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The little encounter in the orc stockade where you eat the bad soup is not as fun when you have no access to restoration and are going to be stuck at -2 for the rest of the dungeon. I think it should at least drop the Sickened condition on you visually so you can reload right then and there. I didn't notice I was sickened until it was way several saved games down the road.

The game does mention stomach pains...

I read it as flavor, not "-2 to everything." I don't remember any other conditions bestowed through dialogue.

It wouldn't have been a big deal except I didn't approach the dungeon the way you assumed (fight the bosses and get a campfire). I approached it as a gradual realization that the dungeon was never going to let me have a campfire again and the true challenge wasn't "fight the bosses" but "make it to the exit at all costs" -- I thought you had set it up as an endurance challenge to make the fighters shine. So I bypassed all the bosses and looked for any encounters that could give me cheap XP to get through the birds-chirping exit trap. Therefore the sickened condition was a game-reloader for me and not the "trip-back-to-the-campfire" minor thing you probably designed it as.

Once I found the store I started to realize I had unlimited spells via crafting, and getting out became less of a focus. But I had no expectation of finding a store inside a dungeon -- finding a store was one of the reasons I was so fixated on getting OUT at all costs, since my inventory was full.

Alright, I've played through the stockade several times and I never found the soup nor did I find a store. Where are these things? How much more have I missed?

crpgnut wrote:Alright, I've played through the stockade several times and I never found the soup nor did I find a store. Where are these things? How much more have I missed?

If you fight Kessa (or whatever her name is - the leader on level 2) first, several encounters disappear in other parts of the dungeon. Go down the other stairs and explore the whole level before you take her on.

Thanks! I'm only in Taneliz on this game but I'm not sure I have a savegame from earlier. I'm bad about remembering to save. I'm playing through without the craft wondrous items feat this time. I took two wizards though, which erases most of the challenge. I wonder how hard the game would be without a wizard at all. I bet it'd be brutal.

You are hardcore, man. I save before and after every single encounter and sometimes in between just in case there's a bug.

This doesn't really bother me but I can't find the thread where someone mentioned "teleporting" by scouting ahead with your group leader during a battle so your group will be pulled to his location when the battle is over.

That tactic will let you get into the hill giant fortress without dropping the magical barrier. If you move the door guards back one more square so you can't right click on them and start a combat, it will be fixed.

(To put a proper complaint in this thread, it seems like the Orc Stockade note leads you to go to Taneliz. But after I finished Taneliz, the Fortress encounters were easy and the treasure was pointlessly low-level. Woulda been great if I needed the leveling up, or if I'd done the fortress first, but I purposely avoided Torbury because I didn't want to get into that "hill giant war" kettle of fish they were promising me.)