Just reached this now. The idea of this encounter was neat. I don't have any problem with the encounter the OP is talking about. It's what's comes NEXT which seems to be poorly thought out.
1) My avatar, Beast, gets plopped into a cave with about 8 or so enemies around. For MY build, that was not a problem since I had Duck Duck Goose, and I saved 6 AP and used Favorable Wind, ran 4 AP away, used Chameleon Cloak, and on the next turn used Cloak and Dagger to teleport across the gap. There was only one enemy on the other side, which, while tough, seems doable - and that's just barely. So that worked for my build.
But how is a build without extra movement, invisibility and a self-teleport supposed to handle that? Are they just supposed to sit there on their turn waiting for the rest of the party to come get them?
2) My Knight, the Red Prince ended up in another combat area, but it was easy, two weak enemies. But he only has two ways forward: a locked gate, or another path. The other path leads to a group of weak enemies and a tough one. The tough one chewed through my magic armor - even bolstered with Frost Armor, which many Knights would not have - and happily chain-CC'ed me to death. Apparently I have to leave him there until someone comes to rescue him.
3) Lhose (Enchanter) ended up in a lab and Sebille (Wizard) in Luxury quarters, with the nearest enemies being just a couple dwarves which were easy to kill thanks to a large height advantage.. Okay, but depositing some party members in peace and safety and others in "Death City - Population: You" seems strange.
I can get it if I'm supposed to avoid combat and sneak by enemies, but dropping one guy in an inescapable death room and another in an area impossible to either fight or stealth through is questionable.
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Not sure how Ellezard managed to continue since it seems like there isn't supposed to be another way forward without getting captured. I guess there's always coming in from the exit.
On my classic playthrough I had similar situation and I started by freeing up and gathering guys that are either in easy starting rooms or have teleports. Like Ranger and Knight for example each have a personal teleport or two and you can team them up and 2 of these guys can handle all the stragglers in tunnels pretty much. My Enchanter was in that dwarves room and could not really do shit, so he just sat tight there while Knight and Ranger made their way there.
Finally my Wizard was in that super shit room with a lot eggs and it was done last, it was really difficult there for me, I had to rush him to some ledge and yank him with teleport just before he got shredded.
Only on second playthrough I realized waypoints were active, which was kinda "lol", but I am glad I did not realize it before, because the whole break away the classic way was really great first time around.
But basically, I have a hard time imagining a team where you don't have at least one guy with personal teleport skill, IMO it's safe to assume you have that because it's just so necessary to have by that point and every kind of physical damage dealer has access to easy personal teleport (Cloak and Dagger/Phoenix/Retreat) and even with one guy like that you ensure you have 2 guys teamed up, which is enough.
Now that I think about it, maybe they enabled waypoints there simply because if you are totally screwed, you can still make it (albeit in a kinda silly cheese way really).
