After doing some things in Defiance Bay, I decided to return to my stronghold. The catacombs proved a bit too difficult still and I was tired of running errands through town. Once in my stronghold I purchased some upgrades and rested for a bit in the Brighthollow inn. Picking the right testing bonusses still confuses me, because I feel I don’t have a grasp on all the combat modifiers. I just don’t see or feel what difference it makes if I cast a holy power spell for instance.

I’m playing the PS4 version and haven’t found the right button to browse through the combat log during battles. And every time I think about looking that up, the battles are over. Battles generally don’t last long enough to get a feeling about all the effects.
I’m playing on default difficulty and that proves a little too easy to dive deep into all the mechanics. At the same time, I don’t feel the urge to make the game harder, so I think I’ll just keep on going. Maybe that will keep me from enjoying the game to the fullest, but so be it.

Then I went to Raedric’s Hold to confront the lord of the region. His hold is a massive castle that seems a bit too big for such a thinly populated area, but it’s nicer to walk around in such a big castle than in a small one I guess.
The guards forbade me entrance and attacked me when I went in. After I killed a great many of them, I discovered secret ways in. But I doubt anyone playing the game for the first time using these. If the developers had wanted you to do so, they would have made fighting the guards more difficult.

Then I confronted Raedric. He’s a lunatic that needs to be stopped. But I couldn’t manage that just yet. He and his cronies were way too tough for me at this time. I noticed that I’m a few 100 xp short of levelling up, so I just took him up on his offer to kill Kolsc and decided to return to him first. I’ll probably level up along the way.
And when I return, I will try do look into strategies to kill him and his cronies. Maybe debuffing them will work. And maybe certain types of damage will prove more effective than others.

To be continued…