In the last post, we left off having just gotten to level 6 and crossing over the bridge on our way to Provoka.

The trip to Provoka went pretty uneventfully. We ran into a couple of creeps along the way and also a solo ogre. These encounters helped us immensely to figure out where we were in attacking each. Creeps were easy, Ogres were tough but doable, we probably didn't want a big party with them.

I also decided that we should unequip our weapons and armor. Weapons were a bit tricky, I think overall we were just barely doing more damage without weapons than with, it really required that second hit to do more damage, but it was iffy. There wasn't much of a decision for the Armor. Taking it off meant improving my absorb from 5 to 6 and increased my evade percentage by about 10%. The only one who had even a remote debatge was Sisk who was wearing the cap which gave an extra absorb, but even then it was worth getting rid of it for that evade.

We got to level 7 and then proceeded with the storyline. Pirates have taken over the town, no one knows why. We go in and wipe the floor with the 9 pirates and in order to save themselves they give us their ship!

This point of the game comes with the biggest point of grinding in the entire game, regardless of party makeup. I'm not 100% sure why that is. My best guess is that if you don't know where you are going, you end up looking around, dying some, heading back and forth to the Inn. You find the Witch, etc. And all this leads to getting levels. But when you know where you are going, you skip a lot of the natural exploration that happens and you end up needing to grind. (I also think in later points in the game, it somehow feels slightly more directed than it does right here. And I say all this even though the instruction manual that comes with the game actually directs you through all of this so you kinda know where you are going anyway, but that probably was created much later in the process.)

So we make our way to level 8 and then I think we are probably good enough so we head South West to a new port on the inland sea that we have access to. We find our way to... Elfland? This is one town name in the entire game I never quite understood. The other towns have actual names, but this one has the name that could just as easily been named humanland if huamns lived there, which is just odd.

At any rate, we stop by the Inn for a quick heal and we actually spend some money on the copper band just to see if it is better absorb (it isn't), and then head to the castle. This castle is very different than the one in Humanland, our previous castle seemed symmetrical and this one is kind of all over the place. It's not entirely clear where the prince may be.

We do find him, asleep in his bed. Apparently he has been in a magical sleep for 5 years, but could be awakened by getting an herb from a nearby cave. No one else in the last 5 years seems to have been capable to make that trip, so it is up to us! And that's where we will leave it for the time being!

One thing we know we need to do is level! We begin leveling and soon find ourselves fighting an ogre and 3 creeps. This seems like no problem to me. We've done an ogre and 2 creeps a number of times before after all. But for some reason, this ogre just won't die! At most they take 6 attacks to kill, and I plan accordingly. Into round 4 and even 5, the ogre lives attacking every turn. And this is affecting killing the creeps, though I have started giving attacks to them, I am hampered because sooner than I realize, SISK is in need of healing and starts chugging healing potions like no tomorrow. Alas, it wasn't enough and sisk meets his bitter end. Jane and Pcrd finish off the fight, just barely and we head back to town for a much needed rest.

I apparently greatly misjudged our ability to be in this area with 3 level 8 blackbelts. We quickly hop back into the ship and head back go Provoka to level more. On the bright side, with only 2 blackbelts remaining, we should be able to level faster. I am hoping that we can get to level 10 swiftly, and that at level 10 we have the attacks per turn instead of 2.

Today's XP totals are:

Runecrafting: 1; Aurum: 1; Dominus: 1; Glyphus: 1; Iteron: 1; Dracorius: 1