Friday night started out like every Friday night, with the guys standing around Spiderhouse, complaining.
“Waaa - why do I keep dying?” asks Craig.
“You need better armor,” says Dave.
“How would we even make better armor?” wonders Zaph.
“Why don’t we ask the craftspeople we rescued?” suggests Myles.
With a plan agreed upon, we march inside to inform our grateful craftspeople that their gear is shoddy and that, unless they start providing better equipment pronto, we’ll be putting them back in their sleep caskets for another thousand years. It turns out that crafting better gear requires better tools.
The Smith needs his smithing tools, which were last known to be lost in the Shroud. The farmer wants her almanac, also left behind somewhere off the map. The hunter’s looking for her loom—naturally, it’s missing in an unexplored area too. And lastly, the Alchemist wants his scientific equipment so he can set up a proper lab. When he assures us it’ll help us blow things up faster, we eagerly add that to our list.
Meanwhile, the Collector is still waiting for us to tackle the next haunted halls, but we tell him to get in line. And since the crafter already gifted us with legendary gliders, we decide not to push our luck in case he takes back our shiny new toys.
Into the Shroud: A Mushroom, a Maze, and Mayhem
Like any great adventure, this one starts with a detour. There’s a giant red mushroom puffing out toxic fumes that we just have to smash—for the environment, of course. But as we descend into the Shroud, we discover the sneaky developers have dialed up the difficulty. We find the marker pillars with ease, everyone’s got 9 or more minutes of shroud time, and we glide confidently into the depths with axes in hand. But… there’s way more lava than usual, more enemies, and, well, where’s the mushroom? Why is there suddenly an underground village, and why is everything a maze?
Our shroud counters are running down, so we retreat to regroup. Time for Plan B—the tried-and-true method honed over decades of gaming together. Myles teleports in to try an overland route, Zaph charges solo into the depths, Craig falls down a hole and dies, and Dave searches for treasure. Against all odds, Zaph stumbles upon the mushroom. “I’ve found it!” he declares, as everyone else scrambles to catch up while he’s busy dodging monsters.
Eventually, Craig and Dave manage to find Zaph, who’s frantically trying to survive with his timer down to four minutes. Myles, still navigating from above, is close enough to join us for a quick hack-and-slash on the mushroom. Bonus skill point achieved. Then, of course, the boss we’d been ignoring makes itself known, delivering a solid beatdown before we finally emerge, battered but victorious.
Mission Not Quite Accomplished
Back at Spiderhouse, we restock and repair, then head to Point Omicron, ready to glide into Umber Hollow for the Conway brothers’ last camp. We find a note about them ditching the Smith’s tools, mentioning a location we haven’t yet explored. After more wandering through Shrouded ruins, we locate the cellar stairs, and Dave summons a wisp to light our path. Like any good adventuring party (or, let’s face it, wrecking crew), we smash through obstacles and recover the tools. Victory!
“Let’s teleport back to Spiderhouse and deliver these,” suggests Zaph. But ever-pragmatic Dave reminds us we can’t teleport out of the Shroud. With the timer below two minutes, we dash for safe ground. As is tradition, we scatter in all directions—Craig gets cornered and killed by critters, Zaph attempts a glide, miscalculates, lands in lava, and dies. Myles tags along behind Dave, because… well, some people never learn.
And yet, through the mist, Dave spots the towering rock pillar landmark, leading us to a corkscrew path up into fresh air. With the Smith’s tools still intact, we call that a win, build a flame point, and revive the others.
The Desert Trek and the Sun Temple
Checking the map, we realize we’re close to our next objective, so we push on into the desert, collecting saffron, sulfur, lapis lazuli, and, of course, sand. Dave insists we dig up sand to make glass while wyverns and scorpions circle warily. He claims his “ranger skills” are calming the animals, though the team suspects it’s more to do with Dave’s hygiene (or lack thereof).
Craig finds a cliff, loudly proclaiming there’s treasure up there, so we begrudgingly follow the road to a campsite, finding the farmer’s almanac instead. After a quick map check and an obligatory photo at the obelisk (before Craig inevitably breaks it), we spot the magnificent Sun Temple in a ruined city below. Knowing our mortality rate, we set a fast travel point, just in case.
Craig builds stairs for us to glide from, and we soar over the landscape into the city. Dave, always the treasure magnet, spots a silver chest and dives off to investigate, leaving the rest of us to face high-level enemies. After much scrambling, dying, and regrouping, we finally make it to the temple.
Inside, we puzzle over why adventure always seems to go down, into the dark, and into the Shroud. Craig suggests sticking together, but Zaph immediately heads off, Myles and Dave chase loot, and Craig is left shaking his head. When Dave finds a glowing symbol and presses it, we’re left wondering what it even unlocked, but hey, progress! With more button-pressing and stair-descending, we open a door, finding ourselves face-to-face with Fell Sicklescythe, whose head we apparently need for some altar upgrade. After a fierce battle, we bag the head (gross) and loot the area before hightailing it out.
Another Night at Spiderhouse… and an Unfinished To-Do List
Back at Spiderhouse, we unload, restock, and return to building the lab, the loom, and—finally—some good gear. Or so we thought. The armor requires padding, which requires cloth, which requires flax. Lots of flax. We don’t have any, but we do have seeds. While we log off, Dave gets to work expanding the farm, harvesting crops, and setting up six beehives so we can at least make honey. Soon, there’s honey, sugar, fertile soil, and a growing field of flax.
But as the harvest grows, so does the challenge. Somewhere out there is an ancient mountain city, rumored to hold secrets, treasures, and probably an impressive range of ways to meet an untimely end. And if Spiderhouse is going to survive it… we’ll need every bit of armor we can get our hands on.
