A quick plug for Inscryption!

My oldest child bought me Inscryption for Christmas, and I've been meaning to drop some thoughts here about this fantastic deck builder / puzzler indie game, but first let me allow you to be creeped out by this aesthetic . . .

He just wants to hug me . . . right?!

Just to put it out there right up front, it's really good. point blank. All of my kids have played it, and have done their best to keep me spoiler free. Half the fun is hearing them whisper around me to keep stuff a secret.

Anyway, Inscryption is a 4-lane card battler with a ton of conditions, randomness, and boss play to make it well worth your time and money. Originally released in October 2021, I'm late to the Halloween party, but I'm glad I've now had a chance to experience its unsettling kind of fun.

The developer behind Inscryption is the same Daniel Mullins Studios that brought us The Hex and Pony Island. The Publisher is Devolver, the same group behind great games like Loop Hero and Exit the Gungeon, among a plethora of other great Steam games.

Now that that's all said . . . If you don't want any spoilers . . . stop reading . . . just go get the game and be happy with your purchase. For the rest of you . . . whooo boy.

I struggled on the first act of this game for a long time until I got an undying squirrel totem from the woodcarver, and it was just too much power. It carried me right through that final boss with no issues at all.  I don't know if I could have done it without that totem to be honest. I've got so many "stingite" death cards that it was humbling seeing them all attacking me on that final fight.

So many squirrel cards . . .

After the first act, you're treated to a series of YouTube-like videos from a content creator who ends up finding an old floppy disk from the 90's buried in the forest with the Inscryption game on it (playing into the 16-bit aesthetic as well).  It definitely has the whole Blair Witch Project vibe going for it, but not without making fun of itself in the process.

Green screen and all!

The other interesting portion of the game comes from when you press the back button enough times that you stand up away from the game table and look around your capture's cabin.  Herein are several small minigame puzzles that will give you advantages in the actual game.

All the things the arcane eye sees!

Apparently there are three acts total to this game, and I've only managed to get half way through the second act, so . . . I still have a lot to explore here.

Anyway . . . just had to plug this card game in case some of my readers hadn't played it yet. Good times and highly recommended.

Happy Dueling!

Tougher than Tasuq in Runes of Magic

It's my 3-month-a-versary in Runes of Magic, and I'm very much sitting in end game currently with a 100 mage / 100 rogue / 100 knight character, but of course, being 100 isn't all that's needed to dominate trash mobs in the end game "string of islands" known as the Shamtaem Archipelago. It's basically Hawaii, but full of mobs that will kill you faster than swimming in a bloom of jellyfish.

The islands get tougher as you travel along them from west to east, and Tasuq is the first you encounter as you travel there from the Moorlands of Farsitan. Just to make sure you're tough enough to handle this zone, you basically HAVE to complete the main quest lines found in Splitwater Coast and Farsitan. I learned this the hard way by having someone teleport me into Tasuq directly hoping to find some new quests there while I was busting my butt trying to level during a bonus exp event.  When I got there, it was quest-less.

If, however, you get to Tasuq by following the "Spirits of Despair" quest line, you'll soon unlock a bunch of quests along the way. For me, my plan has always been to get as far as I can in this quest line on my Mage half and then go back through with my Rogue half and catch all the side quests. So far my mage half has moved past the islands of Tasuq and Korris . . . and is currently sitting at the very end of Enoch about to go into Vortis.  The only island left after that would be Chassizz. That's it . . . That's end game for Runes of Magic.

Peeping in on the Shadow Camp of Tasuq

At the end of every one of these islands is a quest that asks you to go into the dungeon instance associated with the island.  So far, I've just been skipping these. I heard, however, that perhaps a full group of our guildies could do the end dungeon on Enoch . . . if we could ever coordinate a time to actually go through that matches everyone's schedules.  That's the tricky part.  (We're all a bunch of busy adults that live all over the globe.)

So, I paused my Mage's trailblazing and took a break to go back to finish Tasuq with my Rogue half and as of yesterday, Tasuq has been cleared save one or two quests that involve the Vale of Rites (that's the dungeon for Tasuq).

 . . . ignore the tombstone between Repear's Horn and Vale of Rites

When you enter the zone you begin in a place called Silver Streak Camp. The Hand of Balance has set up camp here with merchants and guards. Your main point of contact here is a dashing fellow named Ayden Highlander, the Primary Chairman of the Silvershadow Adventures' Guild. Runic Energy and Spatial Magic have been sensed from this string of islands, and you're perfect for the job of investigating and nullifying threats to Taborea. Go get 'em!

Merchants-a-plenty in Silver Streak Camp

As it turns out, the Hand of Balance aren't the only ones interested in this weird Spatial Magic, there's a group of nefarious evil-doers named the "Inexorable League" led by a demonic sounding Mazzren the Reaper. Every time I read "inexorable league," I can't help but think of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." Anyway, you'll be running into all kinds of inexorable league enemies on Tasuq as they've set up camps all over the central part of the island.

There's the Dust Camp, which sits in area known as the Dustbowl, where experiments the inexorable league has done with this runic spatial magic is causing that portion of Tasuq to become a desert-like canyon. 

Oh no, Inexorable League, what have you done to Hawaii?!

 

There's the Shadow Camp in the Tasuqian Boscage where you'll also find lots of enraged wildlife like panthers, boars, and deer with poofy tails.

Then there's the Reaper's Horn itself, which is a large ominous castle.  That's right, the inexorable league has been here long enough to build a giant castle . . . and so have the good guys apparently as the Grey Citadel is our turf.  

A look inside the Grey Citadel

The Gray Citadel has TONS of quests once you unlock them.  Really the majority of your sidequests all come from the Silver Streak Camp and the Gray Citadel. 

One of the really interesting things here is the re-appearance of elite enemies that are incredibly dangerous. You can even find elite enemies that are boosted with enemy effects like Tenacious, which gives them a 100 percent HP increase. If a battle with some of these elites goes on too long, they'll just hit you with a massive 25k hit or two, and that's a quick trip back to the binding stone.

I would say that Tasuq is the first of your end game "gear checks" as you proceed along the islands the Shamtaem Archipelago. Enemies here are level 98ish and it only gets harder from here. I'm finding that end game gearing is really a money game as you tier up, stat up, and level up each one of your gear items by using mana stones and jewels, all available for sale in the item shop for premium currency.

I've geared up my mage, I'd say about 1/2 of the way to where I'd like him to be. He's currently sitting at around 75,000 hit points with mostly Tier 6 gear that has been raised to +7.  My staff is up to +14 or so as well. All my Jewelry is still Tier 5 as well as my back item.  

The cost of getting gear up to the max of Tier 20 seems to be 100 percent a whale hunter's delight. I mean, 3 Tier 6 mana stones is roughly 90 cents worth of premium currency (let's round up to a dollar to keep the math clean).  3 Tier 6 mana stones equals one Tier 7 mana stone.  Therefore you'll need 3 dollars worth of premium currency to go up to Tier 7.  9 dollars for Tier 8.  27 dollars for Tier 9.  81 dollars for Tier 10.  You get the sequence . . . and that's for ONE piece of gear. 

I don't know . . . maybe I don't have the full picture on gear costs and I've never seen anybody with a tier 20 piece of gear because if you do the math, isn't that like 4.5 million dollars for one piece of gear?  That can't be right, can it? No . . . I gotta be looking at this wrong . . . THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT?! Please someone educate me in the comments if I'm not looking at this right.

Anyway, all I really care about is that I have gear that's good enough that I can do well in instances with my guild mates, and as I said before, I feel like I'm about 1/2 way there from really what feels like spending a minimal amount of money.

Happy Dueling!

Has Runes of Magic Lost their Friggen Minds? Ding 100 AGAIN!

So I log on yesterday and my guildmate, Eni, immediately barks in chat, "Sting, do the event." Therefore, I immediately went to work collecting 100 Coins of Petals, clicked over to Veranas Channel 1, and turned in my 100 coins . . . what came back to me was a 50,000,000 exp orb and 10 1,000,000 talent point orbs. The real shocker came when I saw that turn in could be done . . . 10 TIMES EACH DAY!! That's just insanity.

It's . . . real . . . and . . . beautiful?

So I start thinking to myself, where can I find the largest concentration of low level enemies with the fastest respawn time? I started going around to a few old haunts in Northern and Southern Janost, and they were ok, but they weren't great. Then for some reason I remembered an instance that I've soloed through several times called The Heart of the Ocean.

The Heart of the Ocean is a great instance. You have to complete a quest chain to gain entrance, and I had already done that a month or so ago. The Peak quests I've been doing lately have been really wanting to send me in to battle against the fourth boss there, so I'm pretty familiar with the layout.

Loopy Dungeon is Loopy!

In between the third and fourth boss there's a group of 12 fish warriors blocking your way. Come to find out, these warriors respawn . . . it might actually be the only group in the entire dungeon that does this. If you run the easy instance of the dungeon, only 8 of the warriors respawn, but if you run the normal instance, all 12 respawn.

Thank you for stacking up in a nice AoE right there

Typically none of these respawns drop loot, but during the event, all of them drop a Coin of Petals. So, here I sat and nuked ,and looted, and nuked, and looted, and etc. until I had all 1000 Coins of Petals that I needed.

Roasted Ayum Initiate!

It was boring but effective. The next thing I knew, I was back in Varanas Channel 1 and talking to Frank. (Now that's a good Event NPC name: Frank).

Frank and Friends in Varanas Central Channel 1

Frank gave me back 9 more 50 million experience orbs and 90 more 1 million talent point orbs. I switched my class to my often forgotten 3rd class choice of Knight and made 10 clicks to bring my knight level from 43 to 89 in the span of less than 10 seconds.

It's hard to explain the feelings I felt in that moment. It was a reflection on all the time I spent to get my Mage from 43 to 89 . . . all the quests . . . all the begging for help . . . all the time . . . and really all that I had learned.  Here I was a level 89 knight who had never even played the game as a knight. No, all I ever really wanted from this game was to play as a Mage/Rogue vampire.  That's it.

This morning, I logged on and did the same thing and went back to Frank with another 1000 Coins of Petals. Five more clicks and my knight was level 100.  Five more clicks beyond that, and I had earned maybe half of a peak level.

To be honest, gearing 3 classes for one character seems like it's going to be a lot of work and money. I'm able to survive in Korris with my current gear on the Mage, but my Rogue is still wanting . . . I haven't even thought about gearing a Knight.

Look, I don't want to say that's WHY this event exists (to get a player to the part of the game where they'll spend more money), because if that's the case, they really should have made 1.5 exp the standard exp gain rate in the first place (as I've argued before). 

Overall, this game feels like a multiboxer's delight.  I can't tell you how many people call their characters "toons" in this game, and while that typically gets under my skin because it belittles the time you put into developing your "character." An event like this seems to naturally encourage making multiple level 100 (I'll go ahead and say it) "toons." Throw away characters you can just add to your personal army. Really, it's not odd to see a pile of characters sitting on top of each other with the same name only with a slight variation -- imagine StingiteA, StingiteB, StingiteC, StingiteD, and StingiteE all riding a 7 person bone dragon mount together.  Yeah, I don't like thinking about it either.

I don't know. It's weird. I can't even believe the event rewards are so good right now.  I guess if you really want a max level character in Runes of Magic without all the pains of actually leveling, yesterday was your day to log on and start playing. Not to worry though! You have a full week.  This crazy event is running through January 27th.

Happy Dueling!

Blocked at Level 100/100 in Runes of Magic

So, last weekend on Friday, it happened! I was just doing some simple quest in Splitwater Coast while working through the new Spirits of Despair quest line. Bonus experience was again turned on last weekend, so leveling came relatively quickly. The moment I hit 100 on my Rogue to complete my 100/100 level felt mid-breath. One moment I was getting supply sacks to give to the commoners, then the next moment it all changed.

I'm just a simple vampire riding his spider, helping farmers with their supply sacks until . . .

I immediately received a pop up that told me to stop what I was doing, head over to Veranas, and talk with Leya Peak, who was in charge of giving the quest for peak experience. So that's exactly what I did. I transported back and talked to Ms. Peak about her Peak Quests.

You might say she's well read . . .

I accepted her quest and was immediately greeted with a complex task. Defeat 3 bosses on hard mode in the highest dungeon of the highest zones in the game.  These were zones I hadn't even taken a step in, but the rumors of the difficulty of Vortis had not fallen on my typically deaf ears . . . and I was confused.

That's . . . not as simple as it sounds . . .

I headed over to the guild's discord to ask how one coordinates this task that seemed insurmountable, and I was greeted with the cries of "READ THE GUILD ANNOUNCEMENTS." So I read the guild announcements and found that there was . . . another way! DUN DUN DUN!

That's right. You don't HAVE to do this horrible quest to defeat Zeyj, Sunlight, and the Phantom Anubis, but instead there is a slower and easier way, and that is this: there's a guy who will give you a quest once every two hours. You might be able to do it, you might not. Good luck . . . this is all just part of the grand roadblock between level 100/100 and level 100 (1) / 100.

Basically, you go talk to the Mystery Hermit in Logar (dude's across the way from the Snoop portal on a hill), he has a new target every two hours.  If you finish it, he gives you 3 peak fragments. You exchange 12 peak fragments with the Donkey Merchant next to the Mystery Hermit for an endless star energy. You can get all 3 endless star energies this way instead of doing the hard mode bosses to finish the Peak Level quest.

Me and all the other fools hanging out with the Mystery Hermit and his Donkey . . .

It's now been 4 days since this happened to me, I have 9 peak fragments as of this blog post. Yup. 3/4th of 1 out of 3 star energies. So, the reality here is that most targets from the Mystery Hermit are out of my league for soloing. My lucky 3 targets so far have been a boss in the Heart of the Ocean instance, a boss in the Origin dungeon instance, and (. . . and this is just weird, but appreciated) 30 level 5 bears in Logar.

So, if things keep proceeding the way they have, it'll be half a month before I can proudly exclaim that I have completed this quest. What this has done to me as a player is as follows:

- Completely stopped high level questing.  If I'm going to quest, I don't want to miss out on the exp for peak levels. I'll do low level quests on my 3rd class of knight, which is now level 41. (So technically my levels right now are 100 Rogue / 100 Mage / 41 Knight)

- Increased my daily mini-game playing. While I'm stuck and can't quest, I definitely can play mini-games to earn Phirius Shells, so I can buy a few epic rarity level 100 items from vendors. Malatina the clown, Lylia the child house decorator, Andor the trainer, Mahler the goblin hunter . . . all those crazy weird mini-game types . . . they're my best buds these days.

- Typical Daily Quests are still ok. To play mini-games, you need to do your daily quests because the mini-games all cost Phirius Tokens, which you can really only earn in the mini-games themselves or through daily quests. This is also supplying me with some gold, which is needed for buying crap at the Auction Hall.

My new favorite Daily Quest spot -- 40 seconds to completion

- Logging on every two hours while I'm awake.  Every two hours, I gotta just check to see who's up. Just dropping in to check the Mystery Hermit is my new jam.

- Behold . . . Mirrorworld. I didn't even know this was a thing until yesterday.  I was complaining about how difficult it is to level my pet, and my guildies started giving great advice like they always do. One of them was to make sure to do my Mirrorworld runs everyday.  I'm like . . . what's that? As it turns out, it's a little side system full of mini-solo dungeons where you earn currency to buy stuff like Golden Eggs. Go figure. You can run three Mirrorworld dungeons for free every day.

I probably should also start working on my tradeskills at this point to help feed the money beast. I guess if I'm REALLY bored I'll do that as well. 

Until then, I'll be waiting patiently at the roadblock.

Happy Dueling!

Playing Hoops! Level 70 Elite in Runes of Magic

Seems sometimes all we do in MMOs is jump through hoops, doesn't it? Collect 10 of this, kill 12 of that, run over here, escort this dude over there . . . yada yada yada. It's quests like the level 70 elite skill quest in Runes of Magic that push it over the top though. There's "quests" and then there's "QUESTS!" in all caps and with an exclamation point at the end.

Here's the deets:

~~

Hoop 1: Get both classes to 70.  Not just one class . . . both classes. Got it.

Hoop 2: Head back to Varanas and talk to my man Daris. You remember him?  He's the guy eternally standing in the middle of the ring of class trainers in Varanas.  That dude. Why's he standing in the middle like that with everyone staring at him? I don't know. Seems like that would get old after a few decades. Anyway . . .

Daris . . . forever the center of attention . . .

Hoop 3: Daris sends you to talk to Votakai. Here's the problem though . . . Votakai sits behind a huge army of pixies in the Sanctuary of Balance deep in the zone Chrysalia. Those pixies will agro and kill you dead unless you've progressed far enough in the quest line that they ignore you.  So, not only do you need to be level 70, but you also need to be far enough along in your quest storyline so the fairies don't kill you.

Tread carefully friends . . . pixies . . . yuck

That Sanctuary of Balance is where all the dragons hang out in their human forms when they're doing that dragon astral projection thing they call Sleepwalking, so they need to guard the sanctuary and who knows why pixies were the best choice, but there you go. That's Runes of Magic for you!

Hoops 4-33: So, I didn't get the full gist of why this is happening, but back in a desolate corner of the Ancient Kingdom of Rorazan, Votakai is in his dragon form and is doing his Sleepwalking thing, and you need to protect him from an army of elementals. Somehow you got tangled up in this mess and Votakai is being punished by his elder dragon teacher named Norhonsar?

Unfortunately you can only take the residual heat from 10 of these particular elementals at one time. When you've killed 10, you get a blessing from Norhonsar to protect you and a little trinket called a Proof of Protection that proves you helped out 1 time . . . now do this 29 more times . . . OH!  Did I forget to mention that you can only defeat 10 elementals per hour?  30 hours later . . 

Forever locked in battle!

Hoop 33: You did it!  Now witness your great failure as Votakai dies because he was Sleepwalking for too long thanks to Norhonsar being an overzealous teacher. 

Hoops 34-35: Well, that sucked . . . Norhonsar tells you to take Votakai's soul to 2 random locations all the way out in Tergothen Bay because  . . . and get this . . . Votakai always wanted to see the human realm. Why in the world would you take his soul to Tergothen Bay of all places . . . it's like . . . let's go visit that dingy looking weird zone where bandits are always attacking you out of nowhere for no good reason. That sounds like a nice place! YEAH!

Hoop 36: OK, so now what . . . quest is complete . . . who the heck do I turn it in to?  You'd think you'd go back to Norhonsar in the Ancient Kingdom of Rorazan since he was the one that told you to take Votakai's soul on a field trip to Tergothen Bay, but he does nothing for you. He just sits there looking guilty and depressed. 

No no no . . . listen . . . you need to go all the way back to where you first talked to Votakai and click on a pedestal there. I know, it's strange, and you may not even remember the Sanctuary of Balance after the past few days of jumping through hoops, but YOU GOT THIS!

Hoop 37: Votakai then turns into a dragon ghost, you click on him, and request the level 70 elite. It's a small hoop, but an important one.  I don't know why you get rewarded for failing to keep him alive, but as long as I get my skill, you do you, Votakai. Anyway, yeah, you don't want to waltz away from the Sanctuary thinking you did your quest turn in and now you have your elite skills. Make sure you do that last step or you'll just have to trudge back there a day later when you realize you missed a final step.

Sleep well, Ghost of Votakai. Thanks for the elites!

And there you go!  Level 70 Elites for both of your classes! It's a crazy involved quest just to get a skill that they should have probably just given to you as a reward for your hard work of reaching level 70 in both classes. What'd be the fun in that though, right?!

~~

Personally For my mage / rogue side, I got the Pride of the Baron skill. It encourages me to crit a lot so I can health drain a lot. Time to build a crit monster set of gear?

Pride of the Baron!

For my rogue / mage side, it gives me a nice AOE skill that consumes 10 knives and makes my dps jump while doing aoe damage every tick for 30 seconds.

Got be real . . . this sounds way cooler than my vampire skill . . .

And that, my friends, was an amazing MMO quest. I liked it. Next up . . . the epic weapon?! yeesh I don't know. I have a couple pieces and parts already . . . I just don't know if it's really worth it at this point.

Happy Dueling!

Ding 100 -- Runes of Magic 3x EXP event Redux

This morning at 2am Central, the amazing 3x experience week wrapped up in Runes of Magic, and let me tell you . . . it is HARD to go back to regular experience gains now. It feels slow . . . tedious . . . and all the other adjectives that make you think negative thoughts. BAD! TERRIBAD!

But let's stick to the positive thoughts! 

I ended up as a 100 Mage / 95 Rogue, and holy frickin' crap, I WORKED during that week of exp to get that far. You know how I mentioned the 3x experience ended at 2am Central? I was there.  I was there with 4 other addicts from our guild and a slew of other people talking in world chat. In fact, I earned all of level 95 on my rogue in the last 30 minutes of the event. Saturday I spent well over 12 hours in my chair just busting through quests as fast as humanly possible so I could get my mage side up to level 100. The only thing that stopped me was family, food, cats, holidays, and the new season of Cobra Kai.

You remember how I was following the Morrok line of quests?  All of that went totally out of the window somewhere in Syrbal Pass. I might have been able to tell you how it all eventually wrapped up, but I was too concerned with gaining as much exp as humanly possible before all the goodness ended, so I stopped and jumped ahead to zones the would give more exp bang for the buck.

Jill and Morrok have some serious relationship problems . . . *popcorn*

It's actually left me in a really strange state in the game where I feel a bit . . . exhausted, lost, and under-geared? So here's my plan . . .

1- Chill.

Seriously. I was not chill last week.  Now I need to just log on, do my dailies, work on random stuff like my level 70 elite skill . . . you know . . . minor stuff.  Re-center myself a bit.

Here's a nice Avatar-Esque bodo village to find your zen.

2- Get Back on Track.

Quests back in Syrbal Pass are giving around a million xp each. (Just for frame of reference, some high level quests were giving me 15-20 million xp during the 3x exp event.) It's not bad, but at level 95 it's also not great.  You have to complete 5-6 quests to get a 20th of a level. That said, I really wouldn't mind completing ALL the quests in the game.  It's a good challenge. 

3- Get "Decent" Geared. 

I was asking in guild chat tonight the easiest way to get geared at level 100, and the response was use a credit card.  yeah.  People trade premium currency for gold and then spend the gold in the auction house.  Outside of this though, it does seem you can get decent level 100 gear that doesn't have perfect stats for around (rough guess) 5 million a piece. It'll take some doing to get to that point, but it doesn't seem out of reach.

I could also run minigames to convert Phirius Coins into Phirius Shells and buy gear through a vendor.  It's a slow process, but doable.

I could also run level 100 content with a full group . . . maybe someday!

I'm sure there are other options, but those are the ones offered up in guild chat . . . and mind you, all these solutions don't even involve the tier'ing and stat'ing of items that happens once you have a piece of equipment.  It's a long arduous process that could take a long time to get yourself in a pretty good spot.

~~

Of course, rumor has it that another 150% event will happen this weekend!  I may be at it again!  

A Vampire's Job is Never Done in Runes of Magic

It really would be nice to get to 100 Mage / 100 Rogue.  At that point I could start earning "peak" levels. That's right.  You aren't truly max level at 100.  There are many more Peak levels you earn when you have two classes at level 100. 

Happy Dueling!

3x Experience Week and Chapter V in Runes of Magic

Team . . . team . . . look. I've been playing a TON of Runes of Magic. My company gives me this week off as a benefit and it lined up nicely with this Runes of Magic benefit, and so I've been benefiting . . . a lot. 

I started at level 67/67 and now I'm level 82/82.  So basically 15 levels on my rogue and 15 levels on my mage, and it's been a whirlwind of just GO GO GO when I log on. I've tried to snap a few screenshots of major story plot here and there, but at this point it's a bit of a blur. So, please forgive me if I get some of this wrong . . . let's talk Runes of Magic Chapter V -- Fires of Shadowforge!

The Shadowforge dwarves are now awake after a dark age where they lived in a "deep slumber" thanks to some dark magic gone wrong.  (At least that was the lore they made up so they could introduce dwarves as a playable race five expansions into the game.) Their story all unfolds on the continent of Balanzasar, which initially requires a trip involving a dragon. (after that point, you can just use Snoop)

Yeah . . . let's trust the demon that wants to help us and all that . . .

Dragons are pretty crazy in Runes of Magic. From what I understand, they do this kind of astral projection called Sleepwalking that involves traveling an elemental network that isn't visible or palpable. If anyone was to lose their way during sleepwalking, they'd either lose their mind or just outright die. You'll frequently talk to dragons in their human'esque form. It's all very complicated, and creates a kind of interesting triangle of conflict between the dragons, the elementals, and the demons.

Let sleeping dragons lie

On the continent of Balanzasar you'll be working first through the Ancient Kingdom of Rorazan then on to Chrysalia. From Chrysalia, you'll move on to the Merdhin Tundra. Beyond that is the Syrbal Pass.  That pathway is where I've been questing.  Enemies in Syrbal Pass have been hitting me for anything from 4k to 7k a hit, and it's getting nastier by the level as the enemies catch up to my gear.

Beyond Syrbal Pass is the final zone of Balanzasar: Sarlo.  At the rate I'm going through these quests and leveling, I'll most likely end up there sometime today or tomorrow.

Apparently me getting all this juicy experience all quick like this is both good and bad . . . good because I level and improve my character's stats and equipment possibilities . . . bad because I'm developing a talent point debt by leveling so quickly.  That 3x experience makes me move on to areas three times as fast and so now I'm getting three times less the talent points I'd usually get from grinding . . . or something like that.

It's a future me problem that will probably make it harder on myself at end game content because I won't have my skills at max level, which means I'll be a level 100 character whose powers and abilities (the main source of damage) hit like a level 80 character.  I suppose more to come on that development!

As for the story behind Balanzasar, it all seems to center around getting the true dragons on your side while dealing with a couple questionable demons named Sismond and Maderoth. Sismond makes several appearances throughout the main quest line as he gives you questionable but somehow helpful advice in your quest to take care of Maderoth . . . because Maderoth is going to take down the elemental lord, which would be bad for dragons who travel the elemental network.

It's a council of dragons, who all look like humans, agreeing to help humans . . .

Spoiler alert, you guessed it, they both turn out to be bad: Maderoth is a boss in the dungeon known as Belathis Fortress and Sismond is a World Boss later on in the level 90'ish zones. It's pretty clear to see that Sismond just wants to get rid of his competition and saw a fortuitous advantage with a temporary alliance with the stupid mortals. Demons . . . can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

So there you have it. I've been blindly clicking on yellow exclamation points that turn into grey checkmarks, and then turn into yellow checkmarks. Wash, rinse, repeat.  Bring it on!

Happy Dueling!