The first encounter was a ton of fun, but some really low diplomacy rolls meant the eidolon got beaten on quite badly. She survived, though, and gave one last chance for diplomacy . . . which also failed miserably. Ah, well, at least she got away after giving a little info about what had happened.
The ruined settlement had some good flavor, and after cleaning the mural we had a decent idea of what we were going to be facing -- or thought we did.
Then the second encounter just about killed us. We broke the illusion with the barbarian's idea to "fish" for the chest with a grapple arrow and rope, which a couple of decent will saves figured out that it wasn't really there . . . and that's when the excrement encountered the rotating atmospheric oscillator. That water orb is just crazy frustrating, and it felt like any time someone would get out they'd just get sucked right back in. If not for the warpriest's potion of fly, a couple of us would have been washed down the river. Nobody was ever in any real danger of dying from combat (and in fact the adds each went down in one hit) but there were some very close calls with drowning. Eventually got through that, though, and the GM let us camp on the way up the mountain -- the warpriest and wizard were both out of spells at that point.
The third encounter, however, was where the real frustration set in. Climbing those (expletive deleted) stairs just about killed the party. We split into a "left" and "right" group, with climbing rope, pitons, the whole works on both sides. Left side went with a slow-and-steady approach while the right side tried a faster approach. The right side each (Barbarian and Rogue) made their first climb checks . . . and then proceeded to fail the second, taking a good bit of damage. They then grew increasingly desperate to get up and join the party, leading to some bad decisions which combined with bad dice rolling to keep them on the ground. The party on the left took several rounds to get up to the top (discovered about halfway up, and then the shooting started) and would have been in trouble if not for the warpriest's crazy-high AC. Once they reached the top, though, it went much better -- getting four archers with one well-placed fireball is always a good time, and the constructs didn't prove to be much of a problem.
The trek through the mountain was . . . anticlimactic. The rogue hit every one of his scouting rolls, and the warpriest's navigation rolls were flawless.
On to the fourth encounter. For a time, we thought we were going to be able to diplomacize (is that even a word?) our way through, but it was not to be. No problems with the encounter itself, and both went down with little fuss.
Our fifth encounter (after another flawless navigation / scouting roll combo) was similarly simple. The boss got off his crystal-shards move, but never got another hit in. I heard a little bit about what might have happened if we hadn't taken him down as quickly as we did, and I'm certainly glad we didn't have to deal with that.
