What do we end up getting from our pilferhobo tour though the inn? Only one item really stands out, and it's this sweet hat. Of course, Sylvina is all horny on the head, so only Aloth can use it. It doesn't confer any stat bonuses, apart from a +50 to sssttyyyllllllllleeeeeeeeeeee.

With the inn desecrated, we move on to gearing up for forthcoming adventures. Along the way to the Blacksmith, we stumble on a hidden cache, with a few items and some much-needed coin.

The scroll is for Minor Endurance Recovery, a useful 1-shot spell to help out when we’re taking damage. This goes into Aloth’s quick action slots. The gems may seem like merchant fodder, but almost every material in this game can be used for something, and fortunately, there's a very nice Stash feature that takes all the craftables and hives them away from your main inventory. This is great as it means you don’t have to play Tetris with all your stuff, but the downside is that we’ll have to find other, actually useless, junk to sell in order to afford our desired affluent lifestyle.

We arrive at the Black Hammer Smithery, where the owner tells us that there's problems with material supply, but that the stuff he has in stock is all excellent and homemade.

There are a few very nice magical weapons on sale, but we have about 350 copper coins and they all cost upwards of 6,000, so no bueno.

What we do take is an additional sabre, to replace the sword in our offhand and give a bit more damage potential, and a grappling hook and rope, to scale that well we found in Valewood in Episode 2.

Let's get climbing!

Yes, I am going to immediately go back there and see what’s on that ledge for the dopamine points, don’t try to stop me!

We use the hook and get to the top, where there’s a body and a couple of lootable plants.

On the body, we find something pretty cool for us: a pair of magical gloves that confer a +2 bonus to dexterity. Equipping these gives Sylvina a Dexterity of 22! We now attack a full 36% faster overall.

Equipping these and checking over our other equipment leads me to something else I’d previously overlooked - the ability to enchant items.

Enchanting typically requires some of the materials that we have in our stash, some gold, and the item needs to have free enchantment slots (the little anvil logo shows the number of slots that an enchantment will take up, and most weapons/armour have around 12 slots total). We put ‘Damaging 1’ on one of our sabres for a nice 15% damage buff, taking the damage range from 14-20 to 16-23. Coupled with our new modal ability this is quite the buff to attack power compared to before.

But JOHN, I hear you ask, what are you buffing for? Well, it’s time to visit an old friend…

The bear is still a tough fight, even with better equipment, another level and a companion capable of huge damage with spells. I’ll let the combat log speak for itself, but ultimately we prevail and the monstrous foe is brought low.

EDIT: After the fight, I checked around, and the expectation is that you're meant to do this fight with a minimum of 3 party members at our difficulty level, or be supremely overlevelled/overgeared. This probably really only shows that my current damage output is pretty high, rather than any real semblance of strategic play...

Once the bear is dirt (we stole its skin BTW), we can get a good look around the cave and what it was guarding. A spoopy purple mist is emanating from the body, and approaching it gives us a vision of its former occupant…

We get a vision from this, taking us to past times:

Light blooms at the edges of your vision. You feel the sun at your back, and the weight of a bow in your hand. You know, suddenly, that you have come a long way from the Vale, hunting deer. Now, you are standing before a cavern, and the darkness extends far into its depths. Even so, your friend strides out before you, his red cloak flapping at his heels. You follow, heart hammering in your chest, as he leads you deeper into the cavern.

There is a roar like thunder, echoing around you. Fear seizes you, casts you stumbling back towards the exit, towards light and escape. You see a glint of steel, and there is a sudden, terrible flash of agony behind your knee. You scream, stumble, fall.

Your thoughts are chaos, lances through with pain. But in a moment of terrible clarity you see your friend look back from the mouth of the cavern, his dagger daubed in crimson to match his cloak.

And then there is a great, dark shape above you. And then there is more pain.

This is the partner of Nonton, the guy that we found in the middle of Valewood. Looks like he’s a filthy heretic. We promise the ghost a bit of vengeance. More bodies equals more loot, right?

Aloth calls us out for spacing during the vision, and we tell him to get used to it.

In the cave there’s not actually much else loot-wise, but if you scout around there is a loose rock with a little bit of stuff. Tanglefoot is a spell that will bind enemies to a spot. Again, this will be given to Aloth for his quick action slots, especially as we had to use the scroll of Minor Endurance Recovery to not get clapped by Mrs Bear.

Theres nothing else for us to do here for now, Nonton has casually decided to fuck off somewhere else to escape vengeance. We head back to Gilded Vale, and to a house we haven't yet visited in the north west.

Here we find a pregnant woman named Aufra. Aufra, it turns out, is Calsica's sister. Let's hope the grumpiness doesn't run in the family, eh?

She's devastated by the loss of her sister, somewhat surprisingly. Perhaps we are the reason that people get grumpy? Nah, can't be, we're wonderful!

She asks us if we would be able to help her out - she's worried that her baby will be born soulless or Hollowborn, as seems to be happening to each birth in Gilded Vale these days. Lord Raedric is in the habit of exiling any woman who bears a Hollowborn child as well, and Aufra is a widow and wouldn't survive if she was cast out.

She asks us to go far to the south to a place called Anslög's Compass to find a midwife called Ranga, who apparently has a way to prevent a child being Hollowborn. It's too far for her, but honestly right now it's no skin off our nose - either we'll get there in time or we won't (and I suspect that we will, even if we mess around), so we agree. Aufra gives us 20 coins to pay the midwife with. Where was that shop again?

We pop into one more house, and LOOK WHO IT IS.

Nonton is here, shacked up in Inogred's house. Inogred is the widow of Perly, the dead chap in the bear cave, betrayed by Nonton here. Smells a bit like a plot to me, and we confront the couple. The only evidence we actually have is the vision we saw in the cave, but there's enough detail in that vision that Nonton relents. Inogred then comes out with a howler, claiming that her husband was as much of a beast as the bear! She'd actually tried to leave Perly before but his temper was great, and so she fell for Nonton, seeing him as a kind and caring person in a world of hurt.

Their sob story seems to be just that. We have the option of:

• Robbing them

• Reporting them to the Magistrate

• Attacking them

• Being nice and letting them go

• Being grumpy and letting them go

Ultimately, we don't give a shit about the petty squabbles of the locals, and we already had the fun of the challenge in the Bear. I go back on my previous statement about vengeance, because these two don't look like they'd put up much of a fight by comparison. We're not robbers really, not of people like this anyway.

We could report them to the Magistrate, but theres a couple of issues with this: firstly, our only actual evidence is a vision, which we're already a bit of a freak for having, so that probably wouldn't actually get us anywhere, and secondly, Urgeat is a sniveling little pellet of man, and I don't want to talk to him anyway.

They leave, and we poke around the house, finding a secret drawer under the bed that has, amongst other things, a climbing rope. Damn, could have saved the cash for that...

I noticed something quite fun as we left Inogred's house - Sylvina's stealth is now powerful enough that she can hide in broad daylight, right in front of people!

The circle around a character's feet when in stealth mode indicates if they're currently being observed by NPCs. Red for Aloth means that he's fully visible, but the expanding yellow circle for Sylvina means that this dumdum right next to us is still oblivious to her presence. I sense there will be shenanigans in the future with this..

Next time: main story progress? In my playthrough? It's more likely than you think!