The last quest under the Troll Trouble main questline is The Curse of Candlemere, a quest so divorced from anything having to do with trolls that you may not even realize it’s listed there, instead of, say, an errand. The Season of Bloom quests are less ambiguous. You’ll get your first hint at what you’ll be dealing with for the next few months when you get a (not so) random encounter involving some cultists, one of whom turns into an owlbear! This ultimately leads to Tristian’s first companion quest, Kingdom of the Cleansed.

The first quest under the Season of Bloom header in your journal is An Amusement for the Nobles, which will begin when there are eleven day left on An Ancient Curse, Part 2 via a generic Invitation for the Baron throne room event. You can ignore this entirely, but it’s well worth doing for the rewards (both monetary and XP) and as a way to prepare for what’s soon to follow. If you have trouble with the monsters you’ll need to slay on this quest… the rest of the Season of Bloom questline is not going to be gentle.

Another hint will come when there are six days left on An Ancient Curse, Part 2 in the form of the Monster Sightings event. You’ll lose some Kingdom Stats if you ignore it, which isn’t unusual for a Problem, but the nature of the event undeniably ties it into the greater Season of Bloom questline, albeit in a far less interesting and important way than An Amusement for the Nobles.

After those teases, the Season of Bloom questline will kick into full gear when there are 260 days left on [An Ancient Curse, Part 3], as you’ll get the Monster Invasion event. You’ll want to see to this as soon as possible to avoid losing Kingdom Stats, and to resolve this event, as it’ll start off the next three quests under the Season of Bloom banner: Mother of Monsters, Witch Hunt and The Seed of Sorrow.

At this point, this main questline will continue much like Troll Trouble - you’ll need to explore and complete the various Season of Bloom related quests to save your barony, and do so in a timely manner! When there are 88 days left on [An Ancient Curse, Part 3] you’ll get the The Disease Continues to Spread event warning you of the impending collapse of your barony, and sure enough, this also heralds the escalation of Dark Epidemic events that’ll start popping up too frequently for your advisors to handle.

You should strive to be done with Season of Bloom before this, and it’s quite possible to complete this questline well before this deadline (although we certainly won’t begrudge you an expedition to a neighboring region if, say, a [quest were to pop up] providing incentive…). This, of course, is a soft limit for completing Season of Bloom; if you didn’t spend your time during and following Troll Trouble wisely and didn’t improve your Kingdom Ranks, you may have more trouble dealing with various quest-related events, like Predatory Beasts, Blighted Disease, and Local Plague. Generally speaking, however, if you managed to unlock the Warden role you should be in pretty good shape to draw out matters for nearly 200 days, should the need (or desire) arise.

Monster Invasion¶

While this isn’t the first Season of Bloom event, it’s the first one you really can’t ignore, as it sets off numerous main quests, including Mother of Monsters, Witch Hunt and The Seed of Sorrow. It will start when there are 260 days left on [An Ancient Curse, Part 3], and you’d be well advised to keep this date in mind, clear your calendar, be back at the capital and don’t start any projects that skip time near this event’s start date. Once it pops up, you’ll want to attend to it immediately.

There are a few moving parts here, but to put it somewhat succinctly:

• Your Councillor will tell you goblins who are celebrating the arrival of the monsters. This starts the quest Mother of Monsters, and your Councillor will mark the location of the Goblin Village on your map. You’ll also get 600 XP just for chatting. Nice.
• Jhod will tell you that Kesten has left to investigate the cult of Lamashtu, giving you Kesten’s Letter, revealing the location of the Shrine of Lamashtu and starting the quest Witch Hunt in one fell swoop. If Kesten was assigned as an advisor, he’ll be absent from that role for a while, so be sure to plug that gap, if you can.
• Jhod will also tell you about a scheduled vivisection in order to learn about the nature of the threat you face. This will start The Seed of Sorrow, and is the immediate quest you’ll need to resolve.

To advance the main questline, you must complete The Seed of Sorrow. In fact, you won’t have a choice otherwise, so make sure you’re prepared before you advance time and trigger the Monster Invasion event - the mandatory encounter ahead might prove challenging for you, depending on how you’ve built your protagonist. Check out the linked quest page for more details.

After completing The Seed of Sorrow you’ll be free to burn time on side quests (especially any artisan quests you weren’t able to finish up from earlier), boosting kingdom stats, or exploring. Just because you can, however, doesn’t mean you should, and frankly we’re inclined to finish Season of Bloom as quickly as possible. Not only does it make more sense, storyline-wise, but frankly there’s very little of interest between Monster Invasion (+260 days AAC3 time) and [The Lonely Hunter] (+205 days AAC3 time). This gives you nearly two months to resolve Season of Bloom, which is more than sufficient, after which you’ll be able to spend the better part of a year working on all the events that pop up between Season of Bloom and [An Ancient Curse, Part 3].

Despite the suggestion that you finish Season of Bloom before indulging in more side content, all the events until there are 88 days left on [An Ancient Curse, Part 3] (+88 days AAC3 time), as you simply might not be able (or willing) to complete Season of Bloom quickly. By +88 days AAC3 time, however, taking Kingdom Stat damage from events become nigh inevitable, so we’ll assume everybody has Season of Bloom wrapped up before then.

As you can see, there’s not a whole lot going on during the Season of Bloom save for the start of the Errand [Lonely Hunter] and Amiri’s next Companion Quest [Pariah]. In the former case, completing this Errand will allow you to claim the Silverstep region, found a village there, and potentially recruit [a new Artisan] dwelling in your Silverstep village.

A Feast of Feasts¶

This quest - Ekundayo’s first companion quest - starts with the event card Linzi Has a Suggestion. Oh, I bet she does… This time her interference isn’t quite as larcenous, as she thinks we should throw a surprise party to cheer up the ever-brooding Ekundayo. Certainly that’ll make him forget his dead wife and child? Whatever you expectations of the outcome, accept her offer to start the quest [A Feast of Feasts].

Letter from Maegar Varn¶

Pretty simple event, your neighbor to the east - and fellow adventurer-made-ruler - Maegar Varn will send you a care package to “last you through these tough times”. This takes the form of a Message from Maegar Varn, a Wand of Prayer and a Wand of Good Hope and comes with no strings attached. What a nice guy! You’ll also gain Economy +1 and Relations +1 for resolving this event.

The Lonely Hunter¶

Easily the most important event that can pop up during Season of Bloom without actually being related to the aforementioned main quest, you’ll get a generic Letter for the Baron event card when there are 205 days left on [An Ancient Curse, Part 3] (+205 days AAC3 time), where a man named Brevis will whine about a local hunter named Ivar, who is apparently “discrediting” you among the local population. While Silverstep isn’t technically your territory, it’s adjacent to the Kamelands and nobody else has claimed the region; a show of force there might help bring the area into the fold. Agree to look into the matter to start the quest [The Lonely Hunter], the completion of which will allow you to claim the Silverstep region.

You can take care of this quest now, or wait until Season of Bloom is over, depending on your inclinations and situation. It’ll take roughly 3-4 days to complete (depending on how frequently you have to rest - travel time will account for nearly two days), and the journey there is also a fine excuse for a rather short [expedition], as you can visit the [Lonely Barrow], [Ancient Mine] and [Rotten Cave] areas while you’re at it. Check out the [Lake Silverstep Village Expedition] for more details.

We’ll ultimately leave the timing and scope of this journey up to you, but for clarity, we postpone it until after Season of Bloom.

Blighted Disease - Predatory Beasts - Local Plague - Dark Epidemic - Monstrous Gathering¶

All of these event cards are related to Season of Bloom, serving as both timers and gameplay representations of the consequences of allowing the plague to spread. Like with Troll Raids during Troll Trouble you’ll get event cards detailing the escalating effects of the problem, which you’ll need to assign an advisor to successfully resolve to avoid Kingdom Stat damage. This one escalates faster than Troll Trouble, but you also should have more advisors on hand to deal with these myriad event cards. When there are between 205 and 195 days left on the timer for [An Ancient Curse, Part 3] you’ll have to deal with a number of these events, but if you can weather this storm, you should be mostly fine until 82 days left on [An Ancient Curse, Part 3], when the Kingdom Stat damaging events will start occurring too quickly to successfully resolve them all.

The faster you complete Season of Bloom, the less of these events you’ll have to deal with.

Pariah¶

When there are 135 days left on [An Ancient Curse, Part 3] Amiri will show up and ask to speak to you about her old tribe. This starts Amiri’s next companion quest [Pariah]. If you haven’t completed Season of Bloom yet, you should probably see to that first before tackling this quest.

The Disease Continues to Spread¶

This event card warns you rather bluntly that you have two months to complete Season of Bloom. Going forward you’ll keep Disease Keeps Spreading events warning you of the impending fall of your barony, along with numerous Dark Epidemic and later, Monstrous Gathering event cards to put some Kingdom Stat damage on the board to give you added incentive to resolve the issue.

In our experience, two months is an optimistic estimate - we had trouble keeping our barony afloat much longer than a month (+45 days AAC3 time, to be exact). Ideally you’ll be done with Season of Bloom months before this, however.

All in all, there’s not a whole lot that transpires, quest-wise, between the onset of Season of Bloom (via Monster Invasion) and either your barony’s collapse or your resolution of the matter. Like with Troll Trouble you’re given far more time than you really need; there’s roughly 200 days between Monster Invasion and the point where we had trouble keeping our barony afloat, and the entire questline can be resolved in around three weeks. This process will take longer if your Perception checks are too low to spot areas like the Goblin Village and the Goblin Fort, but even if you have to waste time searching for random encounters, two months should be more than enough time to deal with this plague.

Check out the following pages for walkthrough of each quest and major event relating to Season of Bloom. The events and side quests that’ll occur after Season of Bloom will be discussed in the page [Events After Season of Bloom].