Stage 3: Clearing New Sorpigal: Goblinwatch & Abandoned Temple of Baa
Approx. level 5-7 New Sorpigal
You are back on the New Sorpigal mainland with a party that should be around level 5-6 and equipped with bows. With the early goblin and mage camps behind you, it is time to clear the region's first two real dungeons — Goblinwatch (the keep south of town) and the Abandoned Temple of Baa (west of town) — both rated very easy. Along the way you will gather the Goblinwatch Code, the Candelabra, the Heart of the Spider Queen, cobra eggs, and rescue Angela, then return to New Sorpigal to cash in five or six quests at once.
Pick up the New Sorpigal quests first
Before you head out, make a circuit of town so every dungeon trip completes a quest. In the Inn, talk to Andover Potbello for the Candelabra quest. Visit the two NE houses for the Spider Queen / Heart quest from Buford T. Allman (Elements Guild) and the find Angela quest from Violet Dawson (Self Guild). Speak to Hejaz Mawsil (Buccaneer's Lair) about Seeking Cobra Eggs (he pays well for them later). At Town Hall, get the Goblinwatch code quest from Janice. With all four Abandoned-Temple quests in hand, one run clears the whole place.
Clear the NE goblin camp and SE mage party
With everyone now carrying a bow, sweep the outdoor camps for gold, experience, and crates of loot. Take out the goblin camp to the northeast and the mage party to the southeast, then grab the crates around them. Pull from a distance and fight from behind walls so the casters cannot reach you. Leave the eastern islands alone for now — you will visit them after the dungeons if you want the Expert Water Magic teacher there.
The New Sorpigal mages are glass cannons: Apprentice / Journeyman / Mage have very low HP (the Apprentice Mage has just 6 HP, tied for the lowest in the game) but throw Flame Arrow, Cold Beam, and Lightning Bolt, so drop them fast with arrows or Fire Bolt. Goblins and Goblin Shamans are weak; only the higher tiers occasionally toss Fire Bolt. The Goblin King (40 HP) can break a piece of your equipment with its attack, so kill it quickly rather than trading blows.
✅ Clear
- Apprentice/Journeyman/Mage (NS) — tiny HP, good XP, snipe them before they cast
- Goblins & Goblin Shamans — easy XP and the crate loot they guard
⏭ Skip
- Nothing here is worth skipping — just bracket the Goblin King so its item-break attack lands on no one
Goblinwatch is the keep just south of New Sorpigal. Kill the goblins around the outside and grab the crate behind it, then go in.
Fast finish: head down the right-hand path, open the door, kill the lone rat, then clear the room of ~8 goblins. Open the bank of cabinet doors in the wall to reveal three chests — have your trap disarmer open them (the traps here hit hard for this level) and take the Goblinwatch Code scroll. That alone satisfies Janice's Town Hall quest, so you can leave now if you like.
Full clear (recommended for XP/gear): from the entrance, go straight ahead. Take the right path and clear goblins, rats, and bloodsuckers, then hit the switch to open two side passages — the left holds a guarded chest, the right is just rats. Enter the other door and clear three goblins to reach the keypad wall (see the spoiler block for the door code). Past it, follow the hall down through rats and suckers to a hole near the south wall; drop in and fight through a mixed room of enemies. Loot the chests there — but the second chest from the left drops three Goblin Shamans when opened, so be ready. Follow the passage back to the entrance to rest and resupply, then take the lower right ramp down to two opposing caves, each ending in a chest (rats guard the west, bloodsuckers the east). That clears the keep.
The keypad door (hint)
Deep in Goblinwatch is a lettered keypad (panels A–P) that opens and closes numbered doors. The trick: each panel opens one door and closes another, so start by opening door #1 and let whichever door it closes tell you which panel to press next, chaining in order. The letters you press spell a word — think about what 'Goblin' looks like backwards. The exact sequence is in the spoiler below. (Note: opening the doors is not the quest — you still need the Goblinwatch Code scroll found elsewhere in the keep.)
Show spoiler — Goblinwatch keypad solution
Goblinwatch keypad solution
Enter the panels spelling NILBOG — 'Goblin' backwards (the wall is labelled ENILBOG). Press the letters N, I, L, B, O, G in that order and all the doors open.
This cave-temple is west of New Sorpigal — do not confuse it with the larger Temple of Baa south of Castle Ironfist (that one is for the Chime of Harmony quest, much later). Knock out the bats at the entrance, grab the loose treasure, and take the stairs down.
In the right-hand room, kill the cobras and take the Candelabra from the chest (Potbello's quest). Cross the hall and clear the cobras and the spiders in the rooms beyond, then head into the cave. Push through bats and spiders to a chest in an area periodically zapped by a timed Sparks trap (it fires every few minutes from a fixed point, not from the chest itself), so grab the loot and keep moving. Continue to a room mixing all three monster types and go north to meet Angela Dawson (Violet's quest done). North of there, a room of hanging cages holds items — stand to the side when clicking the two middle cages or a trap may catch you.
Back at the big room, take the cave down (more spiders). At the fork, left is a dead end of spiders, so go right through cobras and spiders to a down-slope room and a chest at the end. Then go down the slope the cobras came from: right leads to a cobra nest with eggs and a chest — grab the cobra eggs for Hejaz Mawsil; left is the spider nest with the Queen Spider. Kill her, take the Heart of the Spider Queen (Buford's quest), and loot the chest behind the door at the back of the nest. Click the portal stone above that door to warp back to the entrance.
Both dungeons are very easy on paper, but nearly everything here inflicts a status. In Goblinwatch, Rats (Common/Large/Giant) and Suckers (Blood/Brain/Soul) carry Disease — individually trivial, but let them pile up and your stats tank. In the Abandoned Temple, the Spiders (Spider/Giant/Huge, plus the Queen Spider boss) and Cobras (Cobra/King/Queen) are all Poison-immune and inflict Poison, and they travel in large packs; their HP is low, so focus-fire one cluster at a time rather than wading in. Bats have little HP but flutter, making them annoying to hit — arrows or area spells help. Keep an Antidote / Cure Poison and a Cure Disease handy, and rest at the entrance whenever the status load gets heavy.
✅ Clear
- Queen Spider (boss) — required for the Heart; a Huge-Spider+ but still low HP, snipe it
- Spiders & Cobras — clear in clusters for XP and to reach the egg/heart chests
- Goblinwatch goblins/rats/suckers — easy XP and the chest loot they guard
⏭ Skip
- The left dead-end spider room past the Temple cave fork — nothing but more spiders, no reward
- Do not melee Poison-immune cobras/spiders in a swarm — pull and arrow them so their Poison doesn't stack on the party
The Expert Staff teacher (Dorf, 2000gp) lives at Goblinwatch itself, so if any party member uses a staff, train up while you are here. New Sorpigal town also offers a deep bench of Expert teachers (all magic schools, Bodybuilding, Meditation, Perception, Identify, Learning, Ancient Weapons) — spend your dungeon gold on the skills your build actually leans on. There are no Master teachers in this region.
When you cycle back through New Sorpigal, remember its free buffs: the fountains by the Temple give +5 Hit Points, +5 Magic Points, and +10 Might (temporary), and the well by the docks gives a permanent +2 Luck. On the GrayFace patch, fountain abuse is fixed — you can no longer re-drink by deactivating party members, and each fountain works as one use per buff period — so drink before a dungeon run rather than expecting to stack it.
⚙ Patch note: fountain bugs are fixed — you can no longer drink repeatedly by deactivating party members, and the Blackshire/Kriegspire fountains no longer wrongly share a single 'used' flag. Each fountain now works as intended (one use per buff period).
Return to town and cash in the quests
Head back to New Sorpigal and collect your rewards in one sweep: turn in the Goblinwatch Code at Town Hall (Janice), the Candelabra to Potbello at the Inn, the Heart of the Spider Queen to Buford, and report finding Angela to Violet — then sell the cobra eggs to Hejaz Mawsil in the house behind the inn for a tidy 1000gp. When you finish the Goblinwatch turn-in you can also pick up the Chime of Harmony quest (ask about evil cults); note that the Chime itself is found in the Ironfist Temple of Baa later, not the abandoned one. With the gold and XP in hand, you are set to move on to the Castle Ironfist region.
The third New Sorpigal dungeon, Gharik's Forge, sits in this same region but is rated very hard: it is full of Fire-immune Fire Elementals and Electricity-immune Sorcerers/Magicians/Warlocks, and its key door needs Gharik's Key from the Silver Helm Outpost on the Misty Islands. You cannot finish it now — leave it for a much later stage.
✅ Clear
- NE goblin camp & SE mage party — crates, gold, easy XP (mages have tiny HP)
- Goblinwatch goblins/rats/suckers — chest loot; full clear sets you up for the next region
- Abandoned Temple spiders & cobras (in clusters) — reach the Candelabra, eggs, and Heart
- Queen Spider boss — required for the Heart; low HP, snipe it
⏭ Skip
- Eastern islands — leave until after the dungeons (visit only for Expert Water Magic)
- Left dead-end spider room past the Temple cave fork — no reward
- Gharik's Forge — very hard, needs Gharik's Key from the Misty Islands; do it much later
- Don't melee Poison-immune cobra/spider swarms — pull and arrow them instead
- Goblinwatch — now
- Abandoned Temple of Baa — now
- Gharik's Forge — later (very hard; needs Gharik's Key from the Misty Islands Silver Helm Outpost)