TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Okay, so.

a) You skipped the New Factory. Laaaaame. This is what the Revive All spell is for! But for those wondering what you missed, it's just another conveyor belt maze, with no fighting. You have to find buttons to reverse key sections of the belts to make progress. You can sneak into the Safe Haven by breaking down a wall with Move Mountains; IIRC there's some potions and other minor loot there.

b) I did not know about that miniature crypt. Curious what the rewards are; loot kind of loses its meaning at this point in the game.

c) Fuuuuuuck Vahnatai Soul Crystals. They can pull either basilisks or Eyebeasts, they can pull an arbitrary number of them, and as mentioned the summoned monsters never despawn. That section of the Great Wall took a few attempts for my solo character.

d) Either Bon-Ihrno interceded a lot more than we realized, or Rentar-Ihrno got astoundingly unlucky. Let's count the many things that had to go right for Art to succeed.

The Slimes: Jordan the mage stumbled across their home completely by accident and then set up his own, less well-hidden home, providing a vital and accessible clue to the Slime Pit's location.

The Roaches: a cadre of roaches just happened to achieve sentience and were willing to share the location of the Factory. The GIFTS just happened to settle on Bigail and are willing to share the location of the roaches. A powerful mage just happened to be willing and able to give Phoenix Eggs to any likely-looking adventurers. A cave quake damaged part of the Filth Factory, creating passage to the deeper areas that would otherwise have been completely inaccessible.

The Troglodytes and Giants: whoops, they hate each other. Gee, that sure was stupid of Rentar. You'd think she'd've done her research better. The troglodytes manage to map out an alternate route to the Barrier Crystal before they get walled off.

The Golems: a mage stumbled across the location of their tower and is willing to share. A starving drake doesn't eat the mage. The best general in the entire continent was available to set up shop keeping the golems contained. A band of completely insane bandits steal the Orb of Thralni, thereby convincing Anaximander that Art's crew is more qualified to keep hold of it than anyone else is.

The Alien Beasts: two random prospectors back in Upper Exile stumble across a Vahnatai hideout and have to be killed. For some reason (Bon-Ihrno's influence seems especially likely, here) a key to the Vahnatai stronghold in Footracer Province is left with the bodies.

Miscellaneous: the Empire got a sane ruler to replace Hawthorne and Garzahd. She instituted broadly reasonable countermeasures and is willing to work with Exile. I'm confident that both Hawthorne and Garzahd would rather have antagonized the Exiles and assumed they had the power to deal with things themselves, rather than admit they needed help.