I’ve been putting off advancing the storyline for far too long. I kind of knew once I started it things would start moving quickly. I’d also discover many timed quests were coming ahead for me to deal with.

I ended up heading back into the forest region and speaking with my leader about a meeting between a few of the different tribes. She told me things felt off and she was expecting something bad to happen.

I was asked to keep my eyes open for anything that stood out. Besides noticing how unhappy the other factors were. Nothing stood out in the department of wanting to do something extreme.

So, the meeting between them all took place. That is when things went sideways rather fast. One party did not show up to the meeting. I was tasked to see if they were still at the inn and just not aware the meeting had already taken place.

On my way to check at the inn, there was an explosion. Some of the faction leaders were killed or went missing. I ended up going to an underground crypt to see if I could hunt down anyone who was behind the attack who was still fleeing.

While down there I found a note that hinted at a location that my leader and possibly others were going to be taken to. So, I made quite a rush out of town and towards that location.

The location itself is not shown on the main map of the game. It was however one I've found in the past and I knew it was easy to clear that area out.

If only all timed quests went this smooth and quick. In no time I had saved my leader and another person that was in a jail cell. I had taken out a few of the people responsible.

Before returning to town, I even explored the local area. There were rumors that one of the leaders behind that attack was still hiding in the woods. That rumor ended up being true and while it was quite a fight I almost did not win. I took out one of the people behind the attack.

For my efforts as a reward, I ended up getting a gold bar, some food, and potions. While I was hoping for something better. I also had a feeling that things were just starting. You don’t just get attacked and do nothing about it. The faction behind the attack was going to have to be dealt with as well.

With doing what I could with the recent crisis I was given a couple of days to rest up. At that time, I ended up discovering the real estate agent was in town and I picked myself up a house in this region for a cool 500 silver.

I also decided before moving forward in the storyline I wanted to get myself a better weapon. Legend has it there is quite a powerful mace that deals cold damage in a dungeon called Face of the Ancients. To get it, however, I'll have to take out quite a powerful creature.

This ended up being well worth the effort. It would just end up taking a few tries. I had no idea at the time just how powerful the creature I needed to take out was. Thankfully I knew of rather a silly way to deal with such challenges if one has the resources to do so.

First, however, I needed to clear the dungeon out. This place was divided up into a couple of different sections. One section was burning hot and the other one was cold. Staying in either section for too long could get you killed for the elements.

Sometimes I'd backtrack to the hot or cold area of the dungeon to recover. Other times I'd just drop down some campfires in the cold section and wait to warm up while also using a torch for heat.

I did attempt to take on the powerful creature that had the mace I wanted on my own. Things however did not go as expected. I got the floor wiped of me and the amount of damage I did before running out of stamina told me had not much of a shot.

So, I came up with a second plan. I ended up heading out and crafting up an insane number of traps. I then set them all down. The hope was I had enough to kill it. If not kill it maybe I could finish off what was remaining of its health.

It was rather funny watching the creature run forward to attack me just to get hit with spikes and staggered. It then would recover and attempt to take another step forward hitting yet another trap.

I had about 35 traps set up. All the iron I had banked in storage was now used up. I even went out and mined a bit of iron just to have that many traps. While a few of the traps had wooden spikes I did make a few iron spikes as well.

It took a large amount of the traps but the creature was defeated. Quite a silly way to go about it but I got to see a benefit to being a packrat and saving all those iron scraps that I did.

I was now the owner of a nice powerful new mace. I could further enhance its cold damage by casting two spells. One that increased my cold damage. That then would allow me to cast a weapon enchant on the item itself for a short amount of time.

The long-term goal was to get me an armor set that granted a cold damage bonus that would skyrocket my damage output. That however required that I did not mess up any of the main storylines for a few quests. So far everything was looking good.

I went off into a different dungeon and went for an offhand book that was supposed to be somewhat useful for casting spells. Thankfully this one was quite easy to get. I just had to run around turning some switches to power down a force field that was protecting the book.

With my new weapon, I quickly took out anything that stood in my way in that dungeon. I started to think if only I had this mace sooner, I could have done so much more. Granted I would not have had the iron scraps to make all the traps I did. So, it seems I could not have gotten it much quicker without spending all my silver buying traps and iron in shops.

Final Thoughts

While it was yet again winter time in the first region. I went around just destroying everything with my new setup. It also did not take long to realize I did not care for having the book in my offhand. I ended up switching back to having a shield.

At some point, I need to find myself a better shield. I’d end up trying to craft a few different ones. They however were not better than the one I had. I’m hoping there is one out there that gives some kind of bonus to cold damage. I have yet to run into one yet.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Outward Definitive Edition.