The Cursed: The Depths of Durlag

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Taking stairs down from the chess chamber, the party ventures through a large labyrinth of surprisingly more manageable traps and monsters. The focus here is to answer historical questions about Durlag, which isn't too hard since the material is easily accessible on this floor and the floors above.

Passing all the tests, Durlag's spirit opens a door to the deepest part of the tower. There the team finds the last surviving member of another adventure group - this one losing her allies to the demon knight and his magical mirror. Apparently it makes evil duplicates of whoever looks at it.

A chair is important when waiting for heroes.

Sure enough the demon knight waits in the next chamber, and he can't be cheesed as he is magic immune. Catharina opts for the next best thing then, casting haste and invisibility on the party. This lets the heavy hitters close distance safely and in a fast but intense confrontation the demon knight and Yeslick lie dead on the floor. Thankful for their service, the ghost teleports all the survivors out of the tower.

Insight: Haste is an amazing buff for fighters as it increases their attack rate. Useful for encounters such as this where direct spell damage is less effective.

The Cursed: Durlag's Cheese

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Good thing nothing respawned in Durlag's basement, so the team can continue where they stopped previously with Catharina using the skull trap nuke to eliminate all four doom guards in the guard chamber. Lu Lingqi then has to face tank a x10 fireball trap to the face to get a wardstone and only survives through severe potion use. This finally opens the stairs down.

The next floor opens with a perpetual explosion room but moving individually avoids any damage. They then find another adventuring team here (there was a way around the doom guards lol), and they join forces to slay greater wyverns guarding the bones of a large dragon. The other adventurers all die in the process.

After that are chambers of elemental guardians. The polar bear is easy enough, and Sir Erland can tank the air aspect. The phoenix guard fails his save against confusion making him easy pickings which leaves the fission slime the worst of the lot as it splits into two upon death. This is a problem solved by fireball.

Stupid rules only govern stupid people.

The team is then teleported to a giant chessboard complete with rules given by a mysterious voice. Catharina ignores this and just cloud kills, fire balls and skull traps the opposite end, wiping out all opposition without playing the game.

Insight: Enemies only aggro when they see you. Using AoE spells means you can blind fire and win without ever entering combat.

The Cursed: Beast Masters

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Needing party members Catharina decides its finally time to return to the basilisk garden, this time fully prepared for the beasts and wiping them and their crazy mage master out easily. Unfortunately the mage seemed to have had his fun with Yuria, and her mangled statue which looks more like a pleasure toy is in no shape to be restored.

Fortunately Lu Linqi, Sir Erland, Elizabeth, and one other random victim are freed with the first three rejoining the team. They head into Baldur's Gate where Scar, impressed by their investigation in the merchants league, tasks them with unraveling the mystery of vanishing citizens.

Close, but not quite.

A quick jaunt through the sewers reveals the culprit to be an ogre mage feeding his pet carrion crawlers. With the easy warm up out of the way and new tactics learned from lycanthrope island, Catharina decides that it's time to return... to Durlag's tower.

Insight: I've pretty much used all the game party NPCs at this point so I had to get my original characters back. Really not sure what happened to Yuria though as her statue was just gone.

The Cursed: Alphas

[Part of the Cursed story line]

The alpha wolfwere's fast regeneration is very problematic for the three remaining heroes so Catharina has to get creative with her spells, and is thankful she spent all that time at the Baldur's Gate library earlier. The solution is... Skull Trap.

These floating skulls explode like a fireball but do magic damage (magic missile) instead of fire. Also, they only detonate when something walks within range and most importantly, they persist for a long time if untriggered. Catharina stacks six of them which nukes the alpha as soon as Party Girl lures it into range. Somehow the baby it was carrying is fine though?

Not making this up.

Turns out the villagers are also lycanthropes, but of the opposite type: werewolves. Despite the party helping them out tremendously the scum still decide to kill them so they are eliminated instead as none of them are as powerful as the alpha wolfwere (which makes sense or they wouldn't have had a problem in the first place).

They also lied about not having a boat as one is found ready in a secret cove, they just didn't have the sea charts to navigate. Using this vessel, the trio returns to Ulgoth's Beard and discover the knowledge seeker is actually the alpha werewolf. He's nowhere near as trouble some though as he doesn't regenerate. A simple hold spell is enough to do him in.

Insight: Skull trap is the bomb, literally. Never pick to memorize fireball or lightning bolt over it as there are wands a plenty for those. Also while many enemies have elemental resistance not many have pure magic resistance. If you can hurt something with magic missile, you can hurt it with skull trap.

The Cursed: Den of Wolves

[Part of the Cursed story line]

The huge boat is home to packs of wolves and wolfweres, and the team does their best to lure out the hordes to the larger spaces outside. This works a few times before a number too large to handle pursues them. Khalid leads half the herd away into the forest while the others fight, killing the rest despite Alora having her jugular ripped out.

Bad dog!

When they finally get to Khalid all that is left is his gear, and a good number of enemies left to slay. Catharina, Party Girl and Yeslick finish them off but still have the upper levels of the ship to clear. It is now that Catharina learns the value of invisibility as it lets her do more than scout - it lets her have first attack, provided she is out of view when casting.

Lightning bolt, fireball, and summoning wands deal with the next floor up and on the highest floor a single chaos spell leads most of the monsters to kill each other, except for the ultra dangerous, regenerating boss wolfwere. Party Girl ends up luring him away too, but she escapes using the boots of speed.

Insight: This invisible mage strategy is amazing. Use it when you get into difficult spots.

The Cursed: Shipwrecked

[Part of the Cursed story line]

The team returns to Ulgoth's Beard to turn it what few quests they can from their last foray to Durlag's tower, as well as hand in the stolen sea maps to a curious knowledge seeker who then asks the party to sail on his already prepared vessel in hopes to find a special shipwreck. Sure, why not?

We can swim in plate mail, surely!

One storm later and it is the team that is shipwrecked on a distant island, with the only other surviving crew member, Alora the halfling thief, joining them. They find a stand-offish community who also seek to leave the island but are stuck due to the man wolves that guard the forest / timber supply.

Their leader tasks the party with clearing out the monsters who turn out to be shape shifting wolfweres that have a penchant for lure traps. While they are easy enough to slay, they always seem to do damage due to their fast and accurate attacks. Soon the party finds their lair... a large shipwreck of the vessel they had set out to find in the first place!

Insight: There are no vendors on this island so make sure to bring supplies.

The Cursed: Durlag's Guardians

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Despite knowing there is a demon knight lurking about, the party descends into Durlag's basement and finds the locked doors that stopped them before to still be an obstacle as both Tiax and knock spells have no effect on them! Instead Quayle finds hidden levers that manipulate the portals and let the party deeper into this floor.

While the traps are still deadly and numerous, so are the guardians this time around - with greater doppelgangers and spirits of Durlag's past haunting the halls. Tiax rejoices when one such spirit drains all the life from Quayle, but isn't laughing for long when he steps on a trap that makes a hallway literally crush him to death. Ew.

It's pretty dark but that area used to be a hallway.

A circle of inward facing, lightning shooting wyvern statues is used against some of the defenders but upon reaching a guard chamber with four doom guards the team is just too demoralized (and too weak) to continue. Once more, they abandon the tower for other pursuits.

Insight: If it wasn't obvious yet, Durlag's tower is hands down the hardest adventure zone in the game.

The Cursed: Unfinished Business

[Part of the Cursed story line]

After much searching through the city, the team finally finds Catharina's poisoner at a tavern and slays him for the antidote he carries around with him. What an odd assassin. The party then has to do some "evil" aligned stuff to placate Tiax, such as stealing a telescope from a museum and stealing some sea charts from a shipping company.

Pleased that they aren't "goody-two-shoes" Tiax agrees to accompany them back to the Cloakwood mines and with his skills, and the knock spell Catharina learned at the city, they free the slaves of the lower levels and finally flood the mine.

Evil parties can do this much earlier and just drown everyone!

One of the freed prisoners, a dwarven cleric named Yeslick, offers to join the party. They accept as healers are in big demand where they are heading next... back to Durlag's tower. A tourist group from Ulgoth's beard is present this time around in the main entry but they are slaughtered when a demon knight appears out of nowhere, declares the tower his own, and fireballs the room before vanishing again.

Only the party, and one tourist who somehow avoided the blast, survives.

Insight: If you gain too much reputation by doing good things, evil party members will complain and ultimately leave. The same is true the other way around.