06 September 2026
05 September 2026
27 August 2026
August post #8 Kingmaker Challenging Run
This was my 4th time playing it to completion; I usually play every September-ish but this time I brought it forward a bit. I usually play on Custom/super easy mode but this time I went for the Challenging difficulty achievement.
Achievements left (7); now 70/74
Challenging difficulty (done Aug 2026)
Unfair (2027)
Kill bear at level 2 on Hard (done Aug 2026)
100 random encounters (done Aug 2026)
10 artisan masterpieces (attempted, RNG let me down)
Tenebrous dungeon RNG item quest (7/16+5; will continue to work on)
Secret ending (briefly attempted)
The party
I love having a Charisma MC so Zacharaya would do the job. I also enjoy 'supervising' my autopilot party with spells and buffs so its perfect. Some sections where being squishy is a terrible idea and there were quite a few reloads because I was swiftly killed but nothing too obnoxious. Also I get to have a Leopard pet who was cool. I pretended it was a ocelot.
Linzi is ever-present; I usually follow the Neoseeker guide but I just have to stop doing that. It makes her a rogue/eldritch knight and I hardly ever use it correctly. I mainly just use her to play music. Also she had a level in sorcerer and thus an Elk that would die a lot.
Valerie is my rock, but idk once again the character build is weird and sometimes she would get clowned. She might be better with less gimmicky cheese builds and just be a straight shooter fighter with some stalwart defender? Maybe in my Unfair run next year.
Amiri is my more fragile rock. The Neoseeker build makes her more useable but
The playthrough goals
The plan was to clear it on Challenging, which I managed to do.
I tried to get all the masterpieces from the artisans but RNG meant I only got maybe 5/10 of them? Onslaught is amazing.
I also finally grinded out the '100 encounters' achievement, Survivor. I checked the JSON code and I had like 45/100 at one point so just kept track of it on paper. I went back to the 1000 Voices area in Act 6 and 7 and farmed it up to 100. Nice!
I briefly tried to keep up with Curse research but I think I only did 1 so no Secret Ending this time. Some other time maybe.
After I finished the game I re-specced Zacharaya's brother (?) Zachariah my original MC from 2023 as an Elven Alchemist and bombed the Owlbear to death on level 2. Easy! Had tried it before but kudos to the Gamefaqs guide for actually helping me get it this time.
Also I actually finished the game this time; last year I stopped before the House at the Edge of Time just because of the tedium; this year I beat it in like 2 hours easily, I have gotten way better at the game and understanding it but the Gamefaqs guide makes it bearable, especially if you ignore the 'get the books' sidequest.
Playthrough timeline (diary entries in "")
12th August 2026 - "Cleared more of Kingmaker, up before the Great Elm or whatever it’s called. Challenging is proving… fine! I learned a little bit from the last few playthroughs so with a few guides I am doing fine."
13th August 2026 - "played a tiny bit of DayZ then Kingmaker." before work presumably
14th August 2026 - "Cleared Act 1 of Kingmaker anyway on Challenging. It’s not too much tougher but a lot of saving and reloading."
15th August 2026 - "mainly just played Kingmaker all night, cleared Act 2 and tried to sort various Artisan quests and whatnot. It may not be possible to resolve all 10 of them (Bokken kicked my ass?) but will get the Challenging Achievement plus maybe the elusive 100 encounters one and hopefully the Secret Ending."
17th August 2026 - "played a tiny bit of DayZ followed by a few hours of Kingmaker."
23rd August 2026 - "played Kingmaker until 10 [Monday 24th morning after work]. Am in Act 4 near Varnhold. "
24th August 2026 - "I played Kingmaker (a great session got a ton done)"; this was the night work got cancelled due to cyber attack so had a 10-12 hour follow up session "All I did was play Kingmaker, cleared Act 4 and deep into Act 5, I have to clear Armag’s Tomb next. Will I ever get a chance to upgrade my fucking advisors? "
25th August 2026 - Work still off; "Played Kingmaker all night, got as far as Act 7, it’s almost over. Have 88 random encounters, some of the masterwork artisan pieces and am almost finished re: Challenging. So that’s 3 achievements there but I doubt I’ll get the Artisan one, even with Kingdom maxed out. It’s too random." Added comment: Pitax was way easier. Who knew buffing was so important (half-joking)
26th August 2026 - no work so: "played Kingmaker all night once again, managed to grind out the 100 random battles achievement in the far western 1000 voices. I knew I had around 88 so it wasn't too bad. Artisans would not deliver masterpieces so that’s out of the question. I actually did House at Edge of Time (skipped it last year) - much shorter than I remember, totally fine and just spammed Mass Heal with not-Linzi, my replacement bard. Cleared it fine and am now in the capital city camp; will rid me of the curse and finish the game tomorrow."
27th August 2026 - "I finished Kingmaker, the challenging run complete, was not too hard overall. Quickly used a hitherto unused Gamefaqs guide to clear the ‘kill bear on hard at level 2’ BS achievement [used Elf alchemist, Expeditious Retreat etc] Nice consolation prize for missing out on artisans and secret ending. I will just have to get them next year!" Confusing myself with these dates, but actually finished on 28th technically (night shift goofiness)
Assessment
That pesky artisan quest. MIGHT pop back in and see if I can figure out Tenebrous Depths, I think I have some of the items needed for the 1 achievement left: checked and I have 7/16. I've done 4 prior runs so maybe will keep tapping away at it, like I said in September 2024 (didn't bother playing TD in 2025).
I was way better this time; partly due to actually following the advice of using Resist: spells and buffing. Maybe playing on Custom/very very easy for so long was not so good, but feel like I've learned a bit inside and outside of Kingmaker. Looking forward to playing Unfair next year.
What's next
Need to play some new games.
24 August 2026
August post #7 assorted DayZ baloney
I still had a holdover Survivor from May so ran around as them for a bit. I still had a bunch of gear so was a bit gear fear'd. I stayed in Solnech and managed to kill 3 people before killing that character in full view of a random freshie near the town train station. I had been logging in and out for a few minutes at a time and was bored senseless, I had everything.
Spawned back in near Elektro I think and ran all the way back to Solnech. I was decently geared by the time I got back to my body - gone, of course. That's fine. I ended up hanging around Solnech again not doing much, then one day I killed a guy in a house with a pistol. My pistol jammed so was trying to fix that when a girl appeared out of nowhere with only her underclothes on - she managed to punch me out. I woke up to see her wearing all my clothes and she finished me off. Why does no one double tap?
Cue the old guy. I seem to alternate between old guy with white hair and little redhead girl. Anyway this was the run I managed to make it Tisy, but I got most of my gear from the NWAF. Tisy was disappointing actually. Then I ran all the way back to Solnech and hung around the industrial yard. I love playing King of the Hill here and players love to play too. They were getting increasingly smart though, shooting me through the walls and floor. I even got knocked out briefly by a guy with a P1 and nothing else on him; again he didn't double tap so I was able to hop up and punch him out! Insane! That made it all worth it. I had racked up 12 kills before a Russian dude managed to shoot me with a very powerful gun through the walls/floor. Not even mad; I'm almost certain he had people with him nearby as I had seen a humvee drive up nearby.
---
Is this the end of DayZ Szn for a few months? I was almost about to set out and wander the countryside with my trusty CR and tons of ammo but then that happened. I'll probably hop back on the server again tomorrow and see where I spawn in and what I can do. I am also halfway through a Kingmaker Challenging playthrough so that is September Kingmaker Szn covered. We shall see
22 August 2026
August post #6 Karlach Origin #5 part 5: Act 3 finished = Honour Mode finished 8 times
It's over. Honour Mode cleared 8 times in 2026. Time to give it a rest; I was playing it less in August anyway but had to finish off this run. Managed to clear it in one final 8 hour session.
The party
Karlach Barbarian Giant 12
Shared-MVP with Lae'zel, probably edged her out overall. Had 25 AC in the end thanks to high Dex, Graceful Cloth, no armour and 23 Con from the Amulet and other sources. Just throw and kick stuff!
Lae'zel Barbarian Berserker 12
Solid, just wallop stuff with Sword. Writing this I realise I forgot to grab Silver Sword off Voss after HoH, oh well. Soulbreaker is just fine. Started to run out of strength elixirs by the end.
Shadowheart Barbarian Wild Magic 12
Nothing spectacular, I moved around her gear dropping armour in favour of Barbarian Clothes and she performed a bit better. Solid but unremarkable, the Wild Magic features are benign but fairly weak.
Jaheira Barbarian Wildheart 12
I didn't bother doing her personal quest and acquiring Minsc. I was very boring and just had Bear aspect so when I did rage, lots of resistance. Dual-wielding menace.
Timeline
21st August 2026 - cleared the House of Hope; looted everything I could and managed to free Hope relatively painlessly, then kill Raphael et al. Quickly took care of Ethel next but was probably a waste of time; then Orin I believe who managed to almost wipe me out. Jaheira ran away and revived everyone. I blame rustiness on my part. 1 Long rest in act 3 after all this.
Went back and killed Orin then charged the Gortash coronation yelling objection. Giant clusterfuck! Painful waiting for a small army of enemies to resolve their turns. Had to retreat and come back. Gortash didn't heal from the barrel pile I left at his feet so was not too hard, I just kept going up and down the stairs. Not very forward barbarian of me but would have been wiped. So Karlach kicked Gortash to death and took all his stuff, then had to go back to grab his corpse and bring it to camp to resolve her personal quest, dodging small army. Sigh.
Anyway was done so went to Morphic Pool after buying as many vendors stuff as I could; squid Karlach (messed up my stats a bit as usual) ; final fight was GRAND good use of haste spores and Globe of Invulnerability wiped out the Emperor's Dream Squad (had freed Orpheus), could not finish off the dragon so ran around and took out the Illithid artillery arcanists and into Brain. 4 rounds, 3 rounds dealing damage. Fin.
Assessment
43 hours to do this; it was fun and saw some different stuff but time to give Bg3 a rest. I want to do a Shadowheart All-Cleric run and a Durge III pure evil run but they can wait. In a better place atm so don't need my new comfort game as much BUT 2026 has certainly been the year of Bg3.
What's next
I had started a Challenging Run on Kingmaker for the first time so will try to finish that, am in Act 3 and its relatively smooth.
I was not too into DayZ for DayZ Szn in August but then my May holdover character died and suddenly all was fresh again. So that's kind of my chill mid-week game.
Need to play something completely new to mix things up, not sure yet what that is.
19 August 2026
August post #5 DayZ 'win loss record' of sorts
I keep decent records of stuff and decided to take 30 minutes to go through old screen shots plus notes I kept myself on my first few playthroughs of DayZ back in August 2023 and managed to compile this list.
I think this is fairly accurate; maybe missing a few quick runs that ended ignomiously (killed instantly, died of starvation etc)
18 August 2026
August post #4 Wrath of the Righteous initial impressions
I played WOTR in April 2026 and found it underwhelming.
I was playing a Sylvan Sorcerer from the start assuming my companions would form a balanced team, nope. Every new companion I seemed to acquire other than the excellent archer Wenduag and the strong mounted (!) paladin Seelah was a gimmicky spellcaster or niche class. I needed strong warriors not another perosn who is really good at one specific kind of spell or skill.
tbc
-
I had last written a post about this in August 2022. I left it installed on my desktop since then and briefly went back to it a couple of ti...
-
We were extremely well-drilled from having played the Asylum the morning before. Cathy and Royce took turns managing the Item Deck. I manage...
-
Myself and my two good friends, 'Jamdrew', have been walking into town almost every Saturday for the last 5 years or so. We only mis...
