We arrive at the site of the first church of Garth and Poth. I stand on the edge of a forested cliff that dips fifty feet to a desolate area of dried grass and stunted bushes. In the distance I see figures slowly stumbling around below. Nora begins to stir on my shoulder so I gentle set her down.

“What happened?” As she groans and holds her head.

I tell her a servant of the God of Fire redirected our teleport. I was able to convince the servant to release us, but I am unable to discuss how I was able to do that. They will trace us or redirected us if we take any more gates or teleports. Nora appears terribly upset and suspicious.

Nora: Did you have to make a promise or oath to get our freedom?

George: No. It turned out the quest “What Happened to the God Poth?” was important in getting our freedom, which is why we are here. This area should have the first church for the twin gods.

She seems calmer after hearing that.

Nora: Promises and oaths made with the System as a witness will incur negative favor if broken and negative favor is a very bad situation to get into. I was just worried what type of oath they exacted from you. A blood oath for example can result in your permanent death by the System if broken.

Definitely good information to know and I can see this could be a solution to keeping the Deck of Fate a secret from her and perhaps her own secrets. For now, I dismiss these thoughts and I take this opportunity to inspect the closest creature below and see.

Corrupted Shambling Mound

Level: 20

Hit Points: 300

About a mile away is a ruin set atop a hill, which from my map is the church we need to head to. I turn to Nora.

George: Can you see what I see?

Nora: Yes, when a party member identifies a creature we can all access that information.

George: It looks like a good separation between the creatures, so if we are careful we can draw one at a time and kill them. Do you know if they are fast?

Nora: I don’t know, we are low level, which will increase the threat radius. Also, they could be any speed. There are quick and slow and don’t assume that if this one is either fast or slow that the others will be the same.

George: Any weaknesses?

Nora: Destroying the head will kill it, which will take 50% of the hit point in damage to the head, but this increases your chance of missing. Typically, the dodge of a creature governs if you miss, but if you focus on a limb including the head or a specific area of the body dodge is increased by a factor of four.

George: Ok, I can cast 6 fire darts in one casting. I should be able to kill it with a stealth attack if I channel to double the damage range. I will make sure to have a second spell ready in case it doesn’t kill it. You just have a Mana Dart spell, right? Do you want to cast it as well to build up your skill progression or save your mana for an emergency?

Nora: I should leave the party before we start fighting.

George: What? Why? You will get great XP.

Nora: Exactly.

I can see Nora staring at me expectantly.

George: What do you mean?

Nora sighs and gestures to have a seat by the edge of the cliff away from the wandering shambling mounds.

Nora: I am guessing you never had a discussion on perfecting level progression?

George: No, I haven’t, but it sounds like you are going to fill me in.

Nora: Yes, well let me go back to the Starter Area. Typically, most people never get above level five before leaving and some don’t even get above level three. As you know you get one unallocated point per level and some points based on what you did prior to leveling. The minimum you want when leveling is two points in addition to the unallocated point you get when leveling. Three is average. Four or five is the goal. Anything higher than that is incredible. So, if you engage in combat getting XP as fast as possible, by killing creatures as quick as you can you will only get 2 points, which is what happened when we rushed to level ten, but we didn’t think we had any other choice. As a result, I am way under what I had hoped to have at this level, so I don’t want to continue this. This means I should leave your party and just stick close until we get to the church. If things get bad I can join your party quickly.

George: Wow, I had no idea. It makes sense. I will also need to focus on training skills and spells after we get through these mounds.

Nora: That is the best way to maximize your level progression.

“Very well, the cliff looks like it has a good place to get down on the right about 100 feet up. What do you think?” I say out loud and see a notification that Nora has left my party. “Let’s get started.”

She looks left and right, then nods. “I see nothing better.”

They both walk over and carefully climb down to the base of the cliff. The cliff face is a little treacherous, but we took it slowly keeping an eye on the shambling mounds. As we reached the base of the cliff, we are about 150 feet from the closest shambling mound. We entered stealth and walked along the cliff until we were parallel with the closest Shambling Mound. Then we walked until I am in range to cast fire dart. I cast six darts channeled to double damage into the Mound, which didn’t even have time to turn before it collapsed. Looking at my combat log, I see I did 342 points of damage. Without the stealth bonus, I would have needed two casts. In two minutes, I regenerate my mana back to full. I collect a corrupted seed from the body as loot, which is disappointing. I look at Nora holding up the seed and she shrugs, so I just put it in my inventory. I got 150XP and after my discussion with Nora I wish it was less, but there is no help for it, we need to get through to the church. Luckily, I can channel all the XP into my Deck of Fate.

We enter stealth again and move back to the cliff. Then we take the next Mound on the right, we want to clear a path three wide as we make our way to the ruins of the church. We proceed for the next hour clearing a path three wide and ten deep, which gets us one fifth of the way there. At that, point we notice the first Shambling Mound we killed respawns. From what we can see another four hours should get us to the ruins. We continue at the same cautious pace for the next two hours, which has me thinking about stopping to eat a quick lunch when the ground lurches out from underneath of us. I grab Nora’s arm and shadow step to the shadow of a bush on our right. Luckily, we were just getting ready to move back to the right to attack the center of the next row. We both cautiously look over the edge into a thirty-foot-deep pit lined with spikes at the bottom. As we are standing there, the four edges fold back up and the surface shimmers changing to match the surrounding terrain. I catch both Nora and myself looking at each other as my heart rate starts to come back down from that close call.

Nora says. “That is an illusion spell. Can you see through it? I can’t.”

“I can’t either. Can I spot it with Perception or by Inspecting the ground?”

“Using Inspect you would need a Lore of at least mid-range Novice to spot an illusion and part of the Lore skill progression would have had to come from books dealing with illusion.”

“Ok, well we should hold hands then and be ready to shadow step if we need to. I was getting ready to suggest we eat something. Why don’t we eat quickly and then continue?”

“Good.” Nora says as she pulls a sandwich out of her inventory. I pull a sandwich and a skin of ale out for lunch. After eating, we continue, being even more cautious. I make sure as we move that I always have a shadow in range for a shadow step. As we get closer to the church the Shambling Mound level increases to level 25 just outside the church. I now must use channel to double and maximize the damage to make sure I kill the Mounds with one casting. I am not sure what they could do to me, but I am sure I don’t want a Corrupted Shambling Mound hitting me.