Fight Avoiding

[fabulaparva]

Playing on Easy Mode it's possible to complete all quests of the game (main AND side quests) and find all areas with 126 fights or less (yes I counted ). At Easy level, even if that number seems high, most of the fight are quite quickly over, provided that the party is built well enough. If one chooses to not succeed in or do all sidequests (e.g. Riley's quest can be failed right at the first fight with no game over) the number drops even lower...but with the expense of not getting to read some of the story. On the other hand, sometimes (deliberately) failing in a quest will give you something different to read (eg, try failing at either fight in Vaelis' quest). Anyways, I thought I'd post available "shortcuts" or non-violent options for completing the quests here...while still getting to read most of the story. Maybe someone somewhere will find this useful, lol. Act 2 requires more fights than any of the other chapters and also has the least options to avoid them. Quest choices in spoilers.

Note that while avoiding fighting might still work on Normal difficulty as well, I don't recommend this level of fight-avoidance on Hard or NM level. For faster fights in general the key is to invest into aggressive traits and points and have both heavy single enemy attacks and row attacks available. Imo, druid + hunter is the easiest twin combo to play (healing + heavy hits when needed), but that's just my opinion.


Act 1
+When going East of Ninim, give all your money to the bandits (shop first, but you need to have some money for them to let you go --- they let me pass on easy level with just 4gold, lol, but 0 will make them attack)

Available quest shortcuts:
Secret Formula (enter the cave the first time at frozen woods):

Spoiler:

Show up and demand the scroll from the bandits, choose 'dark magic items' => completed with 0 fights

Animal Problem

Spoiler:

Refuse the quest first when you meet the farmer to get a ring. Negotiate with ratmen =>completed with 0 fights

Polar Bear Hunting

Spoiler:

Don't fight the bears. You'll have to fight bandits and spiders before the polar bear, but you can skip both of the 2 bear fights.

Quest caution!!!
Bandits stealing pelts

Spoiler:

You must fight to complete this quest. If you choose to negotiate and then fight, you'll have to fight the bandits without the bleeding effect you get from the bomb if you ambush them. If you negotiate and choose to take the money, you'll get some cash without fighting, but you'll fail the quest. You'll get a better payoff by ambushing the bandits and stealing some pelts.

[jack1974]

Haha interesting. I'm thinking to steal this an post on Steam forums too

[fabulaparva]

Act 2

+Avoid the Lugal area when you don't have to go there due to a quest. It's the only area you can't just walk back out but will have to fight all the mercs first.
+Apart from the Invitations quest, you always risk a fight when you exit a Dingirra family area. Save and reload if you really want to avoid these.
+The Master of the Pits will be after your money on two days: On the day you go adventuring with Krimm the first time and on the last day you get off to buy weapons just before the Liberty Challenge. Blow all your money (or almost all) before entering the arena on those two days to get the related achievement.
+After returning back to the arena on your first Dingirra adv. day with Krimm, you'll face a quest with 0 to many arena slave fights before a Boss. You can try your luck or use saving and reloading. I managed to clear this out with only two slave fights by just reloading a save when I saw the two guys in the cell (they always attack and have no info for you)
+ On Riley's Quest there are 7 guard fights and 1 Boss. You'll get a level-up after 3 fights. There's no shortcut here except trying the stunts (and reloading after failed stunts if you really don't want to fight). You can always lose a fight, but you'll then fail the quest.

Available quest shortcuts:
Memories

Spoiler:

Paying Ardin's tab will cost you 500g. This is an easy fight, so I would say just fight, and save your money for the later confrontation
Paying the Viking off will cost you 1000g. => -1500g and 3 fights => quest complete

Family slave day --- Kiduu-quest
Other family quests might be shorter than this, but I like the Kiduu-reward the most. ( Family-quest rewards are listed in here: Legendary Usables - Quick Reference )You can cut some corners in the dungeon, but you'll lose some exploring fun this way...anyway "short" route:

Spoiler:

1 Lugal fight (entering Iron Hall)
Choose the arrow to the sarcophagus room (the other route is much longer)
-check the other door
-check the coffin
1 Boss fight
Free Robinia
After freeing Robinia you'll have 4 consequent Lugal/Dingirra guard fights following the green arrows outside. If you get Robinia killed in the fights, the quest fails, but you can move on in the story.

Steam Tunnels
These tunnels can be cleared by just using the steam-path shortcuts twice and then fighting the Boss (easy), but you'll miss a bit of dialogue. Best for immersion would be to

Spoiler:

Fight the lizardmen twice and then take the available 2nd shortcut to the boss.
You can also take the first shortcut, then fight one group of lizards to see the dialogue about the lizards and then take more shortcuts to the boss, but there's a bit of an immersion break with the arrows talking about lizards when you haven't even met them...

Quest Caution!!
Ant Queen

Spoiler:

This quest is optional, but if you choose not to do it, you'll lose part of the story, consumable reward, All quests done Achievement and all the later ratmen shops + related achievement!

[fabulaparva]

Act 3

+Autolevel everyone to 14 at the start of this Act, it should make the first quest, Merrow's Men, which is one of the longest quests in this chapter easier to complete.
+There's a secret area in this Act that you'll need for the Explorer-achievement. To find it:

Spoiler:

After completing the storyline quests Merrow's Men and A trip in the forest (aka Jariel's quest), try to board the ship. Then, complete one quest from Merrow (Empire's Plans), one quest from Aenais (Lost Brother) and one quest from the tavern (Pride of Lukoss) --the order you do these quests in doesn't matter. After these and before taking any additional quests, visit the ship repeatedly until the new location to sail to is announced. There are no quests in the area, it's just for grinding. You can visit it and come back without fighting anything.

Available shortcuts
Lost Brother

Spoiler:

Circle Mansion
Free Gonzalo => completed with 0 fights
(or you could just check one room before freeing Gonzalo and have 1 fight)

Empire's Plans

Spoiler:

Choose: Job for Chalassa
2 soldier waves and quest done
There are more interactions and dialogue with the other, longer option, though.

Pride of Lukoss

Spoiler:

Don't explore the cave!!! (lots of long fights)
1 Boss fight if you call out to the crew => this is optional but if you want to see Krimm get angry at Riley again.....

Shortest route: Just board the damn ship
Search in this order:
Captain's quarters =>wraith fight
The crew quarters => zombie fight
The cargo hold (you'll have to open it to finish the quest) => Boss fight

Lost Parents

Spoiler:

Options 'Use slaves as distraction' and 'Try sneaking in' both have the same number of fights:
3 guard fights
+1 can't use magic guard fight
However, in 'sneaking', Chalassa will occasionally kill one of the guards, so I recommend choosing that.

War or Peace

Spoiler:

You don't have to fight captain Starrad if you choose Jariel or Krimm's option
Jariel's option => 1 demon fight + 1 boss fight and done

Nutty Nutt's Treasure

Spoiler:

turn to west
turn and look through telescope
go to East*)
=>=> Kraken Boss fight again and quest done
*)Saving this for last and doing the other 3 directions first will give you 2 boss fights and 1 fight with lotta crabs before the Kraken

[fabulaparva]

Act 4
+ Autolevel to 21
+ Make sure you have at least 5000 worth gold and items to sell if you don't want to do random fights to gather enough money to pay the toll later.
+ Collecting flowers and rhino horns is optional => 0 fights

Centaurs!

Spoiler:

Help Him
Ask her why => completed with 0 fights and you can shop! Remember the upcoming toll, though

Minotaur Canyon

Spoiler:

Avoid
Left path => completed with 0 fights
Note: Ambushing the minotaur and killing him would give you an item to choose (armour or strong potion). There are a couple of funny lines upon choosing the decoy for the ambush that you'll miss if you choose to avoid this guy.

Poor Hulius

Spoiler:

Approach the Gnolls
Pay for Hulius' life
Want him to be a slave => pay 100g and done
(Afterwards, ask for a reward to get a little something )

****
Final note:
Excessive and fast reloading of saves to get better random events may induce a not-so-common RenPy-crash. Annoying, but not fatal, because you were loading something you had a save for, anyway.
Not all quests have shortcuts, obviously. Sometimes you just have to fight. Number of fights I did on this trial to complete all quests (Save Chalassa and Vaelis' quest in Act 3) for each Act: 20 + 54 + 40 + 12. Achievements:
Tainted Love, All About Money, Save Chalassa, The Worst Pirates, Treasure Hunter, Adventurer, Explorer, It's Ratman!
Throwing in a few extra random grind fights without Shea & Althea and excluding them from a few storyline fights would've also earned the This Is Our Story!- achievement.

Please notify me if I typed anything horribly wrong.

[fabulaparva]

Haha interesting. I'm thinking to steal this an post on Steam forums too

Lol, steal away.

[fabulaparva]

For comparison purposes, completing Loren with extension and acquiring the following list of achievements ("pacifist-options" used whenever possible, eg in Karen's and Loren's personal quests, didn't fight Krul, etc)
Free Karen, Vanquished, Formidable, Champion of Orcs Arena, Bad Company, King Slayer, It's Personal, Let's Party, Undeceivable, Animalist, one char romanced/alone, reach 50 points x 3
... took around 101 fights. Go back and forth with few paths, add 2-5 fights and achievements Van Helsing & Diamond Hunter could be added. I got lucky with the Everburn fights and had to fight only twice. No reputation quests done and all random fights skipped. LtAP of course has no separate 'all quests'-done achievement nor does SotW have a cheat-button, so direct comparisons are a bit difficult, but I thought I'd log that anyway.

[jack1974]

Interesting, so are you saying that trying to play both games using the least fights possible, with Loren you got around 101 and with SOTW 126?
Then probably wasn't really the number of battles (even if the average player doesn't exactly know all the shortcuts you used) but something else. To be honest, sometimes everything seems just a bit random

[fabulaparva]

Yeah, I played both games on Easy with lowest possible number of fights I could think of while acquiring as many achievements/quests done as possible. (playing on easy will of course exclude all hard-mode related stuff/bosses)

ETA: I guess one thing that makes Loren's fights look so much less is that the personal quests that you have to specifically look out for, take about 22 fights, so people can skip a lot of those if they are not interested in a specific character, whereas in SotW the personal quests are integrated into the storyline so people will fight to win? Pure speculation here, though.

[jack1974]

It might also be the overall difficulty - for someone like you or me, used to RPG, Loren's hard difficulty could be considered "normal", while SOTW easy difficulty for Loren's players might be "hard"