Westfall and Duskwood

It turns out that I wasn't quite right about Kate's character getting the Poison skill at level 20 - the web page I read about that oversimplified. In fact what happens is that you get the first quest in a short chain; completing the second quest gives the skill as a reward.

Following the quest instructions we went out to a tower in a far corner of the Westfall. The first quest wasn't too hard - just find a Rogue hiding outside the tower. The second quest? Well, it doesn't sound too bad - pick the pocket of a Defias to get a key, then sneak inside the tower and use the key to open a chest. The tough part is that the tower's patrolled by Defias guys - and they all seem to be level 22 and above. Another thing is that according to one source Kate's going to need skill level 70 or better at lockpicking, and I don't think she's that high yet. We decided to hold off on this one, but I have an idea for a plan that might work. [Edit: actually we need to go back to Lakeshire and do the Alther's Mill quest - that should bring Kate's lockpicking skill up to the necessary level.]

Instead we made some progress on a couple of the other quests then went into Duskwood. On a visit to Darkshire a few days ago we picked up several quests but put them off since we had so many uncompleted quests in Redridge, but having finished a good number of those we decided to move on. We have a trail of uncompleted odd quests behind us - a couple in Westfall and three or four in Redridge - but I'm thinking we can go back for those, especially since we're both just about to hit level 21 and the extra boost will help.

We're going to have to be very careful in Duskwood - at one point we were attacked (terminally) by a level 26 Ghoul, and we saw level 28 monsters in the woods not too far from Darkshire. We'll be sticking to the roads for a while at least. If things get too sticky, we can always go back to Redridge; we haven't explored any of the eastern end of that region.