Let's play Lords of Xulima

The teleport gate thing is just outside of town, guarded by a group of bees. The bees are still annoying, but our hit rates are rising -- we get mid-30% accuracy against them now.



I've been bumping up Batman, the Herald of Raznet in a very passive manner, and he's now unlocked his Poisonous Bite. (N.B. I'm pretty sure this is actually a venomous bite. I have a hard time imagining what a poisonous bite would be.) He's still way behind in levels, but I think I can eventually turn him into a worthwhile secondary attack summon.



Time for some sightseeing! The Muddy Lake is an annoying area that will sometimes deduct a few hours of food from you as your feet get stuck in the mud. It will also sometimes inflict a wound on a random party member due to a snakebite. What kind of snake can break your bones with its bite? I don't care to learn the answer to that question.



The Muddy Lake connects a few areas, some of which have alternate routes of access. Most notable is the altar to Raznet.



Raznet's blessing increases Defense and Evasion by 5. Not one of the top-tier blessings, but handy all the same.



Communing with Raznet put Rosa one level away from a major milestone: no more disease. It's prohibitively costly for field use, but when you're not in a time crunch, you can cure your party for the cost of a Velegarn inn stay.



"Fortunately, it was not poisonous. Unfortunately, she shattered a metatarsal in the process." BAU in the Muddy Swamp.



Aha! Now here's something interesting. The Oldest Odendrum isn't guarding anything -- it's just a lone opponent standing at the end of nowhere. We desperately want to kill it on account of reasons.



It loves to put the entire party to sleep. This is a problem. Evasion drops to zero for sleeping characters.



Edward is helping! I didn't realize until now that this cures stunning, too. That essentially makes it a less useful version of Dispel, and for as much trash as I've talked about Dispel, it's really nice to have on a character that isn't doing much else.



The Biggest Tree has a large amount of health and is immune to poison, stuns, and bleeding. (It might not be totally immune to stuns, but I definitely can't inflict any.) It also resists fire, because it's a tree? The oldest tree? Go figure. Rydia is useless in this fight either way, since the party spends enough time sleeping that the heralds tend to time out before getting more than one action.



My better attempts tend to end up looking like this. For some reason -- possibly due to a bug -- there's a long delay between when a character recovers from sleep and when he gets to take his next turn, which is why Edge is getting triple-turned here. From its central position, TOO can't hit Edge with its strong single-target attack. That leaves it with the party-wide sleep breath and leaf breath attacks. Leaf breath is pretty tame, averaging about 25 damage, but the sleep delay means Edge often just never gets a turn.



On another of my more successful attempts, Gaulen managed to stack wounds on the tree. Sadly, the breath attacks are unaffected by wounds, or we'd have this fight in the bag. It's becoming increasingly clear that Gaulen is the key to this battle, though, and I consider switching him with Rosa so he doesn't have to take the single-target hit that carries a long stun with it.



We need better sleep mitigation, though, and I'm reasonably sure that it comes in the form of Mental Resistance. I'm able to get Gaulen to 68, and Edge was already at a moderately high number, which explains why he was doing so well. Thieves have base 10 resistances across the board, which is way better than most classes.



Hey, it's Dispel! In this case, it'll wake Cecil, Edge, and Edward in addition to removing Cecil's stun. Not bad, but we still lost this fight.



I resign myself to the fact that the Oldest Odendrum has had the best of our party, at least in its current shape, and I set out in search of new prey. It presents itself to me in the form of this Ancient Ogre. He hits like a truck, but he's vulnerable to my favorite statuses.



He ends up sweeping the party, and we win the fight only because Rosa dashes from one end of the battlefield to the other, and the Ogre bleeds out while following her around. Cue up the Benny Hill theme.



Rosa limps back to town and gets dogpiled on her way there, but she escapes. At this point, I come up with a brilliant plan.



We decide to take one more crack at The Oldest Odendrum, this time backed up by the temporary blessings of Taliet, Nalaet, and Febret, increasing our Speed and Agility by 5 and our resistances by 15. That puts Gaulen pretty close to the resistance cap of 90, at least as far as the sleep status is concerned. Will it be enough?



Miraculously, yes -- but only barely. It's still an uphill battle. I'd like to try fighting Ovengel with these buffs, and I'd totally do it if I had remembered to activate the dimensional portal behind the castle. Oh well -- it'd be a long shot anyway.



Half the party survives the battle, and we walk away with the Golden Seed. What's this for, and why did I want to kill this tree so badly?



If you guessed it's a permanent blessing item, you were right. Febret's blessing is the +15 to all resistances one, and it's going to be increasingly helpful as we get later in the game.

NEXT TIME ON LET'S PLAY LORDS OF XULIMA: AGAIN WITH THE BIRDS

OLOXPS COUNT: 16 (mushrooms, locks and traps, cereal plants, encounter clearing, herald of Golot, bard songs, Golot's blessing, mausoleum keys, the arena, minions before bosses, riddle imps, Odendro drops, DLC, well of souls, Cursed Hounds, treasure chests)

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES:

• The arena in Sorrentia has ever more monsters to kill.
• Cunavarn's quests still want us to find the dead person.
• Velaskar's quests still want us to exterminate monsters, collect the loot, find the dead person, and collect the other loot.
• Rasmura's quests still want us to eliminate the hounds, get the priceless loot, kill the monsters, kill the witch, and find the person.

Nice job on the Oldest Odendrum. I tried him several times when I first came across him, but he was kicking my ass so I ended up leaving him for later. I scoured the internet (including some Google-translated pages) trying to figure out if I wanted Organic Resistance or Mental Resistance to resist his sleep, but never found a definitive answer and ended up stacking both (with gear and the Divine spells). FWIW though, it felt like I got more mileage from organic.

Man, I wish I'd had the benefit of this advice. This area was really frustrating, with a high food consumption rate and annoying random encounters. I finally ended up clearing out all of the encounters so I could puzzle in peace, but I still had to hit a Steam guide in the end. I can't recall the particulars now, but I recall thinking that the correct solution involved a couple of unintuitive leaps that made me call bullshit. Something about how to determine which statues were kings, maybe? IIRC, one of the descriptions made it sound like the guy was a king, but the correct answer was "What are you doing reading? Pick the guys with the crowns."

I'm pretty sure I found two, but it's been a while. The nice thing about the random loot, though, is that missing a secret room never stings too badly. That being said, I kept Gaulen and my Thief at near-max Perception as they leveled for fear of missing any.

Some of the names in the story aren't like the others:
hero 12
hero 10
hero 7
hero 6

And is this the name of a restaurant?
hero 13

Well, it worked for some real world cities. (For less rigorous definitions of "work".)

That's completely wrong! It should be Y Burn...

I half-suspected that this was one of the higher Kickstarter backer tiers. So I did some research:
That was the $200 tier, and it only had six slots. It was the early bird tier for this:

My Kickstarter sense tingles whenever I see strange names. The tier just below these is the "name-an-NPC" tier, which probably accounts for our friend Jordi the trainer among others.

Also of interest on the Kickstarter campaign:

• The Ulnalum Guardian was a stretch goal. "More than 4 hours of content with this new chapter of the main plot," it claims, which must include more than the Guardian itself, since that was definitely not a four-hour fight.
• The islands of Varas Talak were also a stretch goal. We haven't gotten there yet, but you might spy them on the map in the Ovengel update.
• The Talisman of Golot DLC was originally a Kickstarter exclusive.
• A total of two backers pledged at the "Be a Hero" tier, which gets you a hero portrait. Any guesses?

I guess I need to get with the times and remember that this is a thing nowadays.

PREVIOUSLY ON LET'S PLAY LORDS OF XULIMA: KILLED TREE

AND NOW



This is the easiest witch house to miss. The dense foliage of Rasmura's jungle hides a lot of hidden paths anyway, but the path through the river is tough to spot on top of that, so you might not even know where to look. The bees are a giveaway, but you won't see them until you've already found the secret passage unless you have Gaulen's Explorer skill, which increases your vision radius. It's not useful for a replay, but it's very handy on the first time around for much the same reasons as Perception.



The witch isn't the only feature on this side of the river. There's another riddle imp (and the treasure that accompanies it) and a good number of herbs/mushrooms.

The answer is Yul, in case you haven't been keeping up.



Ugh ugh ugh. This is a very high-quality cloak with no enchantment, making it functionally useless. If it had an enchantment -- almost any enchantment -- it would be very good. Our team's accessories are horribly out of date.

The boots are of a similar quality, making them great but too heavy. We'll hang on to them.



Solving the riddle bumps Rosa to 24, meaning disease is a worry of the past. It will still be a long time until she learns to remove curses.



Our target lives on the far end of the Venomous Lake. As you might expect, you take sporadic damage as you travel through the lake.



It's not a lot of damage. The real threat is that you can't rest in the lake. That's a problem -- resting is responsible for the lion's share of our healing, and without it, we have to lean on Rosa's limited PP.



Examining the nearby chest breaks the map, since it's right on the edge, and the game doesn't deal with the camera shift very well. Whee~



The witch's house is at the north end of the lake. By the time we arrive there, we're in sorry shape indeed. I would've liked to get far enough from these demons to rest, but you can't do that without getting booted back outside, where you can't rest because of the lake. We have to burn through some consumables to make this work.



This witch house is not fantastic in terms of treasure, but you'll never find a better concentration of herbs and mushrooms than in this room. Poor housekeeping pays dividends in Xulima.



Props to JBear for alerting me to the fact that Incinerate Air takes cair of insectuous webs. It's not the most damaging terrain, but walking through that many webs and then back out would chew through most of our health. We have scrolls for that.

You can't actually see the spiders very well in this screenshot, but they're very visible in-game thanks to the animation. Spiderless webs just slow you down.



In the category of "spells we'll never learn" is Hammer of the Destroyer, the second-tier earth spell. It's a good source of wounds, and a level V... er, level five scroll is a nice find.

It's a consumable item, therefore we'll never use it, but it's still a nice find.



Time for the main event. Gaulen mentions that we came here looking for a place to rest, which is more true than the game can know.



Otherwise, Wendofel's dialogue is uninteresting. She does drop some FORESHADOWING, but it's nothing we haven't heard.



We fought the second sister not long ago, and fresh off her heels, Wendofel is comparatively much more threatening. She birds us for quite a lot of damage, though the bleeding is more manageable than it was in our first witch fight.



Hey JBear, I'm using Dispel again. Granted, I'm using it as a glorified Song of Awakening, but Song of Awakening can't hit the other side of the party. So there's that.

Casting Dispel screws up your cursor, making it think you're still targeting the spell even after you cast it. It's cosmetic and goes away after your next attack.



Wendofel uses a few Bard spells. Song of Sleep put Edward and the Herald of Nalaet to sleep, and Song of Clumsiness made the Herald clumsy. It's not a threatening status effect unless you're leaning heavily on evasion for some reason (and if you are, Song of Clumsiness is rare enough that it won't put a damper on your strategy). I guess it could serve as a soft counter to bees and ravens, but those enemies are nuisances, not threats.



This was not a graceful victory, but I won, and I don't feel like redoing it to win with a few more survivors. In this screenshot, note that Edge has stockpiles 50 shuriken. This is the part of the game where bandits start becoming more common, meaning our pile of shuriken gets out of hand. We probably won't need to buy them for the rest of the game (but I still will, because they cost about 20 gold and they're great).



Despite dying, half the party gains a level. I mentioned this a long time ago, but they get experience proportional to how much of the battle they survived, and everyone survived most of the battle. Edge was the last to die.



Edward will gain access to Song of Haste next level. It's really good, but it's also part of the Song of Victory Value Bundle, so I probably won't learn it. I've been putting a few points into his Armor and Bows skills so that he can better contribute when he's not singing or item-slinging.

I note with dismay that Song of Haste has a hefty PP cost relative to everything Edward currently knows. I make a mental note to pump his Energy stat.

As noted, Rasmura is silly with foliage, and wading through it gives us this whopper. I don't think anyone in our party could wear this even if we stripped them naked. 62 is extremely heavy. I don't put much emphasis on armor or the Armor skill. This might be a mistake.



Rasmura's mausoleum is north and center. The description has a little bit of interesting lore. It's not clear whether the potions of youth killed her or if she was simply regretful when she died after drinking them, but the wording suggests some sort of causality.



This is definitely the point in the game at which screw the lockpicking minigame. My SOP is to click Auto three times and reload if it didn't work.



The theme of this mausoleum is lava and traps. You can walk on the lava. It kills you instantly. Maybe you could max your fire resistance and heal every few inches, but I never tried it.

Also pictured: the return of the floating-bouncing skull-things, which are merely disguised floor traps that you don't have to roll Perception to see.



When there's a visible switch like this, the game wants you to find it.



The secret door is a teleporter.



It deposits us on the other side of the rubble, from where we can walk to the bridge to the middle, where the tomb awaits.



You can also get here by walking across a series of spike traps, as seen on the left. Not recommended, but easier than traversing the lava.



The Royal Mummy is slow, but it hits like a Mack truck -- that's Cecil's health after taking one hit -- and it confers a curse of -20 PP. This is Major Traznido's Curse, which overrides the Minor Traznido's Curse that the cursed hounds can inflict (-10 PP). It has enough health to get one or two of these on your party. Fortunately, it's susceptible to wounds, as seen here.



Our reward is an amazing dagger that we would love to use if it were a sword, axe, or flail. It's junky loot day today in Let's Play Lords of Xulima.



But wait: that's not all! There's a bit of treasure in an area on the far left. And by "treasure," I mean "gold," although there's nothing wrong with that.



Incidentally, the ancient ogre we killed last time was the condition for one of Rasmura's quests. We report that and the witch before getting a couple more skill points from this guy.



Rosa is just on the cusp of not learning Life Absorption. It sounds good for a front-line Cleric, and if you were using an all-Cleric party for some reason, I'm sure it would be very welcome, but in any sane party, it doesn't compete with Divine Prayer's free healing and PP. It does become fairly effective at high levels, but it also becomes much more costly.



NEXT TIME ON LET'S PLAY LORDS OF XULIMA: A NEW REGION! CAN WE REALLY BEAT THE DEMONS?

No new OLOXPS recently. Don't make the mistake of thinking that's because optimal Lords of Xulima play is becoming more enjoyable; it's just that our existing list is fairly comprehensive. Also, I acknowledge that this update was a little dry. Sorry about that; I shouldn't LP with a headache.

OLOXPS COUNT: 16 (mushrooms, locks and traps, cereal plants, encounter clearing, herald of Golot, bard songs, Golot's blessing, mausoleum keys, the arena, minions before bosses, riddle imps, Odendro drops, DLC, well of souls, Cursed Hounds, treasure chests)

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES:

• The arena in Sorrentia has ever more monsters to kill.
• Cunavarn's quests still want us to find the dead person.
• Velaskar's quests still want us to exterminate monsters, collect the loot, find the dead person, and collect the other loot.
• Rasmura's quests still want us to eliminate the hounds, get the priceless loot, and find the person.

Yeah, it's really dumb that you can get unenchanted accessories. Unenchanted armour and weapons can still potentially be useful, but unenchanted cloaks and jewelry are literally useless outside of their vendor price. Getting loot like that is a huge buzz-kill.

FWIW, I made the opposite mistake, in that the front line of my end-game party had armour weight limits that had far exceeded the quality of the best armour I could get my hands on. I certainly think it's worth boosting it on the two centre-most front-liners, at any rate.

I suspect not. IIRC, you take some giant fixed number (3000? 5000?) across the board, and if fire resistance were mitigating that at all, I'd expect to see slightly different numbers for each party member.

That's a better dagger than my Thief completed the game with, albeit only slightly. (Yes, my Thief used Daggers, because I didn't realize how badly Swords outclass them, I preferred it thematically at party creation, and I wanted to diversify as much as possible to maximize the utility of loot drops.)

The other problem there is that daggers are also incredibly rare. I suspect that's because there's only one type of dagger, while there are lots of types of sword, axe, and mace. Further bearing this out is the relative rarity of poles and bows, which have two and three types, respectively.

In theory, daggers aren't completely terrible: they require very little skill investment and they allow a shield. There's just no real use case for a frontline character who doesn't want to spec into weapon skills but does want to spec enough armor to allow a good shield. Cleric would be the best option for that, but they can't equip daggers.

PREVIOUSLY ON LET'S PLAY LORDS OF XULIMA: KILLED WITCH

AND NOW



The southern end of Devonia is very similar to Rasmura: heavy foliage masking some secrets. This path, for example...



...leads not only to this glade of 19 secret herbs and spices, but also some extra treasure if you keep exploring past here.



Also like Rasmura, Devonia is thick with bandits. Portent!



Also like Rasmura... no, wait, these guys show up everywhere.

It's been a long time since they were remotely threatening beyond their ability to inflict a curse whose significance extends little beyond the cost of curing it. Knock on wood...



It's Castle Devonia, all right... but there's no way we'll make it past that wall of guards.
Let's check the map. There was an alternate route to the other castles, so it stands to reason that we'll find one here, too.



The game does not let you approach these guards, which is odd given that it was perfectly happy to let you throw yourself on the sword before, but it saves me a reload, so whatever.



Hmm. There's no land route, but if we had a ship, we could come through the rear by sea.
That won't work. Xulima has but two ports: Devonia and Velegarn. The currents prevent us from sailing from Velegarn, no matter our destination, and we can't reach Devonia without going through the castle.
And you call yourself a navigator.
So there's nothing on the map. Let's keep our eyes open, then.



Ooh, I know this one: it's demons. You can see a bit of one behind the top-left corner of the dialog box.



Fortunately, there's nothing blocking us from the dimensional portal.



And while there's a fixed encounter between us and this cave, it's bandits, not demons. We'll be well-acquainted with demons before long now, but we'll put that off as long as possible.

According to the sign, this cave may serve as an alternate route to the castle.
It's as good a lead as any. Let's check it out.



Prince Darthenos's royal guard! This is promising indeed.



We actually have plenty of time for words, but we'd rather let our weapons do the talking.



These are third-tier soldiers, the strongest of their breed. The last time we saw soldiers in this color, it was the game indicating to us that we were going the wrong way. Now, we're expected to take them.

But we'll come back to this "Troublesome" fight in a bit. Let's finish exploring the cave.

I talked about the Exploration skill recently: it expands your vision radius. Handy for LP purposes, but I'm not swimming in skill points at the moment. I'll keep this in my back pocket for now.



"Platinum Philosopher" is my favorite superhero! Is this autographed?

Another suit of armor that exceeds Cecil's maximum encumbrance all on its own. I am not proud of my skill point allocation.



Besides soldiers, the Beast Gate boasts lots of spiders. The "entangled" status gives a flat 50% speed reduction regardless of whether you're caught in one thread or fifty, which makes it scale effectively throughout the game. That's not to say these encounters are scary.



I liked Ovengel's castle. It was nice and empty.



O mighty Yul, why aren't thou hooking us up here? I know thou can do way better than this.
Yul will not support his followers in the end.

If we'd been destroying the statues, we'd have, what, a couple thousand experience by now? That's not much, and it's about to become a lot less as XP rewards start ramping up at this point in the game. Even so, I'm not impressed.



Yes, SOMEBODY should really get on that.
I'm pretty sure he's talking about the heavily-armed party of six.
Seriously? What an ingrate.



These soldiers are standing in front of the entrance. If we beat them, we can take a pit stop in Devonia.

We're clearly not short on health or food, but I am sitting on a couple level-ups right now (the yellow chevrons next to Cecil and Edge) because I'm low on skill points.



Oh, you! You know I can't resist you.

Either option is a game over. You can't access Devonia while the prince lives.



So we jump to Velegarn instead and put Galvan's kids through college.



On the way back to the castle, we're accosted by demons. The "armored demon" archetype is fond of dealing wounds, even though they're armed with flails. Lords of Xulima is not particularly consistent about the status effects dealt by enemies.



Rosa is one level away from a landmark spell. Mass Heal is the only real party-wide heal the game gives us -- Cecil's Aura of Healing also affects multiple targets, but unless we're outside battle, it only hits adjacent allies, and it requires a constant skill point investment, scaling to 30 ranks as opposed to Mass Heal's five. Aura of Healing also caps out lower, restoring 46-78 HP for 62 PP. Mass Heal eventually recovers 90-150 HP for 80 PP.

Don't invest in Aura of Healing. Mass Heal will be useful through the end of the game. As insult to injury, Paladin gains access to Mass Heal as its second-to-last spell, although you could conceivably beat the game before reaching the level needed to learn it.



Really? There's a secret door in the castle? Wow. What a useful tip. Get out of my sight.
That's pretty harsh, but probably deserved.

The first prisoner mentioned beasts accompanying Darthenos. Shouldn't we do something about that before we confront him?
Nah. What's a couple dogs more or less to us?



Darthenos is kind of a disgusting dude, huh?
Shh. But yes.



"Many friends" is pretty generous. Honestly, we mostly like Velegarn for its cheap inn rates.
What was that about the Cursed Hounds?



Gaulen! You made him angry!



For failing to take care of them before confronting the prince, you have four Devoniaraptors to deal with during the battle. This is exactly the kind of hassle we don't need.



Cecil will gain access to Dispel at level 28. He won't learn it at that time, but maybe someday. I've been stacking resistances on Cecil, so he'd probably be a good fit for the spell.



The treasure room mentioned by the second prisoner? This is it. The switch is one of the skulls. It'd be easy to miss, but the dead end here is a bit telling.



Aaaanyway, you can encounter the Devoniaraptors in pairs on each side of the throne room. Darth Enos, Sith Lord of the Beasts, has no comment if you kill one pair, but he does get pretty upset if you kill both.



Absent the raptors, this fight proceeds very similarly to any other boss. Stack up status effects, win.



Cecil sadly bites it before we claim victory.



Our party makes it out of the fight with a bloody nose or two. Wounds become common from this point on, and unlike bleeding and stunning, they persist between battles.

The game is kind enough to remind us where we can find the lock to this key. We'll head there after a word from our sponsors.

NEXT TIME ON LET'S PLAY LORDS OF XULIMA: THE TEMPLE OF RAZNET

OLOXPS COUNT: 16 (mushrooms, locks and traps, cereal plants, encounter clearing, herald of Golot, bard songs, Golot's blessing, mausoleum keys, the arena, minions before bosses, riddle imps, Odendro drops, DLC, well of souls, Cursed Hounds, treasure chests)

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES:

• The arena in Sorrentia has ever more monsters to kill.
• Cunavarn's quests still want us to find the dead person.
• Velaskar's quests still want us to exterminate monsters, collect the loot, find the dead person, and collect the other loot.
• Rasmura's quests still want us to eliminate the hounds, get the priceless loot, and find the person.

I'm pretty sure that you can stubbornly march to your death at the gates after you get that message if you're so inclined.

PREVIOUSLY ON LET'S PLAY LORDS OF XULIMA: KILLED DARTHENOS

AND NOW

With Darthenos gone, his guard has dispersed, giving us access to the town of Devonia. Let's check it out.



His parents could've just named him "Daniel," but nooo.



We get this town's gratitude rewards immediately on discovering it. Two Elixir Vs is a fantastic reward: they'll restore something like 200 HP and 100 PP to a single character. I'll probably never use them. Consumables!



The merchant has an absolutely incredible bow for sale. The enchantment is ideal, too. This will make Edward a legitimately useful combatant. I've been investing in his weapon skill a bit, and with a weapon like this, he'll be able to deal nearly half as much damage as our front line, albeit with lower accuracy. He can also inflict wounds fairly reliably, which is usually hard to do with bows.



Continuing to do the rounds, we bump into the priestess of Valvet. Valvet is responsible for the creation of demons, and just west of here is a hellscape chock-full of them. Valvet won't lift a finger to help us, and her priestess only gives one HP and one PP.



The inn gives experience. If listening to people tell stories is all it takes to gain experience, man, we've been wasting our time on monsters.



I'm kind of in love with this message.



El Capitán, who didn't quite make it through localization, is the owner of this fine vessel.



This is the first port we've seen here, Gaulen, aside from the one where we washed ashore. Where were you expecting to see another ship?



I forget if I mentioned this detail. The seas surrounding Xulima bear strong currents courtesy of Nalaet. You can't get in or leave without her blessing, which calls into question exactly how much Gaulen's navigation skills were required to reach Xulima in the first place.



Varas Talak is the archipelago surrounding Xulima to the northeast. You can see pieces of it on the map posted a couple updates ago.



El Capitán won't take us there, but maybe we can go there ourselves.



I bet I can talk him down to three grand.
Edge! This is his entire livelihood. Do you really think he'll be able to retire on three thousand gold?
Aw, come on. Look at the guy. He can't have that many years left in him.
Let's just give him the gold. It's worth, what, a skill point?
Not quite.



What? His generosity is legendary? What about our generosity? That was ten thousand gold!

We'll do some sailing soon, but first, it's time for an arena break! Gaulen is just cleaning up shop here. Stacking wounds is an easy way to win any 1v1 battle, and Gaulen can poison his opponents at the same time. With 12 wounds, this Odendro has a 1% chance to hit.



The arena gives us the third-tier Cursed Hound before we've actually found it in the wild. It has a powerful melee attack, but that's diluted considerably by the low-level lightning spell that's still in its repertoire. It was terrifying when we first encountered the Cursed Hound Young ages ago, but it doesn't hold up.



Of course, all this one-on-one is great for Gaulen's experience. I try to spread it around, but Gaulen is definitely our best solo fighter on the strength of the wound status alone. Hitting level 30, Gaulen caps out on his Axes skill. This will free up two skill points per level from now on, which might be worth investing into Armor.



Alas, this is the end of the line. The second-tier armored demon inflicts wounds on Gaulen faster than Gaulen can inflict wounds on it. We'll need to return here with better defenses.



Anyway, Devonia. The area of Devonia is littered with these plaques, usually guarded by demons. The plaques are very important to an optional but lucrative opportunity.



"WEWWN." Is it the name of one of the ancients?
I'll make a note of it in my journal.



Oh wow, I totally forgot about Requiem. It's an instant-death spell, and it hits the entire enemy party. Say goodbye to annoying random encounters!

Of course, it's expensive now and it'll be much more expensive at rank 5. It also has a chance to fail, decreasing with each rank, but it checks each enemy individually. We'll be able to rely on Requiem taking out half of a pack of enemies, which is totally worthwhile. Edward is about to come into his own.

On that topic, I got lucky with a bow and I've put a minimal amount of skill points into Edward's weapon skills. He now deals about half as much damage as our front line -- which is actually really good, given his low investment -- making him a decent ranged attacker when he doesn't feel like singing. Of course, Edward will become invaluable a few levels down the road...



I've got it! What if we sailed west, east, west, west, then north?
Gaulen, that makes no sense. Why would we sail in a circle?
Listen. One of us is a navigator, and it's not you.

HOURS LATER



Well, this is a fine mess. We've landed on a deserted island that's swarming with monsters.
Swarming with monsters and opportunity!



It smells like success.
It smells like half a training session.
Truly, we have irreparably damaged the economy of Xulima.



Oh hi! Those sandworms featured two screenshots ago can take half of Rosa's health and deal seven wounds in a single hit. They also have 1800 health a pop and are surprisingly resistant to wounds. No big deal. We are carrying a ludicrous 15 kg of shuriken around, so this gives us a good excuse to empty our backpack a bit.

To explore the other islands, we would have to fight a lot more demons, which I'd rather avoid at the moment. I take this opportunity to remember what it was we were actually going to do today.



Ooh, it tingles!
Disturbing.



The levels are pouring in at this point of the game. At level 30, Rosa will learn Mass Divine Armor, which is like Divine Armor (a spell she never bothered learning) except that it hits the entire party and for much greater effect. This will go a long way towards compensating for our paper-thin defenses. Expensive, though.



The Emerald Lake shares the main problem we had with the Venomous Lake: we can't rest in the water. On the other hand, we aren't being choked every few steps, and there's this small patch of land to rest on once you've cleared out the Motauros that occupy it. This is a good thing, because there's a major battle between us and the temple of Raznet. To wit:



...wow, this was not the best screenshot, was it?



Ahem. It turns out you can't actually capture the Emerald Wyvern's attack animation and damage in the same frame: it does these swooping attacks that ensure it's offscreen by the time the numbers appear.

This is the junior cousin of the Ruby Wyvern that annihilated us outside Ovengel's castle. Both versions are fond of attacking the entire front row, stunning them in the process. They'll less often do this to the back row, which is hazardous to Rydia's health. They're also immune to fire, something I wish I'd known before I summoned the herald of Valiet.



You might recall that Rasmura wants these for a quest. I think they only want three of them, but it's still not happening. Three points of Strength is worth way more than whatever they're offering.



This is the temple of Raznet? It's certainly... evocative.
Raznet is the Lady of Beasts and War. It probably looked a lot like this before Yul had his way.



*high-quality, unenchanted jewelry alert*

This would be endgame-worthy with an appropriate enchantment. It'll fetch a good price, at least.



Traps in front of the door, traps on the door. You're used to this by now.



You're not still praying to Yul? After his worthless gifts?
Look, Gaulen. This is the hall of prayer. What do you expect me to do in the hall of prayer?



MEANWHILE, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TEMPLE



Seriously?
Gaulen, this is the hall of blessings. We have to pray for Yul's blessing in the hall of blessings. I can't believe I have to explain this to you.

We're still waiting for the other shoe to drop on our Yul-worship.

Cecil has long stopped learning spells that Rosa doesn't already know, and I'm going to stop showing them off now. Of interest, though: his weapon skill has capped out, having reached level 30, so he, too, will have two more skill points per level. This means I will probably resume leveling Aura of Protection at a steady rate. It's around rank 12 out of 30 (what is it with Paladin skills having terribly slow scaling, anyway?).



*high-quality, unenchanted jewelry alert*

The central chamber is full of those bouncy-floaty skulls again. Avoiding them is a matter of figuring out where Lords of Xulima divides its tiles. This is very difficult the first time you run into these things, but I'm so totally pro at it now



That's not good. Remember the guardian in Febret's garden?



Ah, false alarm! Mummies and skeletons are no match for us.



This is the game's way of telling you that this was a critical enemy and that defeating it lowered a barrier somewhere. Those barriers usually come in pairs, and this is no exception.



The lowest skull on the left is the switch for the secret door.



*high-quality, enchanted jewelry alert*

I didn't scum the treasure chest for this, but I totally scummed the matching treasure chest on the left side of the temple.



After you clear both side chambers, you can approach the altar. Yul's herald once again offers a slow drip of plot info.



Many of the other heralds give pretty clear clues, but this one won't make any sense until the end of the game. Suffice it to say that Gaulen's guesses are wrong, and you won't do any better. Not only is this really oblique, but it refers to something that hasn't been so much as hinted at yet.

Herald: Remember these words... Dying by my hand would be the sweetest of all the destinies that await you... because the fates that allow you to live are the worst, as they will only bring you a life of disgrace and desperation...

First I choose to end your existence, then we will see where my true fate takes me!



The herald is a fairly unexceptional boss. Notably, it has strong status resistances, but shurikens pack enough bleeding to bypass most of those resistances. He can hit three front-row characters to stun and bleed, which can be hard to deal with if you let him live long enough.



We don't. We get an extremely generous amount of experience from this fight.



"Eight betray a ninth" is a clear reference to the Lords of Xulima betraying Yul, and I don't know why it's made out to be mysterious here. The Guardian is Yul, the Guardian of Souls. The Garden is a literal garden. The sleeping ones are literal sleeping ones.

I can tell you all this and it still doesn't spoil anything, because none of it makes any sense until the end of the game. If you want an actual hint, consider the fact that the sleeping ones have no souls.



I toyed around with throwing a few other items into the well, but I really can't be bothered to scum up experience this way. A fairly contemporary piece of equipment gave me a whopping 150 experience. I'd have been better served getting into random encounters here.



Congratulations! This temple is complete.

NEXT TIME ON LET'S PLAY LORDS OF XULIMA: CAN'T PUT OFF THE DEMONS ANY LONGER

Let's Play Lords of Xulima will take a short break. See you in 2016!

OLOXPS COUNT: 16 (mushrooms, locks and traps, cereal plants, encounter clearing, herald of Golot, bard songs, Golot's blessing, mausoleum keys, the arena, minions before bosses, riddle imps, Odendro drops, DLC, well of souls, Cursed Hounds, treasure chests)

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES:

• The arena in Sorrentia has ever more monsters to kill.
• Cunavarn's quests still want us to find the dead person.
• Velaskar's quests still want us to exterminate monsters, collect the loot, find the dead person, and collect the other loot.
• Rasmura's quests still want us to eliminate the hounds, get the priceless loot, and find the person.

I leaned on consumables heavily, I found, although mostly the PP elixirs. I was going through them like candy in the late game, although I think I was doing way less resting than I'm supposed to.

I was wondering about that. I didn't have a Bard, but when the Requiem spell scrolls started showing up I figured that the spell just must have a terrible success rate, since you'd repeatedly mentioned that Victory was the only good Bard song.

Heh, I dove head-first into demon country when I got to Devonia, because I thought that was the intended progression. It became increasingly clear that it wasn't, but I still stubbornly cleared out most of the north and south ruins before I decided that I'd had enough. Made the stuff that followed seem really easy for a while, though.

I realize I've been talking in hushed tones about the demons for some time now. Aside from the imps (which we've been fighting ever since the first witch), though, they really are a big step above anything else the game has had us fight on a regular basis. (Emerald Wyverns are random encounters in Devonia, though, but you only fight them solo.)

We've encountered two varieties aside from the imps: the scythe-demons, who suck your PP dry, and the armored demons, who inflict heavy wounds. There's one more type that's just tanky as all get-out. This would be a good time for Rosa to bust out some demon-slaying holy spells, but she doesn't get one until level 32. (The early-game Light Ray only gets a bonus versus undead.) If you want to play the extreme long game, you skip all the other offensive spells and only learn Ray of the Gods, but that's going to show up at the end of the game, and it costs a ludicrous 160 PP at max rank. Unlike our upcoming spell, it will get a bonus versus the titans. All-Cleric party: totally viable.

I love the party banter text you're adding. I think the first exchange I quoted is my favorite of the entire LP so far.

Do we need another counter for HQUJAs? (Or HQUEJAs) [That does seem like a somewhat bad design decision or quirk of the item generation code.]

Yikes... I can certainly believe that thing causes a lot of wounds. That's one nasty looking shield. Makes me want to run to the doctor to get a tetanus shot.

Edge/Mogri, where did you get 15 kg worth of shuriken?

Thanks. I can't always be sure what's going to go over well, but I enjoy writing it, and I'm still chuckling to myself over the line JBear quoted earlier.

Unenchanted jewelry is probably intentional -- after all, birds drop unenchanted rings that serve as sale fodder -- but the fact that they show up in chests is unfortunate. I suppose it's realistic; not every ring can be enchanted, even in Xulima. It's only really aggravating when the item in question is of exceptional quality.

But here's the thing: chests have a quality level, and enchantments serve as a quality modifier. So a chest that has an unenchanted ulnalum ring probably doesn't have the quality level to put out an enchanted ulnalum ring, and the really good enchantments give higher multipliers to the quality rating. The crostamium necklace showing up in this chest didn't cheat me out of a crostamium necklace of absolute resistance, although it might have taken the place of a diamond necklace of absolute resistance.

Mostly from bandits, who start showing up in droves, regularly in packs of five or more. I've all but stopped using Edge's regular attack, since shuriken and Quick Strike are strictly superior outside of using resources that we have in excess. Thieves are excellent for utility early on, but they're excellent for utility and damage later. Some people will suggest you use a Bard instead of a Thief (with Gaulen theoretically picking up more of the utility slack in a more damage-oriented party), but with shuriken in the game, I just can't see that. Maybe when Edward picks up his ultimate song, I'll change my tune (ha!).

PREVIOUSLY ON LET'S PLAY LORDS OF XULIMA: KILLED HERALD

AND NOW

Lords of Xulima is a good game. I got home from work on Friday, ready to start a long vacation of not doing any work, and I fired up Lords of Xulima the next day anyway.

That was before the winter sale, and now I have a backlog of games that my grandchildren will be cleaning up for me, but it's not like Lords of Xulima was the only thing in my library at the time, either.



On the way out of the temple, we run into this poor fool. The ogres have been dead for weeks.

Pretty sure this is the guy Rasmura wanted us to find, so we'll scratch that off our list.



Let's give the Brastinium Battle Axe a hand, everyone: we found it very early on, and it's served us for probably half the game so far. It's time to part with it, but it will always hold a place in our hearts.

And now, it's time to fight the demons.



So we head to the garden of Hamaleth, because screeeeew the demons in Devonia.



PRO TIP: Don't do the garden of Hamaleth until you've found Devonia at the very least. The reward is minor in the grand scheme of things, and these guys are a real pain even at "Easy."



This is timely: Rosa is on the brink of learning her first antidemon spell. She is also one level away from maxing Mass Heal. Time to start pumping her Energy stat, since spells are about to become expensive.



Speaking of expensive spells, here's Requiem at work, Edward's new instant-death song. Two out of five isn't spectacular, but we haven't maxed Requiem, either. Even if it didn't get better than this, it's already a very handy crowd control spell, since taking out nearly half the enemies at the start of battle will really grease the wheels.

Insert your own joke about Edward's song making you want to kill yourself. That's hack comedy, and I'm not going to stoop to that.



One fine detail about the garden quest: you have to full-clear the area, meaning both fixed and random encounters. This is easy to overlook. The area clear reward along with the proper quest reward make this one of the more rewarding quests, but the demons ensure that it's not worth completing early on.



Trivia: Oases are named after Lord Horrel Oasis.

Trivia: Either Lord Oasis has a very different perspective on "large sum of gold" than we do, or Sir Jordi is taking a very generous cut of the profits. Probably the latter, since we know very well how these trainers like their money.

With Hamaleth cleared, I suppose we have little choice but to proceed to Devonia.
Let's see how bad these guys are.



Let's go somewhere else.

When I mentioned the varieties of demon in the game, I forgot about the Twi'lek-spawn populating the back row of this formation. I think they cast ice spells? We'll see more of them soon.

This particular formation contains the first and second tiers of a species of demon we've never fought along with three of the second tier of a demon whose first tier we're only comfortably able to take solo. So... we'll be back here later.



In happier news, the Cursed Hounds keep throwing themselves at us with no noticeable change in difficulty. "AROO" and all that.



Well, here's the big guy. This one has two attacks: large damage plus large bleed to a single target and moderate damage plus large stun to a column. You can prevent him from using the latter by simply not placing anyone in the middle two spots of the back row. With our usual setup, Edward gets headbutted on the regular.



I'd rather not take the stun, so on the rare occasion that I'm actually thinking about it, I'll relocate Edward as seen above. Of course, when Rydia summons, it becomes unavoidable that someone will get set up for the column attack.

A second fight with a Morgoloz turns up the nice goodie we see here. It will go to Cecil, who is now training Armor but hasn't gotten far enough to compensate for his relatively low HP.



What's this? A tower? Let's investigate! It probably has another artifact for us.
It probably has another eye-beast for us.
Oh, come on. What are the odds that every tower in Xulima would be home to a nearly-identical monster?



The Tower of Rage starts the trend of terrible dungeons. Oh, they won't all be terrible through the end of the game, but way too many will be. We got a sneak peek of terrible dungeonry in the form of Ovengel's castle, but if we had been going about things in a more sensible fashion, this would be the first truly nasty dungeon in the game.



Oh, no! It's those horrible fire-spitting statues.
Don't worry! Remember the last one we saw? If we can get to it, we can deactivate a statue just by touching it.

No, you can't. That was just the one statue, presumably because it was at the end of the hall where it was located, and you'd have no way to get out without taking a fireball to the back. I'm not sure there are any more statues of this kind that you can deactivate.

Well, that sucks.

Uh-huh.

So here's the drill. Remember Ovengel's castle had the lightning spires that shot in four directions every few steps? The statues operate along the same principle, except that instead of shooting straight ahead, they'll aim for your current position. If there's a wall in the way, good news! You made it out safely. Otherwise, you take 50-60 damage across the entire party. Frustratingly, the fireball animation is slow enough that it often looks like you should be able to escape them, but the check is performed at the time the fireball launches. If you were in line-of-sight at that time, the fireball will track you down and hit you.

The short version is that the fireballs can be very difficult to avoid. Like the lightning kiosks, they can shoot from offscreen; unlike the lightning dispensers, it can be very difficult to determine if you're safe. The relatively low damage from the fireballs ensures that you can survive a couple of hits, and if you really hate these things, you can simply load up your cleric with fire resistance and let everyone else die. That is... you can do that in this dungeon, where there are no enemy encounters. Later on? Ha. Ha ha.

All that said, the Tower of Rage isn't that bad, especially as compared to some of the later incarnations of these traps. The entry chamber seen in the previous screenshot has teleporters to two side chambers, where you can find clues for the puzzle later on. There's nothing else in these rooms, so I ran recklessly through these rooms and reloaded after taking a shot of the clue.



And since I've done it, you don't need to! Pictured: four fireball statues.



I tried that, but the statues won't listen to reason. You're just taunting us cruelly!
That is kind of their raison d'etre, you know.



I know what you're thinking: did I seriously forget to take even a single screenshot of the puzzle room? I seriously forgot to take even a single screenshot of the puzzle room.



The puzzle room is just south of this one, and it consists of eight statues surrounding a fountain. You have to turn the statues to match the clues. The earlier skulls gave us hints for the four cardinal statues, and putting them in place unlocked the gate you can just barely see at the bottom of the lower staircase here. These skulls give us hints about the diagonals, and getting those unlocks some treasure chambers to the north.



Here's the eye du jour. He can deal about 60 party-wide damage, inflict party-wide Crazed (which we resist as often as not), and inflict party-wide Silence (which appears to be simply irresistible).



Our first round doesn't go so well. On the second round, I remember that I have this spell, and while it's not maxed out, it's still very helpful. Our party spends a lot less time than usual hitting each other.



I also cast Dispel! (Just for you, JBear.)



The reward is a substantial 4400 EXP. Keep that number in the back of your head.



I thought Kersket was the lord of earth.
Yyyes..?
But Valvet's strength is in the earth?
Don't overthink this.
It's needlessly confusing is all I'm saying. I prefer the beautiful simplicity of Yul.



This is also in the chest. Why does the Life enchantment give PP and not HP? It is a mystery



Outside the temple, we get into a fight with three muscle-demons at the same time. The difficulty, it is curving. On the other hand, so are the rewards: at 1900 a pop, these guys give a total of 5700 experience. You may recognize that number as 30% more than we just got from the boss.

We'll be seeing a lot more of this guy and his friends soon.

NEXT TIME ON LET'S PLAY LORDS OF XULIMA: DEMONVILLE, POPULATION: DEMONS

OLOXPS COUNT: 16 (mushrooms, locks and traps, cereal plants, encounter clearing, herald of Golot, bard songs, Golot's blessing, mausoleum keys, the arena, minions before bosses, riddle imps, Odendro drops, DLC, well of souls, Cursed Hounds, treasure chests)

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES:

• The arena in Sorrentia has ever more monsters to kill.
• Cunavarn's quests still want us to find the dead person.
• Velaskar's quests still want us to collect the loot, find the dead person, and collect the other loot.
• Rasmura's quests still want us to eliminate the hounds and get the priceless loot.

It was named by the same guy who named the magic guns from Final Fantasy Tactics.

I think this bug was introduced with the most recent patch, although I could be mistaken. The patch was rolled out half-way through my play-through, and I remember noticing for the first time that a vendor was selling a "Life" item with a PP bonus that same night. I think it was HP before that.

PREVIOUSLY ON LET'S PLAY LORDS OF XULIMA: KILLED EYE

AND NOW



I don't feel like it was that long ago that Cecil got his diamond flail. This one is a heck of an upgrade... or it would be if Cecil had a bit more Agility.

Some jewelry-shuffling takes care of that, and soon enough, Cecil is once again a top-tier damage dealer.

I don't want to go back to Devonia. There are too many demons there.
While you are a bit of a whiner, my friend, you do have a point.
Didn't Sorrentia have an east exit that was blocked by guards ages ago? We could explore that.
Sounds like a plan!



Alert readers will remember that we picked up the Orb of Valvet last update. This area (Vilak, for reference) is accessible much earlier than that, and if you come here without the Orb, you'll take periodic damage as you walk on the wastelands. AS USUAL, the game is content to let you explore while your life is whittled down. On my first playthrough, I assumed that was the intent for two reasons: first, the damage near this entrance is very minor (although it increases as you get deeper into the map), and second, this is pretty clearly an endgame-tier map once you get into it a bit. So let's get into it.



This is not an improvement over Devonia.



In fact, Vilak has the highest demon population per capita of any map in the game. We've explored very little of this map, and already we've caught up to Devonia in terms of demon difficulty. A few demons later...



Nagira? That's where Ovengel lives! Let's get our revenge!



This is not Ovengel's castle.



I want no part in this.

Hey, remember way back in Febret's castle when we were occasionally ambushed by a monster that would cause a fatal case of death? That's this guy, only now he's a fixed encounter that is standing very much in our way.



This fight is terrible. The Guardian has entirely too much health, and he's immune to residual damage (bleed, poison, fire), so you have to take that down the old-fashioned way.



The Guardian's only attack is to grab someone in the front row -- Gaulen or Cecil in this case; while Rosa and Edge can attack it, it can't reach them. It deals a bit more than 100 damage and inflicts heavy wounds. It can also rarely cause Major Vadrinzo's Curse (pictured).



The Guardian is notably not immune to wounds itself. It has pretty heavy resistance: Gaulen inflicts two wounds on a lucky hit, but usually he only gets one per attack. This is nice, but not as nice as it could be, because...



...this is the only other thing the Guardian can do.

The Cursed Earth Guardian is the less-fun version of the Earth Guardian, the enemy summoned if you decide to kill a riddle imp. The Earth Guardian is basically the same fight, but it takes extra damage from fire-based attacks and can be caught on fire. Without that vulnerability, this fight just takes way too long. I suspect the Cursed Guardian might be classified as a demon or undead, which suggests an alternate form of attack from your Cleric, but your Cleric is probably busy healing wounds and recovering health. Fortunately, this is the only time we'll have to fight one of these.



The rewards are underwhelming, to put it nicely. If we'd killed the Cursed Earth Guardian in the Temple of Febret, then this would have been pretty big at the time, but even then, it's not like it's earthshattering. Even an optimal Lords of Xulima player knows you can get better rewards by just moving forward in the game. The optimal play would be to hold off cleansing the temple and come back for the Guardian, but the part of that that sucks is having to fight a second Guardian, not jumping through the hoops to keep the Guardian around to fight.



Watch out, I have detected a trap!
Watch out! I have detected a trap!
Watch out. I have detected that you're stepping in on my game here.
No, you watch out. I'm the one who's been pumping Perception.

Look, there is a secret door over there!
Look, there's a matching secret door in the other room, and we're five feet from the switch. You're not impressing anybody.
We're all very happy for both of you. Now cut it out.



Push the switch on the right to open the secret room on the left. Push the switch in that room to open the way to the witch. Standard stuff by now.



This is fun, though: the teleportation mechanic from the Tower of Time is back. The corner teleporters just pass you to a different corner teleporter, but the one in the center can slam you into the north wall, slam you into the east wall, put you back in the central corridor, or deposit you in the secret room.



This is not the best use of that mechanic, but the Tower of Time explored it thoroughly enough, so it's fine.



Let's talk to witch.



What is my favorite color?



She might be spoiling the intro to Lords of Xulima 2. No, I'm serious about this. I suspect Gaulen dies between games.



ALSO SPOILERS: No, she won't. I don't know why Gaulen thinks it's worthwhile to press the witches for information anyway.



Everything you say simply makes me more determined to complete my mission. I need to go. Goodbye.



Oh well *sigh*



Vilowia has a few more tricks up her sleeve than her sisters, although this largely works out to our advantage, since the birds are still the biggest threat. That said, Sleep and Crazed are a real hassle. Rosa's Magical Protection is clutch here.



Also very helpful: Rosa's Mass Divine Armor, Cecil's Aura of Protection. No one lives through two shots of bird unless Rosa slips in a Mass Heal between them, and even if she does, the bleeding will quickly take down any survivors. Either we win quickly, we get very lucky on Vilowia's attack selection, or we die.



And we die several times before getting to this point. Once again, the day is saved by shuriken.



Among the witch's loot is this skill book. That's very handy, since Rydia is now the recipient of all of our spare skill points, and she still doesn't have enough. I've had to put off leveling the Herald of Valvet further to ensure that I'll be able to get her other skills up to snuff.



In the category of "very tempting, but probably not worth it" is this sword. Despite the qualitometer being two stars short of full, I think Midrinium is actually the second-best tier. This would constitute a very large boost to Edge's direct damage, especially against the functionally-obsolete Ogre class (which includes goblins and other things with green skin), but it comes at a cost of 20% of Edge's bleeding. Since bleeding is really the only reason we keep Edge around when he's not messing with locks or traps, I think I have to make the tough choice to bench this weapon.

NEXT TIME ON LET'S PLAY LORDS OF XULIMA: MORE HELL

OLOXPS COUNT: 16 (mushrooms, locks and traps, cereal plants, encounter clearing, herald of Golot, bard songs, Golot's blessing, mausoleum keys, the arena, minions before bosses, riddle imps, Odendro drops, DLC, well of souls, Cursed Hounds, treasure chests)

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES:

• The arena in Sorrentia has ever more monsters to kill.
• Cunavarn's quests still want us to find the dead person.
• Velaskar's quests still want us to collect the loot, find the dead person, and collect the other loot.
• Rasmura's quests still want us to eliminate the hounds and get the priceless loot.

It suddenly occurs to me that I don't have a list of Devonia's quests (one of which was to kill this witch). Please look forward to it next time!

You really like throwing yourself against the witches earlier than the game intends.

Also, that new claymore seems like a clear upgrade to me. I think it's a better overall weapon, and in fights where you really want to stack on the bleeding, you'll be having him throw shurikens instead anyway. Plus, not everything bleeds.

One of my favorite things about LoX is that there's no right order to do things. There's often not even an obvious way to do them, although there's a definite hierarchy to the princes and witches.

That said, I'm not sure we tackled this witch much ahead of time. Orb of Valvet to Vilowia seems like a pretty natural progression, especially if you dislike demons as much as I do. Sure, there are plenty of other things we could have done, but nothing jumps out as an obvious next step. Vilowia's cabin is near the Sorrentia side of Vilak, which is indisputably the easiest section of the game available to us at the moment, and while I admit I did not exactly take the path of least resistance in Vilak, I wasn't exactly beelining for a witch fight, either. The game is very good at saying "come back later" when it means it.

Shouldn't Gaulen be the one watching out if he's been pumping Perception?