Thank you Pholiota

So, Harmattan with Cerhilith.

I honestly feared it would be worse (haven't fought too many Immaculates yet though hahah).

Back on Saturday I only did some setting up - wandering around to loot chests and hollowed trees, killing knocking out Kazite bandits and stealing+selling their weapons, and whatnot. Mana trap works very well against golems and against bandits, especially after my brain connected the dots that mana trap = ethereal damage = I can use the ghost boon (I can't remember the proper name) to boost my damage. (Also! Mana sword is a thing and it might be useful against Forge Master.)

On Tuesday post-dinner I started off by heading towards Duvernay Plaza in the nighttime snow still without having proper winter gear and relying on potions (a bad idea in general). No elemental there. No lieutenant in the camp (he's not there apparently unless you have already freed Pholiota once). But! I noticed a portion of the camp you can't climb to from down below, so I went around to where the Wolfgang tower is and - surprise! - I was able to climb up (mountains are usually non-climbable outside of Chersonese), so I got to this high wooden platform in the camp. There was nothing there, except a gap between two buildings that I fell into while heading back. I was prepared to wait 1+ hours to pass out from dehydration, but the cold did me in first. Then some unknown entity in the camp (I'd already killed knocked everybody out) captured me, I had to find my backpack again, but thankfully not much time had passed.

I actually don't remember if I went back to town, but the next thing I did in terms of exploration was heading down south toward the Vigil Pylon...where I climbed some mountains again! (The ones where the huge mana pipe is). Again, there was nothing there except pure white snow, but the new perspective was really nice! I tried getting onto the pipe, but that's not possible. I had some trouble going back (getting stuck on invisible walls), but in the end I managed it.

Meanwhile I was having the local armour set made. I found two shield golem scraps in a trash heap behind the tower in the Kazite camp! WTF. Loot RNG has been suuuper nice with Cerhilith. My first character got nothing - nothing! Cerhilith has already randomly found 5 shield golem scraps + gotten 2 off two Galvanic golems. I also have something like 7 x purifying quartz already. My first character only got a couple at the very end in the Laboratory. Is this Elatt's blessing too?

Anyway, before the armour was ready, I decided I'd had enough of freezing out in the snow (I had to heal two bad colds, too), and headed to the Abandoned Living Quarters (the easiest dungeon). I was not very excited to actually start the questline again, for Reasons, but I have to say that going about it "the opposite way" was very interesting / made it feel "new" (i.e. starting from the actual entrance rather than from the train). I was soon overloaded with Kazite weapons to sell, but decided to ride the train to Forgotten Research Laboratory anyway to uhm...bask in the purple glow of the closed doors, and see the loot in the station. Killing the Immaculate there took a while...

Then I went back and sold my stuff and got my new armour, which provided cold resistance, so I could go about freeing Pholiota without freezing. I'd looked up where I needed to go bc I didn't have the patience to look everywhere for her(?) and still maybe not see her. Hence I went to the troglo labyrinth first, killed the Kazite lieutenant next, got the necessary key, and finally headed to the other bandit camp. While I was at it I also visited the Corrupt Cave(?) and explored the area north of the city (which I really like).

After doing some inventory management, I once again headed to the Abandoned Living Quarters, collected some remaining loot...and sold it to Pholiota at the station. Ah, it's sooo nice having her there with her cute hat and jolly music. That definitely makes going through these dungeons again more fun. And immensely more convenient, too. From ALQ I again took the train to the Laboratory, looted what I could loot, sold what I didn't need/want and moved on to Ancient Forge. Rinse and repeat - collected loot sold it, advanced through the dungeon, went back to the train, sold more stuff and moved on to the Lost Golem Manufacturing Facility.

I was able to buy the whole Wolf mage set + the Wolf doctor helmet, a few recipes and some sanctifier potions from Pholiota. I went back home only when I was overloaded with stuff I wanted to keep. I have to say, I did notice that sound in the Facility that a Reddit user very rudely complained about, and it is indeed very annoying (though I don't approve of the rudeness). Both Ancient Forge and the Facility felt huge the first time through and are indeed quite big.

I took a "day off" the quest next and visited the Ancient Harmattan basement then the warehouse next to the city. I wanted to sleep after this, instead I went "fuck it" and decided to explore the top of the corruption-leaking destroyed clocktower complex. With my first character I'd only run through it once. With Cerhilith I patiently killed all the golems, including the Galvanic Golem, and got more nice loot.

At this point I cleared my corruption level, got some well-deserved sleep, and got ready to take on the Destroyed Test Chambers. I decided to wear the Adventurer armour (unfortunately no boots or helmet to buy, though I wouldn't have used the helmet anyway), bc it has nice fire resistance + some cold and hot resistance, with Entomber boots, which paired with the Light Mender headpiece provided good lightning resistance (vs Galvanic Golem).

I went through the Chambers mostly fine - the Galvanic Golem was a major pain to kill and the cold part of the Chambers is super cold and I almost fell ill again. I traded with Pholiota and then since my backpack was still only 2/3 full I up and went to the Crumbling Loading Docks (I make sure to always have anti-corruption stuff now). I only wanted to clear the golems and kill the boss later. But once I reached the top I went "fuck it, I'm going to try and kill Giant Horror". I didn't have any damage or defense potions, I didn't even use Rage or Discipline boon, I just used a possession potion, increased corruption defence, stamina potion and mana + life regen. Giant Horror dealt more damage to me this time around, but it was not too bad and I could still tank it. I used my Tsar sword with lightning spell and everything worked out as intended, though the corruption made me really thirsty, for some reason.

So now the easiest areas for the questline have been dealt with (exactly from easiest to less easy imo), and now I have the least favourite areas to go through, Corrupt Mana Transfer Station and Ruined Warehouse, before the Laboratory.

I didn't want to tackle either of those yesterday, I moved some stuff from my house in Harmattan (back) to my house in Monsoon via Berg instead. I hope that didn't respawn enemies in Harmattan already...