With the Bank quest line complete, I'm expecting the next story beat to open the final Bezar quest. In the meantime, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit for me to pluck.
With the key north and south routes now opened up, I'm feeling a lot less pressure to upgrade my guilds. I take this opportunity to buy the Alchemy Lab.
I start sending heroes into the Den of Danger, ostensibly to work on the Beginner's Brigade quest but really to look for the Tinker. My very first scout finds a LEMMISI near the spawn. Since I am not taking this run very seriously, I spam the hell out of it and am pleased to see a hidden staircase in the upper left corner.
And now I have a Tinker. I go ahead and withdraw my Thief. No way he can take Bleaty, not after burning over half the map at level 2.
The Tinker is awesome because you can use him to quickly search for important subdungeons. This is very good for unlocking gods, since their subdungeons are usually harsh and can completely spoil a run if encountered normally. Also, as a proper adventurer, I think that he is often underrated and overlooked.
I'm going to go ahead and complete my pantheon. Going from one altar to three is a big deal. I start by sending my Tinker to the east, after Glowing Guardian.
I realize almost right away that the commando strategy won't work for GG. His quest is very involved, and any character that can complete it could also just finish the dungeon normally. So that's exactly what I decide to do.
The Tinker can buy EVERYTHING. Between conversions and gear, he's a total beast. I also think that he is guaranteed to get a bonus dungeon if the stage you're on allows one. Almost all of the high level monsters are dead before even finding Count Blah Blah, and I have a Chaos Avatar just waiting to happen.
I found Glowing Guardian, as expected. I don't actually do anything with him until the dungeon is safely cleared.
Chasing down the Dark Ones is very resource intensive and doesn't give you any experience. Total pain in the ass.
No important badges, but that wasn't the point.
Now that I have GG, Dracul can start appearing in the east as well. He doesn't spawn as reliably, but that's why I waited to do this kind of stuff until I had the Tinker. It usually takes less than a minute to check the subdungeon when you start out knowing where the staircases are.
As it happens, I find Dracul immediately. He's a total dong when you first meet him. After you accept his faith, he reduces your max hp to 1 and then kicks out. I don't need that kind of garbage, so I just withdraw. Now that he's part of the pantheon, we won't have to deal with his stupid hazing ritual ever again.
While I'm at it, I start hunting for the Witch as well. It takes 5 tries to find her. This would have taken forever normally, but with the Tinker I can do it before the water is done boiling for my tea.
PS devs I have posted this in the bugs forum before, but you still haven't attached a proper sprite to the Witch.
The 1st level Witch Hut is useless (it gives you the option to swap your Health or Mana potions for Fortitude and Burn Salves), but all of the successive upgrades are fantastic. Chasing down the locations for her quests will be a major motivating factor when deciding which areas to explore next.
And at this point, we are up to date. I didn't get prompted about Bezar after clearing the Eastern Tundra, so I guess that quest happens in the Ick Swamp instead of Hexx Ruins. Bother.
Options I am considering:
1) Use the Tinker to quickly pick up the remaining 4 gods.
2) Since I have halflings now, go ahead and unlock the Venom Ward
3) Clear the Hexx Ruins to open the way for the last Bezar quest. Preferably done right after doing item 2)
4) Peck away at the Den of Danger quests. I think that the Crystal Ball and Helm of Heroism can be found there.
5) Improve my item pool by completing class challenges.
6) Go ahead and get the gnomes, so that I can unlock the Soul Orb
7) Scum like hell with the Tinker so that I can get orcs and goblins
8) Do as many parts of Complicated Tasks that I can with my current map pool