Snow day Saturday Pathfinder Kingmaker

I'd be lying if I didn't say I spent my snow day playing a lot of Pathfinder. It's not all I did . . . but I spent a good deal of time on it.
My guys are 8th level now, and only since level 7 have wolves and worgs become reasonable foes. Before that, I spent a good deal of buffs trying to avoid getting destroyed by them. You see, they get a free "trip" attack if they hit you. If you trip, you can only Stand Up before doing anything . . . which provokes an Attack of Opportunity, which they get lots of because they run up and surround you. So, you get hit, you fall, you try to stand, and you die. Only once I was high enough level - and armed with ridiculous weaponry like flaming swords and acid bows and corrosive axes was I able to defeat them with only a few trips here and there.

Now Will-o-wisps are my worst enemy. They tend to attack by surprise, and get a surprise round attack that consists of a lightning stroke. And then they go before my guys routinely, and get another. And THEN they get to move into melee and attack again. When it's 3, 4, or even 5 wisps, and they all target my lead character, it's brutal. By brutal, I mean fatal. I had my main guy at 100 HP and with a full Protection from Electricity spell on him get taken to negative HP and killed outright before I could act. Yeah. I won the fight and brought my guy back . . . but I literally went into the fight expecting the wisps and buffed the guys out the wazoo against their best attacks and died while trucking around with 100 HP. So that's not a lot of fun.

I'm still enjoying the game, but it's really tough to figure out what's next - and believe me, there is a useful order to do things in. Checking some companion guides, I see I permanently missed out on one guy because I short-circuited the troll adventure by directly going after and destroying the trolls. Yeah, I didn't realize I needed to wait. It's a lot like Planescape, where my first playthrough was good, but I missed a lot. My second was much better. I don't know if this one will get a second.

I don't want to waste time, but then again, I don't want to miss out because I go squish monsters too soon.

I also realized that a lot of random encounters drop useful goods, like masterwork weapons, which sell for 100 each. I avoided all fights I could early on, to save resources. Clearly I should have been taking the fights on as the profit would have paid for the rations, potions, and scrolls needed to clean up after.

Live and learn. Still fun, except when wolves attack - I mean, now, when wisps attacks. Sigh.