulty and just observing how it handles things. So far, I’ve mostly seen that spellcasters are more active and do more different things. This part of the game has involved some of the first real difficulty increases I’ve seen. Although not in expected places. Like the Harpy cave is often a hard fight (depending on the party), but apart from observing many of the harpies had more different defenses up, it didn’t prove very difficult. But the last fight in the dungeon, against a mass of Jackalweres, spellcasters, and several demons. Wow. That fight is normally no big deal to me, but it was tough here! Especially with so many summons to face. I failed twice, the summoned demons and such were ultimately overpowering. I finally won the fight when I sent Aias and Ila, hasted, racing to the back of the cave and tearing up the summoners quickly. But I had to sweat out the whole fight, a lot of isolated little battles developed, like the one where Pikwell got cut off. It was fun, and maybe the first time I’ve been particularly enthused by what SCS brought to the game.

There are a few battles ahead with high level casters, I’ll look forward to seeing if they can be as challenging.