Leadership has level 7 for a prereq?
Some background:
We will start playing Kingmaker in about a month so I've had ample time to prepare for most scenarios and have added loads of conversions, but perhaps not enough.
The Party:
-Cleric of Bane/Dreadmaster (w. leadership - Bane Anti-Paladin cohort)
-Transmuter Wizard (Zhent Skymage/Telekinesis Master (Master of the Unseen Hand) with special mount- Wyvern and then Green Dragon cohort)
-Ranger/Assassin (probably w. humanoid and fey favored enemy)
-Zhent Noblewoman Bard (ruler role w. leadership; thinking about creating a battlebard prestige class for her)1. we usually play with 30 point build, so the characters will be heroic level.
2. also, since two members of the party will have leadership feats (Dreadmaster will have insane amount of followers) and probably bodyguard type cohorts, and since the Skymage will have a young adult green dragon by the end of the adventure, this raises several issues.2.b. another thought we had is to make the leadership feat accessible at lvl1 or 3, which would grant the player a cohort of lvl1 immediately and a couple lvl1 followers later on as their leadership score increases to above 6 (basically just expanding to table to lower leadership scores).
however, with high cha scores (16-20) and perhaps born leader background traits :), it would mean that the party at lvl1 is exploring with 3-5 extra fighters or rangers. at lvl3 they could have 4-8 lvl1 followers.
some solutions:
definitely have to raise encounter levels - adding templates, funky wilderness encounters (from clans of the fey realms and bestiary2 :), levels on key npc's and basically multiplying monster totals by at least 1.5!
another thought is to limit 1st level followers to commoners and hireling type roles, so the feat basically gives a 1st level bodyguard until level4-7. this would only be important in the beginning, but i would just treat everything as having a 6 member party.to keep it short, I definitely need to change things up.
please let me know if you have any...
If you are going to play with those builds and allowing leadership and thus extra NPCs from 1st level on, you need to do major upgrades of all encounters to keep it challenging. The AP, like all APs, was written and balanced with 4 characters/15 pt build in mind. 30 pt build and adding lots of cohorts will make most encounters in the AP, as written, trivially easy, unless your party is composed of entirely new and not terribly skillful players.
If you go this route, I would start with the excellent 6 player conversion in the sticky thread and then beef it up even from there. The problem when doing that is that the characters are still low level and instant death becomes more prevalent if you beef up the monsters by adding the advanced template. But if you don't and leave them standard, you are in cakewalk city. The more inherently powerful the characters are, the more difficult it becomes to balance encounters without risking tons of player deaths.
So my actual recommendation is: don't do it. Keep the point buy at 20 if 15 doesn't seem heroic enough to you (must confess my own bias here, I find folks who struggle to do heroic stuff despite mediocre stats to be much, much more heroic than stat-gifted characters who breeze along doing the same stuff without breaking a sweat), or at the most 25. You'll still need to ramp up the encounters, but not as much. And keep Leadership pre-reqs the same - they have no need for those extra bodies at low levels. All it does is create more balance headaches and work for you, and create longer, more complex and time-consuming combat scenes.
However, if you choose to go this route and your group finds it fun, more power to you.
I have question about exploration and time. Lets say that fully expolaration lasts 1 day. When an standrad site come to life? At 7 am? 11 am? 3pm? Late night?
I have question about exploration and time. Lets say that fully expolaration lasts 1 day. When an standrad site come to life? At 7 am? 11 am? 3pm? Late night?
I think it's left up to you, really. At what time during their full day of exploring would you like them to encounter the site?
For the most part, I'd go with a random time between, say, 9AM and 7PM. It's assumed that the players stop for meals, set up camp in the evening, and get enough rest to memorize spells the next morning. All told, I'd say that's about 12 hours. Eight for sleeping, one for memorization, three to set and strike camp, cook, etc. Not unreasonable.
But, in the end, it's up to you. Some players love the smell of troll blood in the morning; others prefer a nice cup of moon radish tea in the afternoon. Have an all-dwarf party? Maybe they like exploring at night. :)
I have question about exploration and time. Lets say that fully expolaration lasts 1 day. When an standrad site come to life? At 7 am? 11 am? 3pm? Late night?
I roll randomly for when, during the exploration day, they come across a particular site, unless it is an obvious landmark visible for miles around. I assume about a twelve-hour day of exploration in summer, starting at 7 AM, so roll a 12-sided die. In winter it's an 8-hour day, starting at 8 AM, so roll an 8-sided die.
I do the same thing to determine when random encounters occur during exploration, but using a d12 and a d6 (1-3 being AM, 4-6 being PM).
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...Some background:
We will start playing Kingmaker in about a month so I've had ample time to prepare for most scenarios and have added loads of conversions, but perhaps not enough.
1. we usually play with 30 point build, so the characters will be heroic level.
2. also, since two members of the party will have leadership feats (Dreadmaster will have insane amount of followers) and probably bodyguard type cohorts, and since the Skymage will have a young adult green dragon by the end of the adventure, this raises several issues.2.b. another thought we had is to make the leadership feat accessible at lvl1 or 3, which would grant the player a cohort of lvl1 immediately and a couple lvl1 followers later on as their leadership score increases to above 6 (basically just expanding to table to lower leadership scores).
however, with high cha scores (16-20) and perhaps born leader background traits :), it would mean that the party at lvl1 is exploring with 3-5 extra fighters or rangers. at lvl3 they could have 4-8 lvl1 followers.
some solutions:
definitely have to raise encounter levels - adding templates, funky wilderness encounters (from clans of the fey realms and bestiary2 :), levels on key npc's and basically multiplying monster totals by at least 1.5!
another thought is to limit 1st level followers to commoners and hireling type roles, so the feat basically gives a 1st level bodyguard until level4-7. this would only be important in the beginning, but i would just treat everything as having a 6 member party.we've always played with a 30 build (or choosing out of three sets of 4d6, taking away lowest) and we've never had problems with this.
my worry is that the high builds, combined with the extra characters through 2 pcs with leadership and the skymage with the dragon mount will need major adjustments.also, when we drop mass combat into the mix, two characters will have their own private armies, and the dreadmaster...
As the top row of hexes on the map in this adventure contains the "South Rostland Road", do they belong to Brevoy or should they be explored and mapped by the adventurers? Are they available to be claimed later? They don't seem to contain anything interesting besides to road anyway.
As the top row of hexes on the map in this adventure contains the "South Rostland Road", do they belong to Brevoy or should they be explored and mapped by the adventurers? Are they available to be claimed later? They don't seem to contain anything interesting besides to road anyway.
JJ answered that somewhere in this thread...
They need not be explored and mapped according to the charter, but can be claimed as Kingdom hexes later on. (IIRC)
JJ answered that somewhere in this thread...
They need not be explored and mapped according to the charter, but can be claimed as Kingdom hexes later on. (IIRC)
Hm, I can't find that in this thread, but it seems like a reasonable assumption. James stated that just the top row of hexes from the map in #33 are actually in Brevoy, so these hexes are no-man's-land, but they probably have already been mapped.
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Hm, I can't find that in this thread, but it seems like a reasonable assumption. James stated that just the top row of hexes from the map in #33 are actually in Brevoy, so these hexes are no-man's-land, but they probably have already been mapped.JJ answered that somewhere in this thread...
They need not be explored and mapped according to the charter, but can be claimed as Kingdom hexes later on. (IIRC)
The charter states east, west, and south of Oleg's, as well as mentioning that Oleg's is at the southern edge of Rostland/Brevoy. Seems to me that they are not only known/explored and mapped, but belong to Brevoy, therefore claiming them could lead to one of those border wars mentioned in the various books/threads, though usually when referencing Mivon.
Okay, I'm planning on starting Kingmaker sometime in the next couple weeks, and I think I'm almost ready, but I have one little question:
When horses are included in an encounter, do the PCs gain their experience value at the end, despite the horses not actually fighting/being ridden? For example, the first encounter at Oleg's.
Not usually, no. Unless they, for whatever reason, are a challenge. If the horses were made to stampede the players, and they were able to overcome the challenge (kill them, calm them, etc.), then you might award XP. Otherwise I believe they're included for reference more than anything.
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Not usually, no. Unless they, for whatever reason, are a challenge. If the horses were made to stampede the players, and they were able to overcome the challenge (kill them, calm them, etc.), then you might award XP. Otherwise I believe they're included for reference more than anything.Okay, I'm planning on starting Kingmaker sometime in the next couple weeks, and I think I'm almost ready, but I have one little question:
When horses are included in an encounter, do the PCs gain their experience value at the end, despite the horses not actually fighting/being ridden? For example, the first encounter at Oleg's.
And 'treasure' for characters who don't already have horses...
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Greetings,
I'm just starting a Kingmaker campaign with my group; we're two sessions in, Oleg's has been saved, and the Thorn Camp is... history? The PCs are also experiencing some random pranks and sundry inconveniences as they travel the wilds...
I anticipate my players will be starting to explore in earnest during our next session and I'm confused by the exploration RAW:
Assuming an exploration party moves at the Medium Creature Standard of 30 feet/round, a grassland hex can be crossed in 5 hours, and fully explored in 1 day.
Essentially it's the full exploration times that are confusing me. Does a '1 day' exploration time assume a single working day (8 hours...) or does it assume a full 24 hours to explore a hex, likely divided into 2-3 'actual' days of exploration?
I would assume it is 1 full days work (probably more like 12-14 hrs), not 24 work hours (taking 2-3 days). Spend a day, map a hex.
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Greetings,
I'm just starting a Kingmaker campaign with my group; we're two sessions in, Oleg's has been saved, and the Thorn Camp is... history? The PCs are also experiencing some random pranks and sundry inconveniences as they travel the wilds...
I anticipate my players will be starting to explore in earnest during our next session and I'm confused by the exploration RAW:
Assuming an exploration party moves at the Medium Creature Standard of 30 feet/round, a grassland hex can be crossed in 5 hours, and fully explored in 1 day.
Essentially it's the full exploration times that are confusing me. Does a '1 day' exploration time assume a single working day (8 hours...) or does it assume a full 24 hours to explore a hex, likely divided into 2-3 'actual' days of exploration?
I've always run it as the 8-hour work day. Things are much faster with mounts and all, but not everyone has those I know.
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I highly suggest sticking with the exact times in the book and limiting your group to an 8 hr "workday".
My party tried to argue they could "explore/work" for 12-14 hrs a day in order to speed up the time listed in the book. But if you think about whats involved with exploring a hex, you have to travel in unfamiliar terrain, look for strange creatures or locations, stop to continually update your "in-game-belongs-to-your-character map", plus stay on guard against all attacks during the whole process. Now add in you are doing this in heavy armor in summertime (for most games). As the final capper, the first 1-2 hrs of waking time is spent breaking camp from the night before, saddling horses, etc. and the last 1-2 hrs is spent finding a good camp (survival roll), setting up camp, and tending horses, sharpening blades, fixing straps, etc. So yes, there is a 12-14 hr workday, but only 8 or so of it is spent exploring.
Your party should have horses fairly quickly, which makes calculations easy. 1 day per hex exploring, regardless of terrain, and 3 hrs to cross grasslands/forest hexes traveling. This means they can cover 3 hexes per day going to and from places, like back and forth to Oleg's. Since my monsters tend to go after the 4-legged buffets the party rides, my group brings along 2-3 extra horses as pack animals and replacements.
I am having an issue with my players. Not so much that they aren't enjoying the game, because they are. The problem comes more from the fact that tactically they are incredibly sound. Many of them play MMORPG's or other strategy games, and so if I give them so much as a couple of rounds of preparation before an encounter then they have it beaten almost before initiative is rolled. On the other hand, when they get caught completely by surprise, then there are usually heavy casualties, often meaning that they go into negative HP.
What is interesting that when they were first level they were able to take on a CR10 encounter against 12 wolves (albeit without the +1 bonus to the bite damage) despite being caught by surprise, with minor wounding and a single character going down to negative HP.
I think that I have made them too confident in their own abilities, so much so that they do not run from the massive encounters that I throw against them, and end up with good dice rolls that somehow pull them through.
My question therefore is really two fold. Firstly, how the heck do I inspire the fear of the monsters again into them without killing the entire of the party.
Secondly, how the heck do I resolve that they have captured the Stag Lord alive, stripped him of all his possessions and now want to send him to Restov to stand trial there?
Part of me simply wants to give them a much larger reward, and they have certainly deserved it with the amount of work that they have carried out, wiping out all of the bandit problems without actually dealing with any of the side quests, and convinced that the beautiful boar Tuskgutter is actually the bear from the temple.
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My question therefore is really two fold. Firstly, how the heck do I inspire the fear of the monsters again into them without killing the entire of the party.
Secondly, how the heck do I resolve that they have captured the Stag Lord alive, stripped him of all his possessions and now want to send him to Restov to stand trial there?
Classes, levels, builds? How did they kill 12 wolves at 1st level? Details man, juicy details.
Fear; is really difficult to inspire because this is a game and the characters are adventurers. Generally, players want to play heroes, not some lilly-livered coward who quakes in his shoes and wets himself when a monster shows up. They want to play the guy who looks the monster in the eye and says, "Is that all you've got! Bring it on." When bad things happen, adventurers run TOWARD it, not away. Why do you want them to be afraid? Now respect for the monsters, that is something you want the players to have for the monsters.
Staglord; sounds interesting and could open up all sorts of possibilities and side plots (too many to mention really). If you don't want to bother, just send him north, there's a quick trial and he's executed. I would say the publicity of the trial attracts people to the area, give the group a few extra Build Points to start their kingdom.
Tuskgutter, what? That's pcs for you.
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Staglord; sounds interesting and could open up all sorts of possibilities and side plots (too many to mention really). If you don't want to bother, just send him north, there's a quick trial and he's executed. I would say the publicity of the trial attracts people to the area, give the group a few extra Build Points to start their kingdom.
Actually, taking him to Restov would be a great way to give them the charter at a ceremony following the execution.
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What is interesting that when they were first level they were able to take on a CR10 encounter against 12 wolves (albeit without the +1 bonus to the bite damage) despite being caught by surprise, with minor wounding and a single character going down to negative HP.
Where did this encounter even come from, if I may ask? The only wolves random encounter in the book is 1d6 for CR4, and CR7 is the highest random encounter on the list, being 1d4 trolls.
I would guess (s)he made it up. I do that all the time - although 12 wolves at lvl 1... what can I say.
I agree with the trial - it has a nice touch to it and makes getting the second charter much more festive: first some blood, then some feasting!
Also, if some of his old companions have escaped (doesn't seem likely, but still), they could stage an ambush to free him on the way to Restov. Use terrain, 4-5 dedicated archers (bandits with ranger levels) and it should make for an interesting encounter.
Then let the bandits withdraw and have them stage a second ambush, where they try to capture a PC for exchanging him/her for the Staglord.
Ruyan.
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You want to put the fear into players, then let them know they can lose. Don't overwhelm them with lots of foes, just give them intelligent foes. The kind that use the same tactics that they do. Oh, and don't pull punches (or at least do it judiciously and not where its obvious). If your group went straight to the bandit issue, they should only be 2nd level. There's plenty of things that can instill a healthy level of respect into them as they explore the Stolen Lands.
I was using a 20 point build on the 6player Kingmaker Conversion. The CR12 or so encounter was 2d6 wolves, and I happened to max it out completely, they won with lucky rolls and thinking well enough to get close to each other so that the cleric could get around to everyone when damage was taken. Add that to the amazing dice rolls that they had, with a ton of critical hits rolled and confirmed, they were nearly one shotting the wolves.
They had a gun slinger, inquisitor, illusionist sorcerer, rogue, cleric and a evoker sorcerer, and were around level 3 at the time of the battle with the Stag Lord. They actually haven't dealt with the trusted servants of the Stag Lord. Suffice to say they thought the whole attack through, poisoned a ton of booze that the Stag Lord ended up drinking because he didn't notice that the booze had been broken into, and consequently was knocked unconscious because of the CON damage and some good rolls by the players.
I will most likely be giving them another 10 build points as reward. The lieutenants will most likely be bomb shelling and having their own small bandit forts later, so that will provide an interesting way to make them really work for the exp later. I like the suggestion of bandits with ranger levels backing them up, and if Akiros were to be levelled up a little more then it might make things really interesting.
Like I say, even at second level they were remarkably good, they simply have tactics down. Most characters are optimised well, but with a fantastic backstory. Personality and character has been taken as a must for each character, but the mechanics haven't been ignored. My only worry is that the cleric of Desna has the stag lords helm rather than the rogue who is actually a worshipper of Erastil. But hey ho.
Greetings, fellow traveller.
You might want to try the PFSRD giant whiptail centipede. It's a monster that's on the random encounter table and they have encountered it within the mite's lair.
On a second note: make it two giant ones (mom, dad) and their little offspring (just normal medium-sized centipedes).
Mommy and daddy cannot be tripped, have decent attacks and poison. The little ones are just cannon fodder but help you adjust action economy.
Ruyan.
Kinda spoilers:
Just wanted to share a story about this AP, in the very first encounter, the very first thing that happened was for the fighter to hurl an axe and threaten, confirm, and one-shot Happs. His boys surrendered without even being asked. So much for anyone being afraid of bandits ever again...
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Greetings, fellow traveller.
You might want to try the PFSRD giant whiptail centipede. It's a monster that's on the random encounter table and they have encountered it within the mite's lair.
On a second note: make it two giant ones (mom, dad) and their little offspring (just normal medium-sized centipedes).Mommy and daddy cannot be tripped, have decent attacks and poison. The little ones are just cannon fodder but help you adjust action economy.
Ruyan.
Yeah I love the giant whiptail centipede. I used him under the Stag Lord's fort. I ran the old man a lot smarter than the AP.
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1) A good thread on Fey tricks is HERE
2) 2 horses to carry all the stuff they are stealing from Oleg. I had them as "normal" horses, ie. not combat trained mounts, and let the PCs "sell" them to Oleg, or keep them if they needed horses.
-- david
Papa.DRB
For some reason the links in the OP doesn't work for me :(
Anyone knows what has happened? I believe this source would be very useful to have now when I am about to start the first book.
/Thrilled
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For some reason the links in the OP doesn't work for me :(
Anyone knows what has happened? I believe this source would be very useful to have now when I am about to start the first book.
/Thrilled
If you go into the Kingmaker boards, those threads are all "stickied" so they'll stay at the top (albeit in an order determined by the most recent post, rather than the order of the adventures). There are also a few other useful threads stickied there, such as Kingdom Building.
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Alright. I have two questions. One regarding Kressle in this chapter and the other regarding a possible dilemma as far as producing an heir later on.
So I know that Kressle is supposed to flee for the stag lords fortress at 5 hp and thus isn't expected to escape. In my game, however, she ended up escaping after:
1. Chasing the bard off into the woods until he managed to hide.
2.Coming back to camp to find all her men dead.
3. Delivering a nasty critical hit on the party's inquisitor(nearly killing him)and
4. Stealing a horse to make her escape.
My question is: What am I supposed to do with her after she gets to the staglord's fort. I inevitably had her gather some more men and ambush the pcs at the river crossing where the inquisitor got his revenge with a greatsword through her skull. But my dilemma here is: How does her escape affect the option of infiltration at the staglord's fort? For now, I had her describe three of the four pc's to Akiros. But if any one has some insight as to how this plays out before they reach this area.
Also, I have a question regarding the possible union of a Kitsune(fox folk) and a vishkanya(snake person). Could they produce offspring? If so, would it be some mutant foxy snake? And would this produce any unrest?
To aid your players, you could have Akiros be on guard duty at gate when the group arrives.
Otherwise, I agree with Philip.
Ruyan.
Password is changed. When the PCs use the old password to infiltrate they are let in and lead into an ambush... Akiros may save them from this or it could be a nasty fight out of the Fort/to the Stag Lord.
Yeah, but most will tell you they gave the NPCs full hp anyways to not have the PCs walk right over them.
Ruyan.
Thanks guys. Yeah, I would have had Kressle talk to the staglord directly but he would have most likely been in a drunken stupor.
With regards to the hardship he endured during his youth, I decided although drunk, he had enough wits to punish her for losing the camp further up north and punished her for that.
Ruyan.
So, I'm GMing for the Kingmaker campaign, and now that the PCs are starting to build their kingdom I'm finding more and more that it would be immensely useful to have character stats for all of the main NPCs (like Jhod, Oleg, Kesten,etc.) I know they have ability scores in the front of Rivers Run Red, but is there somewhere online that their entire character sheets are listed? Like, what spells does Jhod know? And, does Kesten have any interesting feats? Ultimately, I'm looking for what is provided for Akiros and Auchs, etc.
I don't believe any of them have full-stat versions, at least not official ones.
Jhod is a cleric. He knows whatever spells he prayed for that morning, and he can change them the next morning if he needs different ones. Being that he's a cleric of Erastil, I'd build him mostly with village-support type spells (crafter's fortune, purify food and drink, hold person, etc.) unless he had some reason to expect combat, or something else was needed. Partly he's an NPC cleric to provide whatever healing or status-removal spells the PCs are unable to provide from their own resources, so think about that.
If it mattered, I'd probably build Kesten Garess as a cavalier, but he might just be a basic fighter with the basic boring fighter feats. Or maybe he's building toward Aldori Swordlord so has the right combination of feats for that. Either way, he's whatever the DM wants, and he can be either boring ("your base is now mostly safe") or interesting (roleplaying with Oleg and Svetlana, contest with the PCs for power, run a still on the side and get drunk a lot and Pcs have to deal with it.)
Oleg probably has all the appropriate merchant skills, and that's about it. Appraise, Diplomacy, Bluff, Sense Motive, whatever Craft spells you find appropriate for building the fort -- oh, and Knowledge (local) and maybe Profession (accounting). He probably has Skill Focus in his most useful skill, and maybe Great Fortitude, or Weapon Focus with his favorite bow. It really shouldn't matter unless it gets to combat with him.
Svetlana probably has several useful Craft skills (cooking, weaving, maybe furrier), probably Diplomacy and Knowledge (local), maybe Heal and Sense Motive, and (I think) one of the feats giving her a 3/day cantrip that would be useful around the house. If I wanted to be really tricky I might build her as a level 1 witch with a housecat familiar and mostly unobtrusive spells and have her doing Stuff in the background that didn't matter unless the PCs really looked into her story.
In any case, it's probably better to get a good idea of their character and motivations and habits, and then build them appropriately for that. The version of Svetlana that goes out dancing in the midnight moonlight with Perlivash and other fey and loves the wild she lives in would be completely different from the city girl orphan bride who was more or less sold to Oleg by the Restov orphanage and really wants to latch onto somebody else who can take her away from this horrible howling wilderness, and neither of them is the devoted trapper wife who really loves and supports Oleg but flirts with the PCs anyway for amusement. Even if all three of them have the same stats you'd play them completely differently.
That's funny. I usually build them the other way around. Seeing their stats, I meka up a personality and a backstory that explains why they have those stats.
I think I was just worried about making up stats or backstory for somebody and then buying the next book only to find they need to be significantly different than I developed them.
I agree with much of what I've read on these forums; my PCs are also killing the encounters without any trouble (within 2 rounds on average). They don't RP the battles much, though, they just go for the most tactically sound strategy. Now, I'm running 5 PCs, but I still have to max out every enemy's hitpoints and fudge some dice rolls just for any of the bad guys to be interesting (let alone intimidating). I wanted to make the Giant Whiptail Centipedes interesting, but even with the randomly rolled encounter, neither of them lasted more than 2 rounds. Am I missing something?
One more thing: despite them defeating everything in their path (all but 3 encounters on the map cleared), I've had to double their XP received from everything just to make them level 3 by the time they got to the Stag Lord. I pushed them up to 4 when they killed him. Just so we're clear: the XP listed on a creature has to be divided amongst the PCs, not that much given to each PC, right?
Yes, the PCs split the XP. Splitting it among five rather than four may be part of your slow growth, but Kingmaker assumes that the PCs will get about a third of their XP from story quests and hex exploration. And there should be some XP from random monsters as well. Are you counting that in?
I'd add a few more enemies rather than just maxing out hit points. Five players have more actions, give them more targets to spend those actions on.
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The backstory of my PCs from our 0-level adventure had Oleg as a retired knight with a bad knee who married the prettiest cook in the kitchen and headed out to get away from the toxic brevoy politics. Kesten was an acquaintance to the noble members of our party from previous events, and Jhod was a druid.
Due to players getting fancy with their plot twist cards (we were trying them out), Oleg was killed about halfway thru Book 1. Kesten was assigned to ride out on patrols around the area and keep it safe, and later became the marshall. He had 2 levels of fighter to start off and then went cavalier for the rest for obvious reasons. Jhod stayed druid and became the councilor, since when the PCs kingdom was just starting, he had already won over all the local farmers by helping them out and checking on them. Svetlana became the treasurer for the kingdom and eventually major of Knight's Rest, the settlement that formed from Oleg's, named in honor of him.
@Truthrevolution- Book 1 is sort of like the cocktail party/reception when you get off the boat, right before you get sent to the front lines. Let them enjoy their drinks, soon they will be wishing they were back in Book 1 again :)
XPwise, don't forget to include XP for exploring, and let the party know if they are low on XP, they need to do more exploring.
That being said, I highly recommend completely revamping all the encounters for your party. Some might only need a touchup or adding one more opponent, while some will need serious overhaul or terrain modifiers to be challenging.
One fun thing to do is take a set encounter, and expand on it. I made most of my set encounters encounter chains. For example, the party encounters a giant turtle and kills it. The turtle belonged to a troll that came here and fed it every day. He is now pissed at the party. The party kills three spiders in one area. Now a pair of huge lions move into the territory and begin hunting, since the spiders are not keeping them away anymore. This made the land seem more alive and dynamic.
I know horses have been mentioned several times so we looked up the encumbrance rules for str and quadrapeds and hopefully this will help some with others dealing with horses.
Most characters with gear slow the horse's movement rate from 50 to 35. For exploration purposes I am treating it as 30. The horses are light riding horses. And I am treating them as treasure.
One PC traded his horse for a lesser restoration from Jhod.
They staked one horse out to distract (well feed) a wyvern from a Hallow's Last Hope random encounter. (I dropped in parts of that downloadable as a delaying tactic because not all my players were available. The disease can be a form of biological warfare from the bandits, or perhaps a twist from drekavacs)
I also have intelligent foes attack the horses when the party leaves them someplace, or while they are camping. (From Hallow's Last Hope I have a worg with small wolf pack working with two former sootscale kobolds running around. [one kobold from the dwarven monastery the other was the hobgoblin I reskinned as a kobold] both encounters from Hallow's Last Hope)