Hey Larianettes!
Dammon explicitly tells you to look for him in the city, so many of us didn't even realize he was in the barn at Last Light until wayyyy too late. Exploration early in Act 2 is also discouraged by the shadow curse, powerful enemies, ambushes, etc. It's also so difficult to prevent Isobel from being knocked out that I had no idea it was possible to prevent it. (I save scummed twice and she kept getting ganked before my characters could even act, so I just assumed her kidnapping was a necessary plot point.)
Why does the shadow curse discourage exploration?
The Isobel fight is pure fucking bullshit and I am sorry you had to experience that. I have made some comments on that already as it requires meta-knowledge to prevent Isobel from being kidnapped.
You basically have to take the boxes out on the Balcony and use them to barricade the doors to her room so you only really have Marcus to deal with. You can cast Sanctuary on her but she will often quite stupidly break it because her AI is terrible and stupid. You can't use AOE spells, you can't cast feign Death on her, she will break invisibility, she is wearing pajamas with no AC bonus and she will encourage every Opportunity attack possible by running back and forth...etc etc...her actual actions never contribute materially to her own defense - honestly I am convinced Selune only recruits imbeciles. At least Shar's worshippers know how to handle themselves in combat even if she is an awful, spiteful monster.
I hate Isobel, seriously, she is useless, but she is also the only thing holding back the shadow curse - so you have to overcome her stupidity to save her - THAT is the real boss fight. You against Isobels stupidity. You will probably lose, good luck.
And the WORST part is this fight is so FUCKING critical to EVERYTHING. It's a goddamn dumpster fire of an encounter that has SERIOUSLY bad consequences if you fail. You lose Dammon, you lose the Harpers, you lose the vendors, you lose the kids, you lose Art, you lose Halsin, you lose the chance to break the shadow curse, you may lose Jaheira, you lose Mattis, you lose Barcus, you lose half the Tieflings.
Look, Larian may not get to re-evaluating this dumb encounter for a bit so really your only option is to go back and 1) win using meta knowledge, or 2) just don't ever talk to Isobel. You don't need her and you don't need to talk to her. There are other - better - ways of handling the Shadow Curse.
You know, I am going to say that this is the worst encounter in the entire game from a design perspective. it's SHAMEFULLY bad. When I went through it I literally felt a pit in my stomach at the thought of other people having to deal with this bullshit because it ruins so many types of playthroughs. In Multiplayer I have had this encounter ruin games. For streamers and people who want to roleplay or not save-scum there is a 95% chance that this encounter ends badly unless you abuse meta-knowledge. If a DM dropped this encounter on a TT group we would replace the DM.
