After a couple more hours play today, I’m now about ten and a half hours in. And still, I have don’t almost nothing (so far as the main quest is concerned, anyway). I’m still Level 1, and I still haven’t progressed past the talk-to-Jauffre main quest waypoint.
What I did do, however, is trudge up the mountain north of Chorral, and find a book about fingers and mountains or something. I had a choice of either giving it to the strange woman in green (which seemed bad) or passing it on to the head of the Chorral Mage’s Guild (which didn’t seem all that much better, actually). I did the latter, and the woman in green was not happy – especially when I turned down her suggestion I go and nick it for her.
Whilst still in Chorral, I cleaned out the Mage’s and Fighter’s guilds of all items of worth, and sold them. Also found loads of food (stealing some of it from a house when no-one was around), and make loads of potions. My alchemy skillz are improving all the time as a result.
Trained up a couple of times today too – firstly with the lizard woman in one of the shops, which boosted my Mercantile skill, and secondly with one of the mages to increase my Conjuration skill. Bought a couple of spells too.
After all that, I decided it was time to (finally) head for Kvatch. I left, on the borrowed horse, and headed mainly back to Imperial City. On the way, I stopped off at the farm where I slayed the goblins (the bodies were still there!) and nicked all the crops, made more potions, and carried on. Reached a fort that I’d previously ignored, and explored that for a bit. It was all above-ground, and all the goblins there were already dead, but I did find a few lockpicks, items of food, and several gemstones.
Just before reaching the small town just west of Imperial City, I found another ruined fort, and went inside. A load of marauders were fighting lizard people, so I joined in and helped. Then they all turned on me! Had to kill them all.
Finally, made it to the town, and stopped off at the inn. The innkeeper gave me a sub-quest to do – find 6 bottles of rare wine hidden in forts across the entire world. I don’t think I’ll be doing that, somehow. Saved my game then.
