Arcanum: Day 4 & 5

Well, it has been a while since I last updated. I have been busy. I played Arcanum a while back, and I remember where I left off. This will be a double post since I did not do much on Day 4.

Well, I spent most of Day 4 at Liam's shack leveling up by fighting the portal monsters. Apparently, monsters from another dimension have started to invade Arcanum, and I have to close the portal. To do this, I can use either a Dispel Scroll (magic) or a portal closing gizmo (technology). However, I decided not to be so hasty. Since the portal constantly summons new monsters, it is a great place to level up. Those were some tough fights, though! The Lesser Void Lizards were not too hard; the Greater Void Lizards were a challenge, and the Infernal Araya (picture Giant Flying Jellyfish) were basically impossible to take down until I had leveled up a bit. The problem was that if I got too near to the portal, multiple monsters would attack, which was pretty much a Game Over.

I dealt with this problem with guile. Since an assault from the east (the direction the forest path leads to) proved too difficult, I decided to loop around and approach from the west. I then learned how to make effective use of the F1-F5 keys. I would leave my party some distance away from the portal. I would then creep up to the portal close enough to aggro a single enemy but not enough to summon the entire pack. When the enemy rushed at me, I would run back to my party members, and we would carve up the monster. I went solo because if I took my party members in too close, they might rush at an attacking enemy and draw the entire pack down on us. Even with my strategy, I still had to make good use of the Quicksave.

I continued fighting these monsters for an hour or so and went from level 11 to level 20. I then decided to continue on, which was a good thing since my armor was almost destroyed.



After repairing my equipment, I headed for the Black Mountain mine. This place was a piece of cake with two notable exceptions: the abundance of traps and the rock golems. Since they are made of stone, you damaged your weapon with every strike. This made for a harder fight, since I refused to use my nice magical weapons on them.



To reach Gudmund Ore-Bender, the last dwarf in Black Mountain, I had to navigate through a long-corridor on the second floor that was laden with traps. To make it through, I had to use my Scroll of Sense Invisible Traps, and I still ran in to some. Having reached the last dwarf present, I learned that all the dwarves had been carted off by a pack of elves and the dwarven king. Their crime was sharing their technology, specifically the steam engine, with humans, specifically Gilbert Bates. This is an interesting development, but we will have to wait until next time to see where it leads.