Dorn’s Deep? Pshaw

For years I had thought of Dorn’s Deep with a mixture of fear and wonder, like it was the Mines of Moria.  I didn’t know what lurked in there – I had read some walk-throughs that mentioned Myconids (those mushroom-shaped thingies) and Drow, and that’s all I had known.  I was anticipating fighting Umber Hulks and demons, and going down through levels and levels of caves and mines.

Instead, I got some pretty wimpy fights.

First off, Jaylen was indeed dual-classed to Necromancer.  He’s been delving into those arts pretty heavily as a Cleric – summoning skeletons and other undead was how we got through many tough battles (despite Venecia’s objections).  He drank a potion of Genius and spent a furious night in Kuldahar scribbling down every scroll Callien had saved for him.  Callien’s nearing his max on spells (it takes forever to get lvl 6 spells for bard), so Jaylen will be taking over once we go through another section and have his levels up.  Odd thing: despite him dual-classing away from priest (and losing the ability to use priest weapons/armor), Jaylen can still cast all his priest spells.  !!!

Finally, Venecia’s boots of speed are negated by her Ring of Free Action – so with Venecia, Kaylen and Rolf all under Free Action, Spivey will wear the boots of speed, making him a more effective scout/archer.  With that done, we head off to Dorn’s Deep. 

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The Myconids are annoying, but only for their ability to enrage/confuse Venecia.  Several times she is lost in a berserk rage, only to turn on us afterwards (and she cant be held or slowed due to Free Action).  Luckily my other ACs are low enough to evade most of her attacks.  The rest of the first level is Orogs and Ettins, not much threat.  We come across the house of the wizard Bandoth, and agree to find his Razorvine extract, on the body of his apprentice.  The Ettin cave battle is dangerous, but Kaylen summons bears to aid.  However, she is pinned alone by Ettins at one point, and only Jaylen’s magic can stop the Ettins and save her.

Bandoth is still tough to deal with, but we barter some spells away from him – specifically a few powerful summons, for elementals and shadows.  Now both Callien and Jaylen have an Elemental summon in their spellbook.

The next level opens with an ambush, with Orogs and drow united to snipe at us from either side of a bridge.  Again we use summons, this time beetles (Kaylen) and undead (Jaylen) to lead the way.  Venecia marches side by side with the undead, having grown accustomed to them, and her armor, shield, and belt of blurring make her nearly unhittable.  While she plods through, the rest of the group uses ranged attacks, disrupting the spellcasters and dropping them quickly. 

Next is another pack of drow, much more challenging this time with spellswords and archers, along with a sorcerer.  Summons are again a help, as Callien summons monsters and then Kaylen summons a pack of wolves.  Rolf and Venecia take severe damage from Drow magic missles, and the Drow are annoyingly resistant to most spells, but soon they drop.  They leave behind new Mithril plate armor, which Venecia wears, improving her AC to -11 or -12.  She joyously takes the front again, rushing Orogs with the remaining wolves.  We rush through the adjoining rooms with relative ease, helped by more supporting spells from Callien and Jaylen.  The last room of Drow is hardly a challenge, as none of them can connect through Venecia’s armor, and many of them stay back from fear.

Next we proceed into a tunnel, and meet a Umber Hulk who speaks with us, claiming he was a Transmuter.  He charges us with killing an Orog general, but we clear the entire cavern, including 3 more Ettins (which always manage to hit Rolf and Venecia hard) and several packs of Orogs.  Kaylen attempts to call her magic wave, but is again hit and her spell disrupted, like the Ettins had done earlier.  That spell takes a long time in casting!  We kill Krilag and take his badge, and proceed back to the main hall. 

The dwarven roundtable, oddly untouched, is studied intently while Spivey roams the room.  He finds a secret door, and a switch/handle that he cannot activate.  We proceed through the secret door, and Spivey recognizes several symbols from the room before.  “It can’t be that simple,” Jaylen warns, but Spivey hops from one symbol to the next, and the room clicks as the machine whirrs and unlocks. 

Spivey smiles as a thunderous click bellows from the conference room.  “They’re just dwarves, Kaylen.  Nobody said they were bright.” 

Rolf knocks his crossbow, but doesn’t fire at Spivey, instead just casting him a dangerous look.

Back in the main room, Spivey activates the switch, and the circle/puzzle room opens to the floor below.  He excitedly leads us all downstairs, into a small engine room, and runs forward to a body and scroll on the floor – which activates a Fireball trap that sears all of us.  Still smoldering, we proceed to the next area, and speak with the spirit of Norlinor, who tells us of the lich Terikan inhabiting the halls.  Venecia is set on banishing the lich, so we rest under Norlinor’s watch, ready our spells and weapons, and head into the crypts.  Kaylen transforms into full Fire Elemental form, ready to do furious battle. 

The undead come in a huge wave, but Callien is ready, launching a powerful fireball that destroys many of them.  Kaylen, in fire elemental form, wades into them unaffected, sweeping skeletons and ghouls away with her massive flaming fists.  Spivey disarms traps and searches crypts while the warriors pummel undead.  Soon all is clear but the main stairway up, so Kaylen and Rolf run up, Kaylen dumping undead off the side and down to the abyss below, Rolf sniping with his crossbow.  The two are surprised at the top to see the lich, Terikan, encircled in magical protection, but Terikan is ready, casting a fireball.  Rolf rolls but is severly burned, and hides behind a crypt firing crossbow bolts.  Kaylen, however, is unaffected in Fire form, and begins tearing through undeed to express her rage at this abomination.

Terikan is surrounded by undead and summons more, so Callien counters by summoning some fearsome Lizard Men.  Wights are unaffected by Kaylen and the lizard men, so Venecia steps in and begins hacking them to bits.  Callien and Jaylen pelt Terikan with magic, but the effects are minimal – Venecia takes him on in melee, and Rolf comes up behind with the axe as Kaylen and the Lizard men distract his henchmen.  He falls, but immediately rises again, summoning more undead.  We quickly surround him and wipe him out.  We try to break down the door to the Hall of Heroes, but it is magically locked – Spivey finds a key in one of the nearby crypts, and just like that we are in. 

Terikan is again arisen and waiting for us, with more undead at the end of the Hall.  Spivey ducks into a few of the crypts, searching for where Terikan’s essence lies.  Soon enough he spurs a few traps, and snatches a book on his way out – but it is just Terikan’s journal.  He collapses in a corner, wheezing, but points Kaylen in there.  Venecia, Rolf, and Jaylen battle the undead wizard and his minions, while Callien studies the tombs, and finds one labeled as Jamoth’s.  Kaylen stumbles into Terikan’s crypt and finds nothing but mage scrolls within it – but she does find a desk, and searching it triggers yet another trap.  She grabs a small gren orb, and before succumbing to her wounds exits the crypt and tosses it to Spivey, who throws it to Callien.  As Terikan falls, Callien steps into Jamoth’s tomb and the phylactery disappears, damning Terikan forever. 

Dorn’s Deep has been conquered, the evil Lich defeated.  The party relaxes and heals, and prepares for the next challenge. 

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Afterthoughts:

The Orgonney siblings are truly deadly-powerful together.  Combining Fighter/Druid and Cleric/Necromancer into just two people, the abilities that ensure are astounding.  Kaylen has almost 120 HPs now, a huge range of Druid spells (she just got level 6 spells, including Summon Fire Elemental), and the ability to change into several creatures, including a Fire Elemental.  Jaylen, on the other hand, has level 4 wizard spells now, and a range of summons – skeletons, monsters, etc.  Then there’s the Cleric spells, the offensive Wizard spells, etc.  Those two back to back are a fearsome pairing.

Really the weakest character has been Spivey – good with the bow, but not as good as Rolf’s crossbow. And unlike Callien, he has a tougher time switching to melee.  His trap detection is necessary, but I feel like dual-classing away from thief (or multi-classing) would have served me better.  Still, scouting with him while hiding in shadows is useful, and truthfully I don’t use the backstab, so maybe there is more that could be done. 

At this point, I would love to split my group up into 3 sub-groups – Venecia/Callien, Spivey/Rolf, and the Orgonneys – to see how they fare.  While marching up to the Lich’s tomb I had Jaylen and Rolf take point alone, and they did fantastic.  Maybe it’s the dual-classing and spec’ing I did, but most of these big battles melt pretty easily.  This group can definitely proceed to Heart of Winter and the Luremaster after IWD is done.  Woohoo!

Severed Hand

Dragon’s Eye was difficult.  Several difficult Lizard Men battles, lots of problems with Trolls and such.  The hardest battle, which I was stuck on earlier, was the third level with the acolytes and trolls all together.  I tried summoning skeletons, fireballing, everything, but it really took me a few times to really get through.  From there, the rest of the level was painful, with the bomber beetles, poison spiders and what-not – once we got to the level with the traps and wizard, it was easy going.  JAylen’s skeleton summoning is a huge help with creatures like poison spiders and bombadier beetles.  And Rolf continues to make hell with his Axe – that cleric had no chance against him.  He criticaled and dropped her in two hits. 

Once everyone was freed and Dragons Eye cleared, we returned to Kuldahar to see Arundel – but instead found the town overrun by Orogs.  We made swift work of them, and went to Arundel – but instead found an evil doppelganger in his place.  The imposter disappeared, and Kaylen ran upstairs to find Arundel dying.  In his final moments, Arundel whispered to Kaylen and gave her his staff.  When the old druid had passed on, Kaylen announced that she would be taking up his druidic path, and tossed her armor and helm aside.  She equipped herself barely, with our magic studded leather armor, a simple shield, and scimitar/spear.  She requested a day of peace to pray for Arundel and learn what she could from his home and belongings. 

Callien again visited the wizard, picking up some more spells, while Rolf and Venecia visited the smithy, obtaining a magical hammer and outfitting themselves with new items.  Jalyen went to the church to pray for wisdom, and Spivey spent his time at the inn. 

[Note: I decided to dual-class Kaylen here, since storyline wise, Arundel passing on his staff and her taking up his mantle in defense of the great tree made sense.  Jaylen is barely level 7 as a cleric, and I will need him to stay until Kaylen has the healing power to replace him.  Callien will continue on as my main offensive spellcaster, with Jaylen doing defensive/curative, and Kaylen’s just being icing.]

When day broke, Kaylen instructed the group that the Shattered Hand was the next destination, and Arundel had marked the way for them.  It would be an intense trial, filled with undead and undead magic.  Along the way, Kaylen made remarkable progress in her Druidic studies – soon she was invoking nature powers and casting minor spells.  By the time they reached the ancient Elven tower, she was ready to contribute.    Immediately upon entering, we were fighting hordes of undead – mostly goblins and orcs.  These were much more difficult than live versions, however – their aim was much truer, hitting poor Rolf through his armor.  Their archers were especially dangerous, and had to be taken out first in many cases.  Venecia took point, with her magic shield and blurring belt making her near-unhittable, while Rolf’s big axe did most of the damage.  Roving around the crumbled tower was difficult, but soon we had cleared the first level, and then the second, despite some difficult orc shamans. 

The third level took a new turn, as huge skeletons began to attack us, along with magic-wielding skeletons, almost lich-like in appearance.   We slowly and methodically made our way through, with Kaylen’s power improving almost exponentially as we went.  Then came the bladed skeletons – these giant behemoths lashed out with two giant blades, nearly splitting Rolf in two.  They were on the lower levels too, as the elevator went down to previously inaccessible places.  Getting around the Hand was frustrating enough, but the spellcasting skeletal mages and the later, Serrated giant skeletons made things nearly impossible.

Soon they had made it to a safety zone, the fourth level of the tower, which was thanfully quiet and free of malevolent spirits.  They were able to speak to 3 or 4 of the more sentient spirits, to learn the story of the Shattered Hand and try to ascertain the status of the mage Larrel.  They learned of the 5 towerlets, and began ascending them one by one, facing hordes of elven spirits.  Archers, swordsmen, clerics and mages all attacked them, but with the aid of Kaylen’s improving spell selection, they were able to clear things out and systematically pick up pieces of the AstroLabe.  Soon they tracked down Larrel, and presented his machinist with the pieces to fix the machine.  When Larrel had returned to his senses, they gave him his daughter’s journal, and he agreed to help them, by transporting them to their next stop, Dorn’s Deep, where the Dwarves lived.

First, the party returns to Kuldahar, to give a few important books to the wizard, and gear up one more time. 

*******

HALFWAY POINT OF ICEWIND DALE!!!!

Wow, Druids are FANTASTIC!  Kaylen gained 9 levels in the Shattered Hand alone.  Her spells are so much cooler than Jaylen’s, and she is 9th level while he is only 8th as a single-class cleric!!  Ridiculous. 

Venecia and Jaylen now have -10 ACs, which at this point in the game is pretty ridiculous.  Kaylen has the worst AC, with 4, and I can’t wait for Umber Hulk or alternate good, natural armor.  Callien is doing well as the main wizard spellcaster, but at this point Jaylen is not going to tank with 55 HPs (even with a -10 AC), and his Cleric spells are losing value, so he will be dual-classed right away.  Callien has been saving all the extra wizard spells for him. 

Spivey’s skills are maxed (aside from pickpocketing), and he is pretty useful in scouting, lockpicking, and stealth (though I still havent been able to backstab).   Dorn’s Deep will be a new challenge, one I’ve never made it to in this game.  Yay for being halfway done, for the first time, after 11 years!!