So, last time we tried to kill Kyass. It didn’t go very well.

We did get close to killing him in a couple of my attempts. A few more levels, some extra spells and a few pieces of better gear and we’ve likely got this. For now however, the Freehold remains free.

For now, we should probably explore the area west of the freehold. We came here before on the way to Bargha but kind of rushed through it and didn’t explore anything. A small hidden area by that ledge we saw earlier contains a pool.Looking into it gives a free point in Cave Lore! Handy, though I think I have enough cave lore in the party to handle everything I’d need it for already.We also find the lair of Pyrog. We do need to get a book from here, unfortunately from what we’ve been told about them,  Pyrog is the picture of your stereotypical dragon. Large, angry and ready to kill and/or eat anything smaller than itself because dragon. Asking nicely for a look at that book is probably not going to work.Pyrog is sitting on a pedestal up the stairs, and like I just said, she’s very much your typical fire-breathing lizard. You can talk to her, but there’s not much to gain form it. She claims to have giant servants because giants are big and strong and thus deserve respect. Personally? I think it’s because they’re too big for her to easily eat, taste horrible when she does manage it and are otherwise too stupid to be scared off.

She also likes to eat adventurers, and doesn’t think much of humanity despite the whole driving her underground. I’ll leave it to the reader to provide their own speech about she’ll rise up and conquer everything.

The other important thing is to note the key, We probably need that to get at the book we’re hear for. Since pickpocking isn’t a thing in this game, that means we need to slay us a dragon

.Fortunately she doesn’t actually attack unless you actually pick a fight with her, so leaving in one piece is surprisingly easy. I actually do try to kill her a couple times, but can’t quite manage it. We’ll have to handle it later.Heading back outside, we can go around behind her lair to find this tower.Inside is an altar we can destroy for some exp, as well as a demon attack that’s no that big a deal at this point.West of Pyrog’s Lair is this massive gate.We need a key to open it, fortunately the game gives us a good idea on where to look.Here is a giant castle, likely full of giants. Somewhere in here is likely the key we need for that gate Surprisingly, we can walk right in, there’s no guards and no need to find an alternate entrance.

That would likely explain why.So now we’re stuck somewhere below the castle, with no way out except to fight our way back up to the entrance.The basement here is full of ogres. We’ve dealt with an ogre fort much earlier in the game, They can still take a bit of a beating now, but otherwise aren’t much of a threat.There is a sort of workshop nearby, which has a few giants in it, as well as signs talking about boats to the north islandWhile there are a few spellcasters, and the occasional bolder tossed around, ogres and giants like to fight up close. Area spells like Spray Lightening are extremely useful here. A back room in the workshop has the key we need, now we just need to find a way out of here. Past the key is another barrier we can’t dispel, hopefully we find dispel barrier level 3 soon.Across from the workshop is a pen with some mutant lizards and a lot of slimes. Having my frontline hold them at the fence  while my casters thrown spells around make it manageable, Though I still need to be careful, there’s a few Unstable Masses in there, which explode on death.We eventually wind our way back upstairs, now it’s just a matter of fighting over to the entrance and finding a way past that pit.I find the main hall, despite the warning we’re obviously going in there, but I decide to explore around the hall a bit first,  killing off some giants so I don’t have to worry about them possibly barging into the hall on me later.We move from room to room, fighting a handful of giants to reach the entrance, before coming around to enter the hall from the other side.Meet Overseer Fnargh. At first he’s not too big a deal, most of the fight is about getting rid of his buddies so you can better focus on him. Things get nasty once you’ve damage him enough.I can’t really screenshot this, but what’s happening now is every turn he makes the room shake, damaging the entire party for a considerable amount of damage. Fortunately I’ve killed almost all of his buddies at this point, Because at this point most of my party can only suffer two or three of his attack at best. Mycroft’s mass healing spell is the only thing standing between me and a party wipe.At this point the fight is a battle of attrition: can I empty his HP before healing all that damage empties my MP? The answer is yes.We search the rest of the castle to kill a few stragglers, before heading back out into the caves proper.We can unlock that gate now, behind it is little more than a simple dock with a pair of boats. Checking the world map, it seems these boats would let us explore the northwestern corner of the map. Something tells me we don’t want to go there until later. At the very least our more immediate goals are to the south, so I decide to leave the boats alone for now.Instead, let’s go tell Bargha’s mayor we’ve dealt with their giant problem.As you can see he’s overjoyed.

At this point we’ve done all the side stuff we can hope to do for now.  Next time we should probably get to destroying that empire orb, and possibly start exploring southwest towards fort remote to finally get the main plot moving.