Adventuring is all about compromises, comfort zones, “exploits” if you will. If you’re playing by the dungeon’s rules then you’ve already lost. There’s this classic, pernicious image of a complex cast of characters delving into the deep unknown. If there’s one thing I want to do with this journal, it’s to dispel the myths the adventurer’s guild deals in, revels in. The myths it propagates to ensure its survival. Let me just start out and say that if anything about your trip to a dungeon is “unknown”, then you’re headed straight for disaster. There’s extensive documentation for just about every dungeon you’d actually want to go to. Use it! You leave anything to chance and you’re asking for a party wipe.

Leave the unknown to the expedition teams, that’s what you pay your guild dues for anyhow. And for the love of the Benediction do not join one: the pay looks good, sure, but I’ve known a few guys who’ve done their fair share of “spelunking”, as they call it, and I do not envy their position to put it mildly. You’ll find those fat guild paychecks eaten up more often than not by extensive trips to the doctor-barbers, and to the tavern.

And that classic party, the orc warrior, the armored dwarf with his hammer, the willowy elf ranger, halfling rogue and the human mage, painfully well-balanced and representing the cooperation of races towards a common good? Forget it. Good adventuring is all about imbalance. You think dungeons are these wide-open caverns, where the melee fighters lock blades with the enemy while ranged attackers fire away? Most underworld zones are just collections of narrow corridors. A party of six, with big, strapping orc warriors is just a hindrance. Especially since you want to spend as little time as possible in close combat with monsters - in a test of strength, the monster always wins. Also, good luck getting an orc and elf to work on the same team. You’d sooner put together a dragon and a treasure thief.

So if I’m so wise, how does one do adventuring right, then? As if I’ve cracked the code. If I knew the answer to a question like that I’d be richer than the Prince of Elsewhere. No, I don’t have a magic bullet, and frankly I doubt there is one. I’ve managed to save my skin all throughout these years because I know what works for ME.

If you put a blunderbuss to my head and asked for some advice, I suppose there are a few pointers I could mention, though. The number one mistake I see adventuring parties make is team comp: making sure to have one of each class, having too many members and worst of all, having warriors. Forget glory, the main goal of any instance is to minimize combat, resolve each difficulty with as little engagement as possible. This is best pulled off in a couple ways: one is to have a team of four thunder mages and one ranger. The mages start each encounter by stun-locking the enemy with a round of Paralyze spells, hit it over and over so that it can’t do a thing. While that’s taken care of, have the ranger take pot shots at it with a good bow, preferably done with arrows that have elemental advantage. Simple stuff, but you’d be surprised at how few people seem to grasp this. They see combat as a way to improve their skills, and not what it really is, a net negative. There’s just too much that can go wrong - one hit means months laid up with the doctor-barbers racking up a hefty tab.

The other way I’ve found useful, the one that I depend on for most of my runs now, is spamming sneak attacks. Just put five levels into rogue and you can max it out. It’s an extra +.2 damage with each point added, do the math, that’s 2x damage every time you get the drop on an enemy. Not too shabby. If you combine that with say, a bomb, or elemental advantage the damage starts to get pretty crazy. The only drawback, which really isn’t much of a drawback at all, is that you most likely have to go solo to pull it off effectively. You have three or four other members shuffling and clanking around and that’ll tip off basically any monster that’s down the hall or around the corner. But for someone like me, who’s too old to get chummy with high-status groups, and wouldn’t want to even if they’d have me, it works like a charm. Stealth up to each monster, nock a bomb arrow, that’s a room cleared in one hit. Just go through each room that way and the risk is basically zilch. Like I said, it’s not exactly glorious, but things like glory don’t mean much to me. Not anymore.

If you think good adventuring requires having a “tank” soaking up hits for the party you’re going about it all wrong. Even a low-level enemy can cut through blue-name armor like it was Auroch butter. Really, plate only worth having for early-early levels, when you’re fighting jackalopes, and those you could fight in your pajamas, or if you manage to find something orange-name, something made by ancients. Good luck getting your hands on one of those, after all my years I’ve only managed to get one piece of Ancient equipment through a friend of mine, and that’s a pair of bracers. (So now my wrists are basically invincible, for what it’s worth). What you want to be doing if gods forbid you find yourself fighting up close is dodge-rolling out of the way - dodge roll constantly. You want to be an acrobat, dodging and weaving, sliding down banisters, bringing down chandeliers and all that, since a single hit can spell disaster. Heavy armor simply does not have the ROI to make it worth basing a build on.

But people are addicted to the image of the dashing swordsman head to toe in gleaming armor. They love armor, they want to be draped in it. And I hope people never get wise: being a warrior is a high-status occupation, not only because of chivalric romances but also just because it costs so much, basically only the rich can afford it. So there’s always a healthy bevy of spoiled rotten brats thinking they can make it big adventuring, and buy a set of handsome plate, then get done in facing off their first Tunneling Squid. It’s like natural selection if you think about it. A force that the rich aren’t faced with often enough, in my opinion anyhow.

-

You think I’m bitter? I’ve had plenty of people call me that. These people will try to tell you how it is. People who haven’t suffered a day in their life, who grew up drinking honeyed milk with every meal and sleeping in the silken sheets of a canopy bed. I’ll tell you how it is: every kid I knew growing up was missing a finger, if not a whole hand. The machines ate them. Every morning before dawn you walk single file into the factories, just the same as your parents. You come back after dark, and the soot covers you like a shroud. No matter how you wash it doesn’t come off. It stains every little crevice, every crack and pore in your body and pretty soon it's all you can smell, all you can taste. It’s in the air, in the food, it piles up in the shanty shacks no matter how the housewives try to sweep it away. You live in a world of ash.

My father worked in a factory all his life. His senses started to go one by one: he returned from work with his head ringing with the clang of heavy machinery, terrible burns from blasts of scalding steam covered his body and made him insensate, always in pain. To try and get away from it he would drink - he’d come home some nights reeking of booze, beer and grain alcohol. He’d spend his week's pay on an evening’s worth of binging, he drank up every cent we had. I tried to hide the money I made. He’d threaten to hit my mother if I didn’t give it to him. It would be a terrible scene, me digging in a sock for a few grimy coins, while he’s dragging mom by the hair, and looming over it all were the factories always running, always roaring and pouring out gouts of ash into the sky above.

-

Then one day a group of guild representatives strolls into town. A man with big hair announces himself as Philip the Fair, and he looks the part. Dressed to the nines in a gaudy, flowing garment, it's like nothing I’d ever seen in the slums. It’s him and a group of adventurers, very typical: a surly armored dwarf, buxom elven archer, a wily little knife-wielding halfling, and a dashing human warrior with long chestnut locks and a four-sided face. A group of stagehands haul in a wooden proscenium, and Philip wastes no time ascending it before an audience of enamored factory workers.

He launches into a flowery prooemium, describing the august history of the adventuring guild, from its humble origins as a single, small-town party to its rapid rags-to-riches rise into a world-spanning organization. He states in no uncertain terms the effectiveness of the guild in thinning out monster populations and unlocking the mysteries of the Ancients. But most of all the speech centers on what the guild has to offer new members: you, yes, you, Joe Schmo, could be the next great adventurer, rivalling even the Hero himself in knightly deeds and accrued riches.

At the sound of “riches” a ripple of excitement passed through the audience. What he was offering was none other than a ticket out of the slums! Instead of slaving away in the factories your whole life you could eat roasts, not millet and swill, you could live in a house, a proper house, not a lean-to made of pieces of aluminum siding. You could even be someone, like the adventurers on stage, touring from town to town and shaking the mayor’s hand. They were selling a dream, and like the low-born fools we were, we all bought it hook line and sinker. Man after man signed up, went on stage, thanked Philip with all their heart, and became an adventurer. I was no different. My heading was dizzy with possibilities - there was a world outside the slums. I could be something other than a factory worker my whole life. I would be a man of action, a respected figure in high society. I would be a member of the adventurers’ guild!

I think if I ever meet Philip the Fair again I’ll kill him.

-

I don’t know if they still tour like they used to. People have gotten wise - well, wiser than they were before. I’ve heard rumors of their little performance being booed off stage, rewarded handsomely for their little speeches with the slums’ choicest pieces of rotten produce. Too many people have died I guess for their tricks to work like they used to. Too many factory workers spending their savings on a sword, getting eaten by a Fly Trap monster in a low-level dungeon. The families wait and wait, their hearts filled with dreams about the money the men of the house are sure to send back, once they get a foothold in the industry. The gold never comes, and soon enough the dream dies. Wives and children go back to the factory. The husband is never seen again.

Maybe I ought to thank the guild for what it gave me. It’s true, I would have been slaving away making cravats the rest of my life if they hadn’t come to the slums. I would never have made the friends I made, seen the sights I’ve seen, or eat and drink till I was sick. So here’s my big thank-you for Philip the Fair and all his posterboy adventuring parties: thank you! When I meet you in hell I hope the devil isn't giving you too hard a time.

I think that party they used to show off, with the dashing human warrior and all, disbanded long ago after one of them bit it in a raid. I bet they’re looking for a new face. So here’s my humble offer, Philip. Make me the new posterboy for aspiring adventurers. Stick prints to the walls of every tavern and street corner. This is what you can be if you risk it all! A balding old sourpuss, who’s got nothing in the world but his sword and memories. I bet I’d be a hit with the kids. Everyone asking for my autograph, ha ha. I’d never know a moment’s peace.

-

I don’t know what I’ll do with this journal when I’m done with it. I doubt I will ever be done with it, it’ll ramble on and on just as long as I do I think. I should put in a word for my mother at some point. She was one of the rare people in this world who only knew how to give. She gave and gave and never asked for anything in return. Yes, if I survive tomorrow’s run I’ll write a great big speech, for my mother, for all the good mothers in the world. Wouldn’t that be nice