Isaiah was a little miffed by this quest. On the upside he now had enough experience to level both his fighter and mage classes. On the downside he only got a lousy pipe for the quest reward. Whoever made that cloak and put it in the game created a moral dilemma for his lawful good elf. The only way he could see to get the cloak was to kill the wizard. If he was an evil character that wouldn’t be an issue. As Nightfall had shown evil characters can just go around murdering everything like a psychopath. Maybe there was another way to get that magical silk cloak but he didn’t see a way to do it while keeping his goodly persona intact.

Isaiah thought maybe he could turn in the quest to Banndalar. So he headed back south along the dragon pass road and quickly went through the walls of shadow city to avoid the archers that would shoot at him from above. The middle aged woman just stood there saying nothing exactly like before. Isaiah showed her the pipe and she didn’t respond. He pondered what to do.

Isaiah says: “Hello Bandallar I did what you asked.”

Bandallar says: “Hello Isaiah, you look like a capable adventurer. Perhaps you could me.”

Isaiah grumbles.

Isaiah says: “nevermind.”

He had no desire to go through the dialogue again and be assigned the quest he just completed. Isaiah was done here apparently. He headed back along the west gate of shadow city and along the quest forest road back to the temple of Lathander. No one was there right now but he felt like it was good roleplay to come back to the temple often to advance.

You advance mage. Mage is now level 7.

You advance fighter. Fighter is now level 8.

HP: 60/60

Isaiah was now a level 8/7 fighter/mage.

His hit points jumped to 60. It looked like he got some good rolls. A level 7 mage could also cast level 4 spells. It would be exciting to try this but he had exactly zero spells in his spellbook of that level. On that note he had spells in his spellbook that he also had never cast because he’d never got the spell components either. He should try to fix this. He should have tried to fix this earlier. It was becoming obvious that if he wanted to be a mage he needed to make components shopping a daily thing until he’d got a bit of a stock of casting components piled up. Also, Isaiah had the full plate mail that he got from a drop from one of the captains in the dragon’s den caverns that he needed to sell.

So Isaiah backtracked. He headed east along the quiet forest road and then swung by the armor store. Fulgar the shopkeeper that had been talking for that weird avatar project meeting was standing there. Unlike last time he didn’t say anything at all. Isaiah sold the full plate in his inventory and the shopkeeper gave him 8238 gold for it. He couldn’t equip it anyway; he suspected that only shop bought items could be worn. He guessed the wizards might have done this because they wanted players to suffer. But there was an upside. For the first time ever Isaiah’s money was in the 5 digits. He had over 10,000 gold along with a bunch of other currency dropped from monster corpses.

Isaiah tried something. He really wanted the full plate and he thought if he got it back from the shopkeeper then he would be able to equip it. He bought it back for 10,000 gold coins. Then he removed his armor (making him technically naked) and went to wear the full plate.

‘This armor is fitting for someone else.’

The armor said as he failed to wear it. He grumbled and sold it again. There went his thousands of hard earned gold for nothing. But he still had enough to go do some component’s shopping at the alchemist in the mage’s tower. Isaiah walked past the ivory carver that he had seen a few times but couldn’t figure out why someone would want something carved from ivory. What did carving have to do with magic. Isaiah hurried and checked the components available.

Bitumen 34 gold 53 stored

Crane’s Feather 29 gold 30 stored

Eyelash 3 gold 91 stored

Mini shovel 48 gold 21 stored

Phosphorus 87 gold 33 stored

Powdered diamond 4800 gold 93 stored

Slug 4 gold 11 stored

Well, this vendor didn’t have the components he was looking for. Any good mage should be able to cast a fireball but for that he needed a supply of bat guano and sulfur. So Isaiah packed up and walked south to Tharis and along the wall outside the city. (Staying outside the city was very important!) and then continued west. He did it so quickly mashing directions that he passed out from exhaustion again on the road west of Tharis. Soth…Lord Soth might have had the right idea by investing in a horse. He sat idle in the room for a bit hoping someone wouldn’t decide this would be a good time to stab him down and walked the rest of the way to the Azha components vendor.

Aluminum chaff 48 gold 29 stored

Bat guano 10 gold 79 stored

Blessed leather 48 gold 77 stored

Diamond dust 1200 gold 46 stored

Eyelash of ogre-mage 144 gold 6 stored

Sulfur 68 gold 21 stored

It looks like randomization of this shop was on his side. Isaiah bought the fireball components. . . all of the stock. He also bought 10 blessed leather. He needed to try out that armor spell. He really needed to figure out which spells were useful and which ones he could ignore. It was just that there were a lot of them and it was a little overwhelming. Not taking damage was paramount so he decided the armor spell would be worth trying out first.

You can’t cast wearing all that armor.

Isaiah grumbles.

(right can’t cast mage spells with the chainmail worn)

Isaiah removes chainmail.

You begin casting armor.

A magic shield forms around you as the leather vanishes into your hand.

Isaiah wears chainmail.

(A few seconds later)

This spell cannot offer protection to those wearing armor.

The magic shielding around you glows then fades away.

Isaiah sighs.

It looks like there is a check in the spell to make it not stack with someone wearing armor. If he wanted to use the spell he would have to ditch his chainmail. This had two problems. He didn’t know if the magical armor had better armor class than his chainmail. Second, the spell has a duration. Chainmail doesn’t have a duration. So for him this spell was worthless. Well the armor spell was a miss. At least the blessed leather doesn’t weigh anything sitting in his components bag.

Next was to try out fireball. Isaiah headed back to the room before the goblin gatekeepers. He sat down studying his book memorizing all the fireballs he could. He then removed his chainmail (This time he remembered he couldn’t cast wearing armor!) and walked north

Goblin gatekeeper attacks you!

Goblin gatekeeper attacks you!

You begin casting a spell.

You are busy casting.

You are busy casting.

Goblin gatekeeper misses you.

Goblin gatekeeper hits you.

HP: 59/60

You chant rapidly creating an orb of fire in your hand.

A massive ball of fire jets out from your hand furiously growing as it slams into goblin.

Goblin is singed by the blast.

Goblin drops dead before you.

Goblin misses you.

You begin casting a spell.

You are busy casting.

You are busy casting.

You chant rapidly creating an orb of fire in your hand.

A massive ball of fire jets out from your hand furiously growing as it slams into goblin.

Goblin drops dead before you.

It was a bit of a bummer that he lost the melee attacks for the round while casting a spell. It would have been great if that was not the case but everything has a cost.

Well, that wasn’t bad. It also wasn’t much better than just using his sword of insanity and bone knife. The fireball does area of effect damage which is a plus. However, he had to remove his armor to cast it which would make him easier to hit. He also couldn’t be wielding weapons while casting. He would have to use a macro to unwield both weapons and remove armor if he wanted to cast a fireball in combat. Then he’d have to use another one to re-arm and wear the armor again. If he could type quickly enough he should be able to weave it in and increase his damage per round. Though just swinging his blades was less of a hassle. He decided using his fireball could make a good backup plan if he came across an enemy he had trouble hitting because of their good armor class. Spells don’t seem to care about someone’s armor class.

Isaiah offered the corpses and took the coins they dropped. The coins were just about the same as the cost of the components he used which was a bit of a bite. Also he noticed the amount of experience he gained from fighting these goblins has gone down from when he was lower level. It looked like experience points scaled with level difference.