So, we're travelling to the Gilded Vale through the Dyrwood, and I'm feeling sick.

The caravan stops and the leader (Heodan) says I probably have a case of the belly rot and sends me off to get some berries to help, and enlists one of the grumpy caravan guards, Calisca, to help.

We set up camp next to some massive greenish rocks made of a material called Adra, which apparently is sought after because it is very good at holding souls.

Here's a map of the first area, the Dyrwood encampment.

Turns out this area was once part of the Engwith empire, and the stones are considered cursed in folklore, though most normal people think that all the mythos around them is just stories for kids.

It acts like you'd expect a tutorial area to, with a few scattered enemies and lootable items (this game thankfully learned from earlier Infinity Engine games and give you a 'highlight all interactables' key, making looting easy). Of note is introducing abilities, such as grumpy Calisca's Knockdown, which leaves enemies prone and unable to act, and my own Blinding Strike, which greatly reduces enemy accuracy. Most of these have a fixed number of uses per encounter (not per day!) and automatically replenish once combat is over.

As a rogue, you always want to initiate combat from stealth if possible, since this will grant a Sneak Attack that increases damage by 50%.

The only real loot here is a hidden cache next to an older unused camp, containing the world's shittest gun.

ANYWAY

There's a few corpses dotted around the area, and the guy that was sent to get water has been mirked by bandits, who then decide that attacking the caravan encampment is a bright idea, and have killed everyone but Heodan.

Depending on your stats, there are additional options in dialogues, shown above as an example.

Ultimately you have to engage in a fight here, but even grumpy Calisca is more than enough for the few bandits.

Upon the bandit leader's death however, a strange occurrence...

The wind beings to swell, whipping around the camp, electric and volatile, upending pots and rattling tents like an angry spirit.

You can feel it begin to seep beneath your skin, and where it pierces you it feels as though it is rending you apart from within.

This is a bîaŵac, a storm that can rip the very soul from the bodies of whom it engulfs.

Calisca, Heodan, and I manage to escape into a man-made cave in the cliffs behind the encampment, safe from the spirit storm at least.

The entrance caves in behind us from the force of the storm, necessitating an alternative exit.

That's right, more tutorial time. The ruined fane has more monsters and puzzles and is intended to be a bit harder than the first area, though still not really deadly (at least on normal difficulty).

As a side note, I play the stealth game hard as a rogue, and literally sneak-explore the entire map if I can before committing to anything. This lets me see chokepoints etc pretty easily, but come at the cost of time, since moving in stealth is about 50% slower than normal. Worth the trade-off in my opinion.

Here we learn about camping, and the bonuses that being well-rested can afford us.

We also learn about the consequences of our actions. Calsica is grumpy and convinced that resting in these ruins is a sure-as-shit way to get killed, and if you insist on doing so she will knack off with the water we got earlier, but not resting will leave a debuff on Heodan that gives him -4 Constitution. Overall you can weigh these options up if you know about them in advance - obviously, a whole other person in your party is better than some dweeb sitting around waiting to catch a cold, but in this case I didn't know in advance, so OFF SHE GOES I guess. Grumpy bitch.

At this point I tried equipping a hat I found to make me more dashing, and realised that my race can't wear headgear at all, presumably due to having massive horns. I sure hope this pre-game decision doesn't come back to kick my min-maxing arse...

We find Calisca a bit later in area 2, but she's been un-lifed by some traps that I, in my infinite perceptive rogueishness, can see from a mile off ->

I get my water back, so see what good it did you, you grumpy old melt.

A little further on, we find a 'puzzle' where you have to use fire to light some beacons, which in turn will disable most of the traps that killed Grumpy...

This can be done without any items if your race is a Fire Godlike, but since we're a Nature Godlike we have to leave it to ol' Heodan and his torch. Even with my amazing rogue powers, I can't disarm these traps, so this sequence of actions is actually mandatory unless you want to take a load of damage. BTW I tested the damage these traps do and it's possible to walk through the reaming traps to the exit, but will cost about half of a character's health.

By playing Resident Evil 2 in area 1 you can use the waterskin and a gem that we find to clean off a relief on a wall and put the gem in the eye socket, and get a Cloak of Protection.

A few fights with spiders later and we're through the ruins, and out into the open where thankfully the spiritstorm has passed.

In the beautiful open air we find a cult...

The leader activates the strange contraption behind him and it sucks the life right out of the other cult members. If only all cults were so efficient!

The aftermath of this is a backlash of energy that slams me to the ground. This crack to the dome makes me hallucinate about other such devices and the cult leader. Guess we shouldn't have picked a race that can't wear helmets. Crap. At least the sickness that we had back in the encampment is gone...

The energy outburst turned the cult members into solid ash, and also removed that wimp Heodan from this mortal coil. For some reason it also gave me the experience I need to go up a level, so all things considered it wasn't too bad at all.

Even so, I keep having odd hallucinations as I progress through this area...

Other than that we take some ashy flesh from the victims of the strange contraption, and continue on our merry way, determined to at least make it back to a settlement.