Calling this the ‘midpoint’ is a bit disingenuous, since this is an open world game similar to the Elder Scrolls series and doesn’t have specific story chapters like its prequel. However, I do have 6 Fire Chalices and equipment in the middle/high-middle range of effectiveness (twin crafted/sharpened Bastard Swords, Ranger Bow, & Light Assassin Armor). So, having just unlocked and reached Ishtar I figured this is as good a place as any to mark as the halfway point.
When I first started out I tried to ‘clear’ the area around each new populated area before moving on. Due to the static leveled nature of the game this turned out to be quite inefficient and I switched to getting from town to town as quickly as possible while only really exploring the specific areas quests sent me to. Picking up the Quick Learning skill as soon as possible was in fact a very good idea; waiting so long was a mistake and you can get it even earlier than 9th level if you rush from town to town to collect all the Ancient Tablets being sold. I ended up making three more mistakes though. The first was learning the Pickpocket skills, the second was learning the Frostwave spell, and the third was learning both Sleep and Knockout (Sleep is exponentially better if you have the Master Thief and Water Mage skills).
Pickpocket works similarly to how it did last game, except success is based on your Thieving level and you don’t get experience for succeeding. This isn’t so bad on its own, what makes it worthless is that with the Master Thief skill and Sleep spell you can can steal everything a target has on them with no chance of failure. 15 LP for a chance at stealing small amounts of Gold is quite obviously far worse than 10 LP for being able to steal a target’s entire inventory essentially at will. As for Frostwave, the damage is considerably reduced the further away the targets are, and the Freeze effect doesn’t last very long and ends immediately if the target is attacked. So it’s basically useless.
Aside from those issues and the Russian roulette nature of melee combat it’s been more or less smooth sailing through the desert area in my self-appointed quest to unlock Ishtar. In retrospect I’m not really sure why I wanted to unlock it since I planned to use a Master Sword rather than learn Master Two-Weapon Fighting… but then again maybe I will learn it since making a Master Sword is incredibly difficult; while the recipe can be easily bought, one of the ingredients apparently only shows up in sequential rare chest loot. Character stats at this point are as follows (Big Game Hunter and Resist Heat are from equipment):
My path from here is murky. I need to try out the Ice Explosion and Hailstorm spells to see if either does decent damage at a decent range, and if so then I’ll probably try to get Ancient Knowledge up to 300 for Mana Regeneration. Otherwise I guess I’ll pick up the Bless Weapon spell, raise Dex to 200 for Master Two Weapon Fighting, and then try to find some better swords.