The Cursed: The Old Gang

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Needing to assemble a melee team to tackle the maze in the Watcher's Keep, Catharina gets the old gang back together: The Paladin Keldorn, now more grim faced after imprisoning his wife and executing her lover, Werewolf Cernd - who is more than happy to abandon his kid with the druids, and Mazzy the hero who somehow escaped Spellhold asylum and the island solo.

With Neera's help they also finally get Valygar un-squirreled, and also un-petrify Raven Skinnybastard to fill the thief role. With the squad ready, Catharina leads them back into the demon filled maze and hands out potions of haste (since spells are wonky) before entering the first demon base.

You'd need way more figurines if this had been a board game.

It is a tremendous battle, requiring the use of many healing potions and Catharina's demon form for victory. Even so, at the end of it Cernd and Mazzy are dead. The next demon base battle goes much better, as thanks to the hard fight, she can now summon a planetar! They win with no losses, and no demon form required.

Insight: Finally someone gets to use that +5 two hander I've been lugging around - Keldorn! His Protection from Evil thing is also annoying to use since it is one by one, but is very useful against evil things. They get -2 to hit!

The Cursed: Beneath the Madness

[Part of the Cursed story line]

The first challenge in the Asylum basement the team faces is who to leave behind, due to the stupid 6 person party rule. Mazzy volunteers herself so Imoen can join, and the little halfling hero promptly finds a small grating to crawl through to try solo her way out.

I think we all know who the real hero is.

Everyone else is left to deal with a surprising amount of yuan-ti, some of whom are baited into a crushing hallway for faster clearance. There are also riddle rooms which Elizabeth and Imoen solve easily.

Disturbingly, there's a lich down here too but he is beaten thanks to Catharina's summoned Hakeashar (magic eating spirit) and a few lucky blasts from Nalia's wand of wonder.

Eventually they run into Bodhi's hunting party and Catharina totally loses it, transforming into a monstrous demon that attacks everyone! Bodhi flees once more, and Catharina eventually reverts no normal. Apparently her missing soul isn't killing her like Imoen, it's turning her into that.

Insight: After this point you get the ability to transform into that at will, though you take a reputation hit and might go berserk each time.

The Cursed: Soul Taker

[Part of the Cursed story line]

The vampires are easily killed, as are the pirate scum of the town whom Catharina couldn't help but mess with. They then advance on to Spellhold itself and run into the "new" manager, Irenicus!

He wears metal armor in exactly one spot only. Lol.

Knocked out in this unexpected encounter, Catharina awakens in another experimental chamber where Irenicus rips out her soul to take for his own. Somehow Catharina survives this, so Irenicus then leaves them to be taken care of by his sister, Bodhi!

Fortunately Bodhi is a moron and opts to throw the team, fully armed, into the lowest basement of the asylum so she can play a game of cat and mouse before killing them. Imoen is here, also lacking a soul, and feels like she is dying.

Insight: I hate getting KO'ed by cutscene. People really need a way to avoid that as it is bad design: rail roading.

The Cursed: Onwards to Insanity!

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Assaulting the vamp nest proves to be easy with summons, and more than a few are staked in the process. Bodhi herself comes near death before flying away as a bat... an immortal bat who resisted magic spells and weapons.

Pity none of them are this cool.

To keep their end of the bargain the Shadow Thieves have tracked down Imoen to the island asylum of Spellhold and have already arranged a ship there. Apparently that's the extent of their "help" as the party have to do the heavy lifting themselves!

Neera is very uncomfortable about visiting an asylum specifically for mages so she is dismissed and Elisabeth rejoins the team in her place. Upon arrival at Spellhold's adjacent pirate town, the team is ambushed by vampires thanks to the cowardice of their ship's captain who quickly runs away.

He must be related to Anomen.

Insight: Remember to visit the temple for restoration if any of your team get drained. Suddenly not being able to cast high level spells and having reduced max hit points is not ideal.

The Cursed: Guild Wars

[Part of the Cursed story line]

After the *cough* slight *cough* distraction of other quests, Catharina and company finally return to the now obviously Shadow Thief thug to pay the fee, which has been lowered by 25%, to rescue Imoen.

This payment earns the team a meeting with the Shadow Thief leader who wants the team to help him first with the ongoing guild war before he enacts the daring rescue.

To save him some time, they inform him that he is up against a guild of vampires based in the graveyard district. He gives them some stakes and assistance in the form of the gnome artificer Jan Jensen, who the team previously thought was a turnip vendor and instructs them to wipe those vampires out.

Jan does keep going on about turnips...

There's not much choice, but vampires suck anyway so Catharina agrees.

Insight: I think you can break the game if you kill the Shadow Thieves at this point so better not do that.

The Cursed: Keep to Yourself

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Looking for an exit the team run into a powerful wraith demon, and only thanks to Neera's chaos orb do the team manage to take it and it's allies down. Unfortunately Haer'Dalis is killed in this battle as his minute meteors are reflected back to him by the wraith's shield.

Mazzy can do that too!

One member down and wandering this place of demons really blows so Catharina switches tactics. The team are now just gonna run. Run like hell. Using invisibility and haste, this actually works - somehow getting past rooms and rooms of enemies until they find themselves back at the start.

Exhausted and again one person down they return to Athkatla to regroup. During their rest Catharina suddenly realized... "Shouldn't we be rescuing Imoen?"

Insight: Haer'Dalis is a strange cat. He's weak, but actually good at everything if you can micromanage him. Too bad, I hate micromanagement.

The Cursed: Gambling with Many Things

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Near the portal down, which the party cannot activate, is a demon and his lackeys. Fortunately this demon knows Haer'Dalis and wants to gamble with the team with his deck of many things.

What? Demons love to gamble!

Catharina agrees to the game, winning the first two rounds and getting a nice sword and a scroll of "Wish" while only suffering minor curses but on the third round the demon wins, having bargained with the holy icon that grants freedom from the keep.

Catharina honors the deal and the demon and entourage leave. Thankfully he throws the icon back after stepping through his portal, giving the party the chance to escape - if they can find the way out of the damned maze.

Unfortunately she's not smart enough to just Wish them out.

Insight: The Wish spell here is more combat oriented, which seems to be a really bad time to summon a djinn and carefully word something.

The Cursed: A Tempting Maze

[Part of the Cursed story line]

To replace Anomen, Lu Lingqi begrudgingly asks Haer'Dalis (who has a clear crush on her) to join the team. The bard has an odd set of skills, but the most surprising is his fame. Almost everyone in town recognizes him.

The team returns to the Watcher's Keep and descends to Level 3, which is a bastard of a maze made of little rooms, some being magic dead zones. It's also filled with powerful, warring demons making it a slog to get through.

Aren't succubi horny little devils?

A room of succubi lustfully offer passage to the end of the maze for the prize of a kiss and Catharina agrees - getting level drained in the process. The succubi don't lie, but only after they leave do the team discover they don't have the key down, and must now go through the maze in reverse!

Insight: And that's what I get for trying to skip the level. Lol.

The Cursed: Elemental Demon

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Nalia is a great asset as she disarms the traps on level 2 of the Watcher's Keep and assists the team in clearing out each of the elemental laboratories. This turns out to be easy when using the opposite environments against each guardian.

Yeah, pink magic is the opposite of... um... something.

Having assembled the key for the chromatic demon, they let him out to get the key for the portal down. Of course the demon decides to attack first, shifting into the various elemental forms they already faced. This is a long fight and towards the end, Anomen the coward has a morale break and turns around to flee.

The demon makes him pay for this mistake by beheading him before the rest of the party can destroy it. With one person down and exhausted from the fight they head back to the city to regroup.

Insight: The chromatic demon is immune to all damage save for the one weakness per shapeshift.

The Cursed: Lich's Apprentice

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Having found the douche bag noble who has his son, Cernd and company are quickly forced into battle since the noble is actually apprenticing for a lich!? It is an easy victory, and the lich - who was just watching, is quite pleased by the result as the noble was a lousy apprentice.

The lich then teleports away, leaving the toddler with Cernd. The werewolf druid is at a loss for what to do and finally decides to leave the team to take the kid back to the grove where he will be safe.

Ironically they replace him with Nalia the noble, whose keep they previously saved. This thief/mage isn't that shabby, and even survives a short foray into the sewers to destroy a small illithid hideout.

I imagine they'll explain this plot in Baldur's Gate 3!

Confident with her abilities, Catharina decides to lead the squad back to the Watcher's Keep.

Insight: There are actually a LOT of liches resting underneath the city, but I'm doing my best to avoid them as they are difficult combats.

The Cursed: Level 2 Respite

[Part of the Cursed story line]

With the statues down the team takes the portal to level 2, which is a set of elemental themed libraries and laboratories around a caged chromatic demon, who happens to have the key to the next level. He asks the party to free him in exchange.

Easier said than done, for after battling kuo-toa, spiders, spirits and desert trolls the team is in pretty bad shape. Fortunately there's a portal out so they use that and return to the city to unload and recover.

This fan art is pretty accurate.

While Mazzy gets herself into a duel with an ogre (which she wins easily), Cernd discovers that the wife he left behind two years ago was with child at the time. Said child now lives with some douche bag noble, who possibly also killed Cernd's ex-wife but there's no proof. Anomen feels his pain but says the law must be followed. Cernd disagrees.

Insight: Level 2 is another place riddled with traps and again I find myself with no thief to detect or disarm them. :/

The Cursed: Statue Dance

[Part of the Cursed story line]

The team follows Mazzy's suggestion to visit the Watcher's Keep next as she heard the Knights of the Vigil were asking for aid. Upon reaching it, they learn that the massive fortress is to keep something in, not out, and the wards are failing... much like with the shade lord.

The knights stress that the imprisoned one must not be killed though, which is very strange. Provided with a holy symbol to grant access and a scroll to repair the seals, the party enters from the roof to work their way down.

Halls of statues always activate paranoia!

Shadows and spirits on the first floor are easily dealt with, but the old statues that come to life trick poses some really tough enemies who can take numerous mord-sword blows. Neera accidentally solves this by summoning a demon, which destroys all the statues before turning on the party.

Fortunately it's very weak by then and is easily slain!

Insight: It's official, combat in this game is much less fun than BG1. So many enemies have resistances and immunities, you'll be micro managing the swapping of weapons and using spell slots to breach or pierce magic shields instead of doing fun explody stuff. Such is high level D&D I suppose... bad high level D&D.

The Cursed: Firkraag

[Part of the Cursed story line]

The red dragon is a dangerous foe, easily knocking back enemies with ease. The mord-swords and sword spiders still do their work while the mages and Yoshimo pepper it from afar.

Firkraag doesn't like this in the least and squishes the spiders and Yoshimo into paste. He also devours Rasaad and chews him into little gibs before finally being put down by Lu Lingqi. Anomen some how survived by bravely running away, the stench of urine and shit all over him.

It's like Lu Lingqi went super saiyan in this fight!

Fortunately there is some good loot, including a +5 two handed sword... that no one can use. Damn it! The team returns to Trademeet to sell stuff and while there recruit werewolf druid, Cernd, and that halfling they freed from the shade lord, Mazzy Fentan, into the party.

Insight: Firkraag lets you prepare before battle, so do it wisely. Fear protection spells probably would be useful in hindsight!

The Cursed: Shadow Boxing

[Part of the Cursed story line]

The search for the missing folk leads to a dark, forgotten temple full of shadows (the enemy) which somehow Rasaad can still punch and kick to death. He's improved heaps! Inside they find the halfling Mazzy imprisoned and rescue her.

She info dumps that her team came here to be heroes too, but they all got caned by the shadow dragon further in. The dragon's master - a shade lord who was once imprisoned here, was saving her as his next "host".

Mazzy is sent back to her home in Trademeet while the team delves on through undead and traps which are very annoying without a thief! Eventually they reach the shadow dragon and literally kick its butt. The shade lord afterwards is laughable, being weaker than most of his minions.

Yes, Rasaad is kicking the shadow dragon to death!

With his destruction, light returns to this forest. Quest complete!

Insight: There's a wardstone that makes you invisible to the Shadow Dragon until you attack or interact with him, so use the time to prepare buffs, summons and traps!