After I finished off the spider-infested temple, and incidentally I will be sending Chris Taylor a bill for the therapy I’m going to need, it was time to tackle the next fantasy standby: The dwarven mine overrun by nasties because the dwarves have been, well, that whole delving too greedily and too deep thing.

At least there wasn’t a balrog.

That didn’t take nearly so long, and it didn’t have any spiders. Scorpions, yes, scorpions a plenty. I don’t have any problems with scorpions.

There were a couple of rooms in it that really made me take notice; Dungeon Siege is an awfully pretty game for something five years old.

I have made at least one tactical flaw in my party makeup, however.

In the very first town you come to, you can get up to three extra party members.

Only one comes along for free, though.  You have to fork over some cash for the other two.

One of them has a doctor’s bill you have to settle and the other one is just so full of himself that he demands cash for his magely services.

As an aside:  I can deal with the guy who’s full of himself.  The chick who got shot with an arrow, though, and wound up with a huge doctor’s bill?

Let me point this out: In Dungeon Siege, healing potions are plentiful, effective, and cheap.  One good chug from one is enough to bring your characters back from death’s door.

The “doctor’s bill” I had to settle would have bought a 12-pack of healing potions, and the NPC who sells the healing potions was standing NEXT to the character with the doctor’s bill.

Anyway, I didn’t have enough money to hire either of them until after I’d ground through the spiders.

So, the characters I DID bring along for Spider Massacre 2008 got a ton of experience, the characters stuck in town DIDN’T get a ton of experience, so they’re much weaker characters than the rest of my party and they die an awful lot.

In addition, the majority of the gear I’m finding has required stats to equip, and these characters aren’t anywhere near the required stats, and can’t GET the stats without leveling. It’s a bit of a paradox, really.

Oh, well, I have the game on “easy” and my biggest logistical problem, apart from finding armor for my two weaker characters, is having enough space to hold all the loot I’m picking up. It’s not like I HAVE to min/max an entire party or anything.