Thay

When you land in Thay, you’ll be on the Thaymount, the mountain outside the Academy of Shapers and Binders. Unfortunately, there’s been a bit of tumult in Safiya’s absence, and the entire place is crawling with enemies. Buff yourself thoroughly before proceeding up the mountain here.

The archers here hit pretty hard, so try to take them down with spells and your own ranged attacks before moving too far down. The wyverns here will cast a debuff on you, but it will fade away after a turn or two, so no need to use Restoration on it. There are a couple of maverick fire elementals here that you can use Provoke Spirits on if you happen to need to eat some souls. Make your way to the front gates of the Academy, bashing the doors down if need be.

The Academy

There are a number of quests here on the first floor, so start getting them. Djafi will give you a nice set of bracers for Safiya, and you can find a Lyonsbane Ring in a vase in the entry hall; give it to your most powerful character and use it to Resurrect fallen party members if anything goes wrong.

Main Quest: Legacy of the Headmistress

Nefris is dead, but her tower here in the school may hold some clues as to what she was up to. Head there and attempt to find out how she communed with Myrkul.

If you come across enemies in closed classrooms, try to lure them out into the hallways to kill them one by one.

Quest: Mysterious Device

If you enter the southeastern room and kill the three students there, you can loot a Mysterious Device from a table inside. Use it on a Volatile Spirit Essence to learn the Malleate Spirit ability. It essentially replaces Mold Spirit, and lets you use Pristine Spirit Essences in crafting. You can also find a few shades in the closet off of this room, should you need to devour a spirit.

Quest: Skeleton Keys

Master Inarus, on the eastern side of the classroom floor, asks you to devour a soul or a spirit in front of his class. Devouring a soul is, obviously, an evil act, while devouring a spirit will negatively impact your influence on Okku. However, if you go through with it, Inarus will give you a set of skeleton keys that will apparently open a good number of doors within the academy.

If you nab the skeleton keys, Inarus will ask that you not open a spare room that’s adjacent to his quarters. Which, of course, means that you should head downstairs and open it. If you find his quarters (to the north of the stairs leading to the Headmistress’s Tower), loot the bookcase within, then Bash it to reveal a hidden door. If you head inside, Inarus will appear behind you, blocking your exit, and start to buff himself up. Having something like Mordenkainen’s Disjunction will be helpful here, as Inarus will be untargetable while he casts Epic Gate and other high-level spells. Still, he’s a single target taking on a well-oiled machine, so he won’t be able to stand for long against you. Kill him to end the quest.

Event: Golem Construction

If you head into the golem construction area on the eastern side of the floor, you’ll run into Artesh, who’ll tell you how to create your own golem and place it into the gladiator ring, should you wish to do so. Before you make your golem, search the area for more advanced golem parts; you can find at least three specialized parts in the Instructor’s quarters, for instance.

When you’re ready to make your golem, bring all of the parts to the Golem Crafting Station here. Remove the hammer from the table, first off, then place a golem head, arms, legs, and torso onto the table, along with a Volatile Spirit Essence. (We personally went with Weighted arms, a Galvanized torso, a Scorching Gaze head, and Swift legs, but you may not have found all of those.) When everything is in the table, right-click on the hammer in your inventory and use it on the table to create your golem.

The golem fights can be an entertaining and profitable diversion.

Before starting the fights, be sure to try and talk to the golem. It won’t say anything, obviously, but you will have the option to let Safiya take a look at it; if you have a good influence with her, she’ll be able to upgrade the golem and make it a bit more battleworthy. You can also cast buff spells on the golem, so be sure to load it up with Stoneskin, Barkskin, Spiderskin, and so on.

When you’re ready to have the golem fight, speak to Artesh again. There’ll be five rounds that you have to fight through to reach the end, with each getting progressively more difficult. You can repair your golem in between each round by speaking to it, but our souped-up model actually managed to win all five rounds without ever taking damage, so hopefully the model that you construct will be as hardy.

Note that you can make side bets for the final round of the match. You have the option of betting either for 100,000 dollars or for Artesh’s soul, itself. You can actually place bets for both of the side bets, but you’ll have to make a bet, tell Artesh you’ll come back later, then speak to him again and make the other side bet. Taking Artesh’s soul is an evil act, and it’s not good for much other than trading it to the pit fiends in the lower level, although you can place it in the soul viewer in the repository to learn about the ironic circle that Artesh’s life has taken.

Quest: Order From Chaos

On the western side of the area, you’ll find Selkhit. Ask him about the experiment that he’s researching, and you’ll discover that Nefris was working with chaos theory, of a sort; she was trying to separate two rooms full of Mephits into their respective races. It wouldn’t happen naturally, is the theory. Or something. There’s also a soul involved, somehow.

Whatever! Just get to solving the damn puzzle, already. If you head into the room with all of the mephits, you’ll see that it’s split in two by a gate with a door in it. If you pull on the lever in the door, it’ll open, theoretically causing the two mephits closest to the door to switch places.

Anyway, the solution to the puzzle is pretty simple: attack all of the obelisks in both of the rooms to cause them to start arcing lightning out. When you do that, opening the door will cause lightning to kill a random mephit. Keep clicking on the door lever until all the mephits are dead, then pick up and drop the bodies so that all of the red mephits are in one room, and all the white mephits are in the other. Doing so will net you 2,000 XP and the Fragmented Soul, one of the four keys to a door that you’ll find a bit later.

Event: Soul Repository

The Soul Repository is at the center of this area. It’s kind of like a library for souls. It’ll come in handy during a quest you’ll pick up downstairs, but for now, if you want to look around, feel free to do so. If you find any souls during your travels, you can bring them to the cauldron-like device here, place them inside, then flip the switch to the side to get a text readout of the soul’s last memories. This will be important in some of the upcoming quests.

The consequences of taking more than your alloted souls out of the repository can be…drastic.

As a note, there are a ton of soul housings in the repository itself, but you can only check out one at a time. If you attempt to leave the room with more than one housing in your inventory, the defense system will activate (which is worth checking out at least once) and return you to the repository. You can drop the housings that you’ve found onto the floor to get around this, but there’s an easier way to avoid the defenses: simply load up one of your characters with all of the housings in the repository, then switch to another character, tell the first character to stay put, then walk the second character over to the stairs leading to another level. That’ll automatically warp the first character to the other area with all of the casings in their pockets. Pretty handy. Unfortunately, if you attempt to come back to the upper level, you'll wind up getting warped into the defense mechanisms, so try not to do this unless you need to.

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