Golden Sickle and Rhalata Starting Level?

[sakuradrops]

What level do you guys suggest as a decent starting point for the two guild questlines? I’m level 13 and so far I’ve only done the first pit fight for the guild and I’m at the waiting stage. I haven’t done anything for the Golden Sickle yet.

Also what level should your rhetoric be at? It’s only at 30 at the moment for me and I hear one of the questlines has a lot of rhetoric checks.

Lastly at what point during the main quest would you suggest doing these questlines? I know you can do these quests at almost any point during the main story but since the world is ending and I’m among the only people who can stop it, it wouldn’t make much sense to me that my character is doing pit fights in the Undercity or playing errand girl for the Golden Sickle when an urgent task is sitting right there in my journal. I guess what I’m looking for is logical breaks in the story that allows you to do your own thing for a bit before getting back to the main quest. I know there are a few moments like that towards the end but I was hoping for some more, you know before ♥♥♥♥ *really* hits the fan.

[Tj Max]

You can basically "rush" trough the main story line pretty far without having to do any of the sidequests or such. You always have a buddy at your side while doing the early/mid mainquests. If you can summon stuff it becomes even more easier.
I don´t know how much further you can rush forward because I stopped at a certain point and reloaded earlier save (just wanted to check out where things are going) but at this point you would be wearing order Platemail and such. Would be pretty stupid to do the pitfights and the early sickle quests then, sensewise....

Also you will be getting money and expierience problems when just rushing main story line at some point. So my advice would be to do the guild quests as far as you can, then doing exploring and making money as far as you can. And then do the order quests.

[gnewna]

Well, you can... Take off the order armour.

I would say the Sickle can be done around the level you're at, I started around level twelve, the second quest had a pretty tough fight that I couldn't get through for a few more levels, I think I was about level 18 when I went back to it, then got through the rest by about level 20.

The Rhalâta questline is much higher level, the final pit fight and everything after it are, I believe, marked **** which iirc means something like 30+ or 35+.

In terms of pacing, it sounds like you're a bit past this point, but I didn't follow Constantine's instruction to meet Lishari until after I'd finished the Sickle quests. I started the pit fights late, around halfway through the main quest, largely because I had a mod conflict causing an issue when I spoke to the woman in the Pit, but I eventually sorted that out. I completed the Rhalâta questline near the end of the third "act", I believe.

I would say, probably get through the pit fights as early as you can manage them, then delay the next quest until you get a "go away and wait" point in the MQ, there are a few of them (and one or two with the Rhalâta) and while they usually say "a day" (and you get a quest update after the given amount of time has passed) I usually just go away and do other stuff until I feel ready to move on, and take it as "actually, they said a week" or however long it's been.

As far as justifying doing non MQ stuff goes, my characters usually rationalise taking breaks to do other stuff as "I need to get stronger, doing this will help me get stronger".

[Quacksalber]

Just start them but do other stuff between the fights instead of waiting for the next one, then you ought to be high enough level once you get to the end. On both my playthroughs I did the Rhalata one way before the sickle, as the sickle at one point sends you on a fetch quest that's quite easy to delay for a long time xD I'm over level 50 and still haven't done it lol