It’s been a while since I sat down and played this. Much like my heroes that get a bad roll when a pig thing vomits on them, I also had a disease for a while. Also I guess I worked on a thing for a game jam, but that’s neither here nor there. But hey, it’s finally time to return to the Iscariot Estate.

First things first, we gotta kill the Siren again. I was too scared to do a high level mission yet and I didn’t want to do anything basic. Hey Peis, wanna do some bounty hunting against a Siren again? Sure you do! Take Taillebois to do some marking and healing with you, while you’re at it. And of course, since the fish freaks of the Cove are pretty vulnerable to blight, I had to bring Baujot and Heuze along.

I settled back into a grove and coasted through the Cove just fine. In my long time away from the game, I forgot that Heuze loves touching stuff for no reason and getting herself poisoned. Well, she puts in the work, so she’s allowed to do what she wants.

Eventually, the gang set up to camp. Now normally, I buff the shit out of people before going out to fight a boss. However, given the Siren’s whole deal of charming party members to fight for her, that’d probably be a bad idea. So instead, I just focused on healing everyone’s physical and mental health.

And so, they went on to fight the Alluring Siren, who gave way more trouble than her previous incarnation. Peis once again kept going simp mode for her, but unlike last time, he was a pretty effective fighter for her; in fact, he wound up knocking Taillebois to Death’s Door and it’s possible that he could have died to bleed damage if the Siren hadn’t been defeated before his next turn. The Siren also brought Baujot to her side, and she wound up making terrifyingly good use out of her stun skill to make the battle take longer. Those shield fish people appearing partway through certainly didn’t help.

Eventually, the Siren’s heart gave out to the copious amount of blight I gave her, which made her fish shield guy die of a heart attack, I guess. Everyone was stressed to shit from all the mind control and siren songs, but Taillebois was still alive, so who’s to say what’s good or bad? With that, Heuze and Peis also graduated into the champion rank, essentially yelling at me to finally go do those hard missions.

But speaking of still alive…

Behold! Another chance to spit death in the face! On the docket, we have the two unfortunate deaths from the very first part: Boteler the Vestal and Beringar the Shieldbreaker. Also Hynde the Antiquarian, I guess.

Now, I didn’t have the deeds necessary to upgrade the roster size to bring someone in… but, I did notice that I didn’t have a healer available for the low-rank adventurers, and I will need a healer to graduate into the mid-ranks when those are fresh out, so…

Poer the Jester. I appreciate whatever help you gave me but I don’t remember what you did, so I’m kicking you out. Nothing against you, but I have a healer economy to maintain and Boteler got fucked up by the worst luck possible, so she deserves this second chance. Beringar, uh, sorry. I’ll probably properly play with a Shieldbreaker one of these days, but that day isn’t today.

I set everyone out to go get de-stressed. Well, except for Peis. I forgot that he has a partner in the brothel he prefers hanging out with but all the slots got taken before I remembered. Sorry man, maybe you can hang out with them off-hours.

But hey, in important news, the game finally offered me a short champion mission so I could finally drink from the well.

Welp, can’t put it off forever. Besides, it’d give a nice accuracy trinket for the grave robbers, so it’s worth doing.

Reyanuld, the Crusader and earliest hero (rest in peace Dismas) led the first champion excursion. Joining him would be Fou the Jester, Couci the Plague Doctor and Mantel the Occultist. With this being a short mission, this would finally serve as a good preview of the difficulty I have up ahead.

Alright gang, let’s do this!

…

Well, bringing Couci along is a bit of a mistake since all the non-humanoid enemies are a bit resistant to blight, so things can’t go that badly, right?

Huh.

Hm.

Uh-huh.

I see!

Alright! So: nobody died, even though Reynauld and Fou kept getting juggled at the edge of their lives. Bringing a plague doctor along to the Weald was a bad decision, yes, but also: this shit was way harder than the Siren mission I did just earlier, which doesn’t bode well!

The stats of all the enemies are fucking jacked. To put it in perspective, it took longer to take down those simple dog enemies whenever they showed up, because wow, they have more health and are dodging way more. Your boygirl clearly isn’t prepared for the major leagues!

Well, let’s destress with something easier. Boteler, I know that you’ve only been alive for a week, but it’s time to send you back out there. Look, if I had to take two weeks unpaid leave from work and head right back in with no real accommodations even though I still feel like shit, you can do the same.

Aubert the Hellion, Riebou the Abomination and Cleri the Grave Robber accompanied her to do some scouting in the Cove to make a little money and get some crests for upgrading. Oh yeah, this mission really was a breath of fresh air after the fresh hell of the last one. Riebou wound up graduating into the next tier, but the mission gave enough crests to let me expand the roster for when I want to do some easy adventuring again.

But, well, I thought this would be an anticlimactic way to end things, especially since I’ve been away for so long. For a little spice, I decided to do a mid-rank mission about hunting down some relics to fuck up over at the Warrens, since that was close to unlocking a new boss.

I made the conscious decision to bring Gregory, the guy I care about the least, this time. I got him a shield that pushes him toward a tanking role. He won’t be attacking much, but hey, this could expose me to a different playstyle that I haven’t considered, something that might make the Man-At-War finally click with me.

While he sat at the back, Taillebois stood in front of him with a stab equipped to help contribute to the fighting cause. Beans led from the front since I remembered bleeding being pretty helpful, and you know what? I decided to make this a treasure gathering mission, so Durandal gets to tag along, too.

Well, things immediately went wrong because I forgot to actually equip the skills needed to work within this playstyle and Durandal almost bit it. She survived though, so she should just get over it.

As with all quests where I had to go around and search for things, I cleared the main objective anticlimactically. But, well… I think exclusively making Gregory tank could work. The problem was that this was not a good testing environment. Since he was just tanking and Durandal was an Antiquarian, I was only stuck with two people to do all the actual fighting – and one of them was the healer, so it was really not optimal for fights. I still made out like a bandit, but I have not gotten a good taste for Gregory’s potential. Maybe next time.

Anyway, that quest was done, which gave the additional award of giving people more damage in the Warrens… and hey what do you know, the Swine King appeared in the Warrens. So hey, I guess next time I’m gonna fight the Swine King immediately. Can’t let a good deal like this go to waste.