Eschalon II Pacifist Run - City of Port Kuudad

This section covers the city of Port Kuudad below, and also briefly the Northwest Kessian Basin.

City of Port Kuudad

There isn't very much to do on the south side of the Northwest Kessian Basin since it's mostly an open deserted area: If you're on the way to Port Kuudad from Everdale and the Central Farrock Range, you can easily get to the city by traveling through the open grassy areas and heading east by following the main road, or striking off in that direction from any other point.
However, in the northern part of the map you'll find the ruins of the Mistfell Zoological Park and Gardens, which has become a bandit camp full of outlanders. If you want to use stealth, magick, or just pacifist run-around skills to evade the hostile outlanders, you'll find around three treasure chests in the inner ruins.

Ruins of the Mistfell Zoological Gardens

(The other major place of interest on this map is the Lorewitch Tower entrance, but you'll only be able to reach that by entering from one of the wilderness areas north of this map, since the tower is cut off by water. You'll also only be able to complete the subquest inside Lorewitch Tower after completing several other missions in the main storyline, as described in upcoming sections on the Forsaken Coast & Secret Guild.)

The Gates of Port Kuudad:

Western city gates of Port Kuudad

If you want to get inside the city of Port Kuudad, you'll have to get past the guards at the gatehouse in some way: The most straightforward and lawful way of doing this is to present a Citizen Writ. (If you arrived her by passing through Wolfenwood, you may already have picked one up off the corpse of a man slain by wolves.)
It's also apparently possible to pay the guards a hefty entrance fee of 2000 gold (which we didn't test), or hide from them with invisibility or stealth to sneak into the guarded gate house and throw the lever that will open the gates. (If you're caught doing this, however, the guards will try to kill you, so use caution.)

Another way to get inside is to enter via the sewer entrance on the coastal outskirts in the east, which you can find the way to by heading up the coast after exiting the Farrock Caves, described in the previous section. (See the PORT SEWERS & THIEVES' ARCADIA section for what you can find beneath the city, whether you enter the sewers via the coastal route, or through the sewer entrance inside the city walls south of the main gates.)

Inside the City of Port Kuudad
There are many things you can do in the city of Port Kuudad, including key quests essential to the main plotline, subquests, training up to level 8 in valuable pacifist skills like magick and alchemy, and visiting merchants who sometimes have skill manuals and special items for sale (some of which can increase your best pacifist run skills without having to invest your own scarce skill points from level-ups).

The City Marker & Marissa's Mercantile (north)

The City Marker: If you happened to give the guards the slip and sneak in rather than presenting a Citizen Writ, one thing you might want to do early on is head straight for the center of town and examine the obelisk-like city marker in the town square. (Doing so should enable you to quick-travel back to the middle of Port Kuudad from outside the city.)

Solving the quest "News from Yoma Narrows"
This quest comes from Phensil, the injured man who blew up the bridge at the Yoma Narrows south of Eastwillow in order to escape a Taurax scout, and asked you to inform the authorities. You can now solve this quest by heading just northeast of the front gates and talking to an official named Edwin inside the "Office of Security and Authoritative Business." You'll be rewarded with 500 experience points after you give Edwin the news. (Edwin also gives a quest to exterminate some spiders inside the city warehouse, but we skipped it on our zero kill run campaigns.)

Deliver the news from the Yoma Narrows to Edwin in Port Kuudad to solve the quest.

Solving the quest "To Save a Child's Life"
This quest comes from the dying man you can find on a side road in the western part Wolfenwood, who will give you a potion of Sparkling Divinity needed to save a young boy from a terrible illness. You'll find the child's house in the north of the city (a little way behind the "Darkest Arts Magick Supplies" shop) and can now deliver the potion to the grieving mother to save her son and receive a reward of 300 experience points.

House of the mother and child to deliver the potion and solve "To Save a Child's Life"

You can also double this reward by choosing the dialogue option to tell her that you're no one of importance (rather than saying you're an adventurer), in which case you'll be given another 300 experience points. (If you told her you were an adventurer, you'd be given the deceased husband's alchemical recipes to for imbuing weapons, but on a pacifist run the xp is probably a lot more valuable. You can also use all alchemical recipes as long as you have enough alchemy skill, even if you never scribe the in-game alchemy formulas into your alchemy book.)

Lockston Hall & The Underground Archives
Solving the main storyline quest: "Destiny Through a Viewing Glass (Part 3)"
Now that you're in Port Kuudad, you can finally solve the main storyline quest by visiting Lockston Hall to ask Saint Gilhem about the strange viewing glass. The Lockston Hall building is in the northeastern part of the city, past the town square, on the other end of a courtyard with a fountain and columns flanking the path.

Inside Lockston Hall, Saint Gilhelm will eventually tell you that the strange viewing glass is an artifact capable of revealing the secret entrance to the guild of Crius Vindica. (You may remember Darus mentioning the guild, before he was struck down by the assassin's arrow at the Inn in Eastwillow.) To find this secret entrance, he'll suggest you travel north of the city to the Forsaken Coast, and you'll receive a reward of 1000 experience points for completing the quest.
Saint Gilhelm will also give you a very valuable "Philosopher's Pendant" (allowing you to increase wisdom and magickal skills without having to spend your own attribute and skill points), along with his blessing to sell it for gold if you decide you don't need it.

Saint Gilhelm and the solution to 'Destiny Through a Viewing Glass'

There are also two more sequential sidequests you can do at Lockston Hall that are optional, but which will require no violence, and yield about 1250 experience points for the first, and 30,000 experience points for second— though the second will take a long time to complete since it requires four relics from many of the game's most formidable "dungeons."

"The Orakur: Of Fact & Fiction"
The first of the additional Lockston Hall quests requires that you solve the bronze riddle and enter the secret chamber in the deceased Ruel's house in the Southern Kessian Basin. (See SOUTHERN KESSIAN BASIN for details on the preamble to this.) To succeed, you'll have to acquire a full set of bronze armor (e.g. a bronze helmet, armor, gauntlets, leggings, and bronze boots). You may already have succeeded if you kept an eye out for bronze items each time you visited an armorer like Keebo in Eastwillow or Ara in Everdale, but if not, your odds of completing a full set have now improved, since you'll have access to quick-travel back and forth from Port Kuudad (which has two armories), Everdale, and Eastwillow.

Acquiring the book from the secret room in the Southern Kessian Basin

Once you get a full set of bronze armor, you can return to the house in the Southern Kessian Basin and step onto the teleporter to reach the secret interior chamber with no door. You'll find two treasure chests, one of them containing several hundred gold coins and a book called "The Orakur: Of Fact & Fiction." As we warned, you probably won't want to show this to Ruel's unfortunate sister Wendy in Eastwillow, since the being known as "The One" has invaded her mind to try to make her destroy the book, and she'll attack you if you show it to her (though that certainly won't oblige you to fight back).
However, if you instead bring the book here to Saint Gilhelm in Lockston hall, you'll receive 1000 experience points, and he will request that you take the book into the underground Lockston Hall archives below the main floor, to place the book on the desk of the mythology scholar. This is the only way (as far as we know) to open up the entrance to the underground archives.

The Underground Archives of Lockston Hall

The underground archives beneath Lockston Hall

After you complete the quest above to find the book on the Orakur, you can then take the book to the desk of the Hall's mythology scholar for an additional 250 experience points right away. Better yet, in the long-run: You'll now have access to the underground archives where you'll also find a mysterious belltree which will eventually allow you to unlock the biggest nonviolent xp reward in the game:
You'll eventually be able to find a set of mysterious bells in four of the most formidable dungeons in the game: The Hammerlorne Mines, Lorewitch Tower, the Thieves' Arcadia, and a tiny island in the middle of Greenriven Lake, which you can only access from the depths of the sunken mining town Lost Westwillow. (Details about where to get the bells are described in each subsection for those places, but you'll never have to kill anything in order to claim them all.) When you bring all four of these bells back and hang them on the belltree here in the underground archives, you'll receive 30,000 experience points, which is probably enough for at least one level-up even for high-level player characters.

After you collect all four mysterious bells, hang them on this belltree for a reward of 30,000xp

Magick & Alchemy Trainers:

"The Darkest Arts Magick Supplies"
This magick shop is owned by a mage named Luci who can train you up to level 8 in both magickal disciplines: Elemental and Divination Magick, both of which are full of pacifist-friendly spells, like Haste, Invisibility, Dense Nimbus (which deflects projectiles by focusing a sphere of compressed air around the caster), and Portal (allowing you to teleport anywhere you set a magical anchor by casting the spell).

 By training with Luci up to level 5 in either or both disciplines, you can unlock all the tier 2 spells without investing a single skill point from your own level-ups. Also, by training up to level 8 here, you'll be able to unlock the tier 3 spells as soon as you find certain special items at shops (or in treasure chests), such as talismans and wizard's hats that will add anywhere from 1-3 points to your magick skills to hit tier 3's minimum of level 11. (And if you then read skill manuals and/or invest additional skill points of your own in either discipline afterward, your magickal abilities will be even more effective.)

The only drawback is the cost: All skill trainers in Eschalon charge 100 gold per skill level (i.e. level two costs 200 gold, level five 500 gold, etc), so any skill you train all the way to level 8 will cost 3,600 gold in total. You can always come back to each trainer later after selling more treasures you find, but you can also raise this much gold fairly easily if you take advantage of nonviolent skills like Foraging, Alchemy, and Mercantile. (See our optional MERCANTILE section for details.)

"Excelsior Elixirs and Alchemy Supplies"

The entrance to Excelsior Elixirs & Alchemy Supplies

This is an important location if you intend to learn Alchemy on a pacifist run, but want to conserve your own scarce skill points gained from level-ups: Becka, the owner of the shop, will train you in Alchemy up to level 8. You can also find Brewmaster rings for purchase to increase the skill further, and finally (ideally after first training all 8 levels here) can read an Alchemy skill manual to add more points to your skill. (Note that if you read a skill manual prior to training to level 8, you'll gain skill levels that you could have just paid for with gold instead, so it's optimal to wait and read it only afterward if you want to optimize. This applies to any other skill you can train in, also.)

Becka can train your character up to level 8 in the valuable Alchemy skill

You can also purchase a huge list of alchemical recipes for potions and special formulas (for things like imbuing armor and weapons) for 750 gold from her. (However, you don't actually need any in-game recipes as long as you know which reagents to combine to produce potions.)
Finally, you can also get a very small quest from Becka: The quest is called "Shortest Quest Ever"  and will involve running a very small errand directly up the street to Big Sal the armorer, for a reward of 25 experience points and a tiny amount of gold.

Other prospectively useful places in the city of Port Kuudad include:

Marisa's Mercantile
This shop (found just above the City Marker) carries various miscellaneous merchant items. The exact items any merchant has in stock each week is randomly determined to some degree, but we had notably good luck here in finding valuable skill manuals for skills like mercantile, lockpicking, and more.

Radcliff's Exotics
The nearest location to the city gates in the northwest corner of the city is Radcliff's Exotics, where you'll find special weapons and armor. (The wares here are usually expensive, but may include items like wizard's hats, gloves to increase lockpicking skills, and other good items other than weapons. Radcliffe also usually has quite a bit of gold compared with the more modest armories, so you can usually sell more weapons and armor to him before he runs out of gold, since you'll find lots of equipment you don't need while adventuring in dungeons.)

Radcliffe's Exotics in northeast Port Kuudad

The Druidic Temple of Atana
Up the street to the northeast is the Druidic Temple of Atana where a priest named Magi Surami will offer a sidequest to go and slay huge lumbering beetles called Goliath Boreheads that are plaguing the Fellpine Forest area. We declined these in favor of a zero kill run campaign. (Hunter in Wolfenwood is another NPC who offers a similar quest.)

Entrance to the Druidic Temple in the northwest of the city.

Another thing that you might consider is "borrowing" a Quill & Inkwell from the interior chamber here, if you don't already have one, because you'll eventually need this and other items to solve a puzzle beneath the city to enter the Thieves' Arcadia. (Scrupulous players can always return the Quill & Inkwell to the temple later on, after using it.)

Mama Fanny's Inn & Slop House
An old woman runs this small inn and shop along with the ghost of her husband (who she'll tell you about, but whom you'll never actually see), and she'll also sometimes have some useful skill manuals, reagents, or other miscellaneous items in stock.

The Mistfell Port Authority
This building is found in the southwest just west of the dock warehouse (which you'll probably notice is full of spiders when you walk past it). You'll find a cartographer named Ned inside the Port Authority building, and he will offer to train you up to 8 levels in the cartography skill. This is entirely optional, but will automatically generate maps as you explore various areas in the game, which can be very helpful to avoid getting lost or confused in some areas. (You can also find a Reveal Map spell if you're skilled in Elemental magick.)

On this street you can find Becka's alchemy shop (southwest), the Misfell Port Authority (southeast), and Big Sal's "Mighty Hammer Ironworks" (north)

Big Sal's "Mighty Hammer Ironworks"
This blacksmith shop and armory is found northeast up the street from Becka's "Excelsior Elixirs and Alchemy Supplies," and you may also end up visiting Big Sal to complete the "Shortest Quest Ever" for 25 xp.

"The Scholar's Inn" is found just east of the City Marker. The inn is run by a man named Vincent who isn't very polite to you, and we're not aware of anything else to do here (unless you're playing a pacifist run as a thief and wants to pick some locks and steal random items).

Sonya (a memorable NPC from Eschalon Book I, who ran a warrior training shop called "Sonya's House of Pain" in the mining town of Blackwater) has now relocated, and runs a similar establishment known as "Sonya's House of Pain II," located just south of the City Marker.

You'll also meet another memorable character from Book I reclining in the street behind this building: Captain Morgan, the heavily intoxicated former captain at the Darkford gate. You'll learn that he was dishonorably discharged for losing the Gate Key closing the north off from Goblin and Taurax invaders from the southern wastelands.

Captain Morgan being given some extra supplies

(If you played Book I, there's a chance you may have felt obliged to take this key yourself, after discovering Captain Morgan too drunk to do his duties.) We felt sorry for him, so gave him some extra supplies. (Captain Morgan will also make a cameo appearance in Eschalon Book III, doing a little better than he is at this point.)

The Magick House
In the far northern part of the city up the road just northwest of the "Darkest Arts Magick" shop, you'll find the mysterious house of a mage or necromancer, and will have the option of trying to sneak inside to teleport to a secret treasure chamber guarded by skeletons.

Our preference is always to avoid stealing from anyone other than hostile/evil enemies, but one player too curious to resist reported he was able to get in and out without being forced to destroy any skeletons, and had the option of stealing an Alchemy manual and some scrolls and potions (but nothing that one wouldn't be able to eventually find elsewhere at shops).

The teleporter in the necromancer's house leads to this chamber guarded by skeletons.

Secrets Beneath the Warehouse:
On the west of the city, there is a hidden lever inside a chest in an un-guarded (but trapped) warehouse that will open up a secret passage into another warehouse next door. You can follow this to a lever to open the mortuary gates in the building just to the southeast, and discover a teleport to a stairwell leading to an underground den of assassins. (Note: This is not the entrance to the Thieves' Arcadia, covered further below, which is also full of assassins.)
If you enter this place using stealth, you can find the assassins' lair with several locked chests, but a gate will shut behind you and summon a number of assassins, so it's best to have some stealth skill or invisibility spells/potions to evade them.
(Caveat: The player who found this area didn't remember for certain whether you could just let yourself out with a lever, or if this particular area required "indirectly" cause some fighting between hostile assassins in order to egress, which might require a Flask of Charm Cloud. However, you're free to give this entire den a miss if you prefer a more peaceful path.)

The Entrance to the Sewers & The Thieves' Arcadia
The entrance to the Port Kuudad Sewers (through which you can eventually solve a puzzle to gain access to the Thieves' Arcadia) is found in the central/southwestern corner of the city, west of the two seemingly abandoned warehouses.

The entrance to the city sewers (and also the Thieves' Arcadia deeper inside)

You can enter the sewers without major obstructions if you want to explore and find a good number of random treasures in the dangerous watery tunnels. If you also want to enter the Thieves' Arcadia, you'll encounter a riddle that you'll have to solve to open up the entrance: The solution will require you to bring a lock pick, a bag of salt, a small candle, and a quill & inkwell, all of which have to be placed in particular chests. All these items can eventually be found in stock at merchant shops and inns selling miscellaneous items (such as Marissa's Mercantile, The Wolf's Den Inn in Everdale, the inn in Eastwillow, etc), as well as particular locations elsewhere in the game.  (See the separate section on the Sewers & Thieves Arcadia for more details on both those areas.)