Game Daze #4: "Baldur's Gate" Day 4

I haven't played for a few days, having been feeling a bit under the weather.  But I did make some progress since the last time I have written one of these gaming entries, or logs, or whatever you want to call these things I am writing.  As far as Baldur's Gate is concerned, I have travelled to Nashkel where apparently something or someone is tainting all of the iron ore, thus making all metal instruments such as weapons, shields, armor, etc. brittle and completely useless.  Also, miners are being killed by dog headed creatures who are called kobolds.  These are the easiest creatures to kill and give out hardly any XP.  They are really only a threat in large groups, and usually when they attack you, it is in large groups.

I remember Nashkel mines from the last time I played, which would honestly be over a decade ago.  I made it down through the maze of tunnels and tracks to the lowest level, where I found a mage just standing there, waiting for me to have him join my party.  My party was full, at 6 characters, and I had to ask one of my fighter characters to leave in order to allow the mage to join.  Then I proceeded to the next lair or tunnel and was attacked by whoever it is who is bringing kobolds into the mines and he apparently has something to do with the contaminated iron ore.  In the process of fighting him, the mage whom I had just recruited was killed, and I was attacked by skeletons, kobolds, and possibly other kinds of monsters.

A lot of my characters were heavily wounded, but except for the mage, all very much still alive.  I was somewhat glad the mage had died, because I really wanted my other character back.  He is named Minsk I think, and he has a pet gerbil or something named Boo.  I think he had an accident with a brain injury somewhere, and he talks to his pet gerbil.  But I like the character.  He is a good fighter.

My party is full at 6 characters, and leveling up is going to be more difficult, tedious, and long drawn out.  In order to level up any of my characters, I have to earn double the experience points that each of my characters already has.  So I basically have to do what I have already done with each character.  I am going to have to find ways to gain more experience more rapidly if I am going to progress in the game further.  But my characters are pretty strong and experienced.  Hopefully random encounters with enemies will have more experience for me when I defeat the monsters that try to attack me.

As far as the story goes, I am on Chapter 3, and am not sure what I am supposed to do next.  The mayor of Nashkel has provided me with a reward for clearing out the mines, but I don't know what is next.  I have never gotten this far in the game before, and will have to look through my game journal or quest log or whatever to figure out what I need to do next.