Airship thoughts: Hey, if it means I never have to set foot on a boat again, I'm all for it!
Kay would like to trade in the following items for credit toward the work she needs done on her Snakeskin Tunic or cash to purchase the Dancing Scarves she wants to buy, which ever comes first... But she is happy to put them into the "Party Sell" pile and claim their value in GP in credit to be used when there is time available to upgrade her tunic or she is able to find the Scarves to purchase...
Wand of Shocking Grasp (25 charges) (350 sale value)
Wand of Magic Missile (25 charges) (350 sale value)
Wand of Magic Missile CL3 (41 charges) (1371 gp 9 sp 5 cp sale value)
+1 Keen Dagger (4151 gp sale value)
Total value: 6,222 gp 9 sp 5 cp
Also, I realized that I was making errors on the cost of the items I want enhanced! Kay's Snakeskin Tunic will only cost 6,000 gp to enhance, because it is HALF the cost to craft the item. 12,000 gp is the DIFFERENCE in the cost of the two, not the cost... And enhancing an Amulet of Natural Armor from +2 to +3 would cost 5,000... Not sure why I was putting the full cost... EDIT: I was wrong... the amulet would be 5000...
At that point, it is probably a good idea to buy a lesser form of Dancing Scarves as well and have Anna enhance them further... (Does Anna also have the ability to speed up her crafting the same way as Dothan, or is that a Bard thing?) So, I could buy either +1 or +2 scarves, or maybe even just buy plain old scarves and have Anna make them magical herself. (But I'd rather have her working on Illian's and my swords than armor... but, you know... I wouldn't mind nicer armor...) So, if I got +2 Dancing Scarves, they would cost 4,300. That's well within my budget... which, from my early calculations, without donations, is 9702 gp 4 sp...
So, if I buy +2 Dancing Scarves I would have 5,402 gp 4 sp remaining. If I could borrow 600 gp from someone to have Dothan upgrade my Snakeskin Tunic, I'd be very happy... But I'm sure I'll have that much once we sell the magical items and Dragon we are selling, right? We have not idea how much an Ancient White Dragon will bring in...
But, the cost to increase the Dancing Scarves from +2 to +3 would be, strangely enough, IDENTICAL to the price of upgrading the Amulet of Natural Armor from +2 to +3: 2,500 and, technically, 5 days, but 2.5 days if casting is accelerated. Meanwhile, the cost of taking a +1 Keen weapon to a +1 Keen Agile weapon is 5,000 gp and 10 days or 5 days accelerated... So, these are basically my Crafting wish list once I purchase my +2 Dancing Scarves, if I can find +2 Dancing Scarves...
If +2 Dancing Scarves are NOT available, we'll revisit the whole armor equation with what IS available... I hope that AT LEAST we can find some Masterwork Dancing Scarves that can be enhanced... (If that's the case, we might as well go for the whole +3 package... 4,500 gp and 9 days, or 4.5 accelerated. As far as I can tell, Illian's swords are only +1 swords, correct? So adding Agile to them is only a +2 addition... So that makes it 3,000 gp per sword and 6 days per sword, or 3 accelerated, so a total of 6,000 gp and 6 days accelerated... So... If we could buy the Dancing Scarves in Riddleport and were travelling to Korvosa (see below) Anna could easily finish Illian's Swords shortly after we got on the boat. (16 days overland travel to get to Riddleport, 1/4 Crafting time 4 days of work. Assuming Accelerated crafting, 1 sword done and one 1/3 of the way done.) Then we get on the boat and, I'll say it's about 16 days, rounding up generously (really it should take a little under 13), so 4 more days of crafting time... Illian's second weapon could be done then, with two days of time to work on other things.
If the scarves are indeed +2 when we buy them, then they will be almost done. It will probably take a day or two to shop in the new city and Dothan will probably want to hang around long enough to perform in a tavern or two to develop her reputation in a new part of Varisia, so that should give her time to finish the Scarves...
Then my sword can go into the que... right?
Or she can start working on other people's armor... Or adding pluses to weapons... we shouldn't let travel time go unused... Kay should probably add Craft Magical Arms and Armor so she can help, but she'll need to get a wand of whatever she's going to assist with for the spell, because her spells are very limited...
If we were going OVERLAND to Korsova, we would go right PAST Riddleport and could see about picking up the scarves there with a quick side trip by a couple of people on mounts who could easily catch up with the rest of the party after the trip into town to purchase things... Then we could all have about 17 days worth of crafting time. So, even without Accelerated Crafting that gives Anna time to do Illian's two swords (12 days) and complete the Scarves (5 days)... With Accelerated crafting, and some serious borrowing of cash, Dothan could easily complete the upgrade to the Snakeskin Tunic (6 days) and several Amulets of Natural Armor upgrades. (Up to 4 from +2 to +3, 2.5 days each, or more if people still have +1 versions they want to take to +2, 1,500 gp and 1.5 days accelerated...)
And I could buy as many more special arrows and durable arrow making supplies as we can find in Riddleport and make durable special arrows until the cows come home...
Anyway, I'd highly suggest Dancing Scarves for anyone who doesn't wear armor. It has no armor check penalty or Arcane Spell Failure, after all. You just have to move around while using it... It seems like a good idea...
I think it's probably a good idea to do some provisioning before we head into the Runeforge. El is just about out of special arrows and there's all this Dragon Hoard treasure to spend, so...
Let's have Anna go teleport a wagon or three here, conjure up some mounts to pull them, load up the treasure, well covered, of course, as well as the dragon, and head off to sell and buy stuff. If we want a bigger city, we should probably think about heading to Korvosa. It's closer than Absalom by a good margin. However, and Kay hates to admit this, the easiest way to get there would most likely be by boat... (Could we take the Dragon carcass on a boat?)
The questions:
1. How long would it take to get there by wagon? (If my calculation of the overland distance is correct: 750 miles, and the terrain, mostly trackless plains, going by the route that is that long, but a little bit of hilly and forest...) I calculate the time would by about 68 days...
2. How long would it take by... gulp... boat? Well, if I figured the distance by water correctly, we would have to travel by land for about 60 miles over trackless plains, which would take about 5 days by wagon. Then we'd have to hire a boat and load it, probably a day or two in Brinewall, but we could have a couple of people ride ahead on horses that are faster than the wagon and arrange for that. Actually, it wouldn't be a bad idea for, say, Dothan, Kay, Hal, and Dwyn to do that. (Face and Muscle) They would get there in 2 days, giving Dothan one day to negotiate a boat, then two days of unrestricted crafting time to work on, oh, I don't know, Kay's snakeskin shirt. Kay could also work on some arrows for Eldthor during all three days, as she wouldn't really be needed for the negotiations... (Not the diplomat, but she needs to be there so she isn't traveling without the snakeskin...) In any event, the trip from Brinewall to Korvosa looks to be aroung 1080 miles by sea, which would take about 22.5 days in a sailing ship. So, it would take a total of a bout 28 days or so to go by sea via Brinewall, hopefully... Call it 30 to be safe.
If we wanted to go through Riddleport, to check out the markets in the third largest city in the region and see what is available in to purchase in the less reputable side of Varisia. Other than Kay wanting to wear a disguise, it would only take a couple more days total, according to my calculations... I'm calculating about 16 day s overland to Riddleport, then a smaller number of days via boat from Riddleport due to it being closer. (About 12.5, around 600 miles.) So it would be around 29 days, make it 31 to be safe. But we'd have to go through a pretty tough town with A LOT of loot... That could be dangerous. Not that we can't handle ourselves. We might be able to get passage on larger ships out of Riddleport that go faster as well... I don't know if that's the case...
3. Just go to Magnamar and do our new city trip some other time, the trip isn't that much shorter than to go to Korvosa, frankly, at least overland... It is about 480 miles, with about half of it rough terrain. It would take about 50 days by my reckoning. By boat through Brinewall, i'm guessing it is about the same distance, 480 miles over sea, but much faster. The same 5 days to get to Brinewall, then a 10 day boat ride to Magnamar, so 15 days. That would be a more reasonable shopping expedition, but we already know what we can buy there... However, we also know we can sell dragon parts there and they know us, so there are some advantages. We could also take a day trip to Sandpoint or teleport to the library for research if needed...