Well, after three weeks of hiatus (5 seconds of Enroth time), we are back, and ready to meet the final member of the High Council.
Introducing Lady Loretta Fleise! She handles Druid promotions, and is also the royal treasurer...wait, what?
As weird as that combo sounds, it is very true. Fleise loves money. And wants more of it. To this end, she gives us her council quest: adjust the prices at each of the stables around Enroth in her favor.
There's a sneaky little catch the game does not tell you about though. She gives you some money in addition to her council approval. How much you get depends on how long you take in in-game time to complete the quest. For the best reward, you have to do this in less than one month.
Er...I mean, my psychic powers told me that...ah screw it.
Since money is easy enough to come by in this game, we won't worry too much about it. Now for the druid promotion quest. We have to go pray at an island north of Silver Cove on one of the solstices. It's the middle of April, game-time, so the next solstice won't be until June. Guess we need to go do other stuff.
Let's take a grand tour of Enroth and do some of the stables! First, we visit the Silver Cove stable and do it. Then we take a boat to Free Haven, and fix the two stables there. From there, we take a carriage to Castle Ironfist, and turn around and do that stable.
Next we take the boat to New Sorpigal, to find the goblins are back in town. We kill them, take their stuff, and visit the stable there. We also disarm the Dragon Tower for there, and I reflect on the fact I probably should have done Silver Cove and Free Haven when I was there.
We'll get back to that.
Anyway, we sleep in for a day, then take the carriage back to Castle Ironfist. Now we turn back to the stables and...wait.
It gives us the option to go to a place called Arena. Cool, I wanted to do a Elder Scrolls game, so let's do it!
We arrive in a place that is very clearly not an Elder Scrolls game. It's an ancient stone arena (duh), which bleachers made from textures shamelessly stolen from Doom. Classy, isn't it?
The way the Arena works is that once a week, we can talk to the Arena Master, select one of four difficulty levels, and fight a small group of monsters based on that and character levels. While the monsters can't be looted for money, you get a cash prize for pounding them into snail snot. Sounds fun!
For easiness, we tackle Page, the lowest of the difficulty levels. And enter the enemies!
It's an eclectic mix. A dwarf, A priest of Baa, a pair of Swordsmen, and two all new kinds of enemies!
The first - and there are two of these - is a foe called a Sorcerer. They use various spells that do a ton of damage, and are very squishy.
The second is a Grand Druid. These women wield a variety of spells, and have the unique power of being able to drain all of a character's spell points. Which she promptly does to Eno. Who, if you recall, is also a Druid. Hmmmm.
We beat down one of the sorcerers, then retreat to a corner to heal our wounds, which are many. Eno was nearly knocked out.
The two swordsmen close in, but we kill them easily. Then onto the sorcerer, who dies fast once we pin him down with melee weapons. Then we kill the priest of Baa, then the dwarf.
Finally, we turn our attention to the druid. She dies pretty quickly. Soon enough, we will be fighting others like her. Very soon
We go back to the Arena Master, and collect our rewards - 1600 gold pieces. Not bad. For now, let's go take a break...before we go around and scam fix more stable prices.
