Level 2
Council Quests
It's time to meet the Council of Loathing. There, you will receive your first Council quest. And on the map, you will see a new area: the Distant Woods!
Most Council tasks are pretty simple: Adventure in a certain area until you acquire an item or kill the boss, or kill the boss and acquire something from him. Then you go back to the Council and get your reward, if there is any. (Don't forget to check the rewards, once in your inventory, if they have a "use" link next to them!)
In this case, it's an "acquire an item and get a reward" task. But you can optimize a little.
Some guy gave you wooden stakes? Equip them! You will see that the Spooky Vampires drop some more stuff than before. Save up as many as you can, don't give them to the guy when he pops up. Wait until you have all the other items you want to have from this area before you finally give him what he wants. Why that? Because every exchange costs you an adventure. Declining an exchange does not cost any turns.
You find some strange things there. Besides the item that the Council wants you to find, there are 3 other important items to get, each of them in its own non-combat. Non-combat? Yes, there are basically 2 types of adventures: combat and non-combat. Can you guess the difference? Other non-combats involve harvesting mushrooms, looting some corpses or dealing with a vampire in more ways than just slaying him.
Of course, if you absolutely do want to slay him, you can choose to do so.
Guild
By the way, have you been in the guild for your class already? Talked to the guild master? You might now be ready to solve his first task.
Once that's done, some other persons show up in the guild hall. Also, have another lookaround in the mountains. See something new?
Areas
Besides the Distant Woods and the Barrel of Barrels, there's also something a little closer.
In town, look around in the Dungeon Full of Dungeons. If you have been there before, you have seen 2 dungeons, for both of which you aren't ready yet. Trying it nevertheless will yield a message that tells you the requirements for each area.
Now, at level 2, a new dungeon appeared. It is not really necessary to go here, but it contains something helpful. In between all the monsters, every now and then a non-combat will appear, giving you the choice between 3 actions. You'll want the 2nd choice only once, and the 1st choice until you've got the mushroom you need. There are 3 basic mushrooms in the game, and one of them can be cooked with the item from choice #2.
Cooking? Yes, you can cook in this game, provided you have an oven from the marketplace as well as the right ingredients. You can also mix drinks with a cocktailcrafting kit and smith equipment with a tenderizing hammer, which you can buy at the Meatsmith in town.
Once you got your mushroom cooked, go to your inventory, examine and use it. This kind of requires that you already made use of the Council's reward. Done that? Good! That means, you already have 2
Familiars
No, you don't need to go alone through the game. You can have a pet of your choice with you. There are a couple of familiars to be found in several places and different ways, and all of them are special. It usually works like this:
- Acquire a familiar hatchling.
- Use the hatchling to put it into your terrarium.
- Go to your terrarium, take the familiar with you - and name it if you wish.
- Find out what it is doing.