You want me to randomly encounter WHAT?! Check the random encounter tables. My level 2 party (plus Burne @8) was asked to encounter a Huge Fire Elemental and 3 Fire Snakes! That's excessive! However, I was forced into a fight with a Giant Lizard and a Lizard Man. Uh..
My guess is that Burne raised your party level up enough to warrant the chance of an encounter that tough. My understanding is that Co8 has added a number of tough encounters in the wilderness. Several of them include new monsters that they have added.
The point about the random encounter scenario before was that the low CR random encounter was forced on me, but I was politely asked to choose if I wanted to face something that I could not reasonably beat due to its high CR.
Encounters are by CR, but whether you get the chance to avoid them is based on your Survival, Spot and Listen skills. They're not related functions.
Before We Sleep We Must Bind Our Hotkeys Some hotkeys simply don't work, or only work after binding them then resting for 8+ hours. This 8 hour wait is especially true on items for reasons I can only speculate about. (Maybe the game thinks these are spells being cast by the character and therefore the character must rest before using such an ability.) Identify Items Don't Use The 'Use Item' Inventory Button I've tried. I declared identify items useless after I couldn't click and drag a scroll or a wand of this spell to activate it. Oops?
Read Magic Makes Chest Identify Stuff Open a chest then push a hotkey assigned to the read magic spell. This turns the chest UI (with Take All) into a vendor UI with Identify instead. This vendor Identify UI stays until I close the program.
Bizarre Bazaar The scroll vendor (Ariel) seems not to refresh her scroll stock. This has prevented me from learning some spells I was expecting to get at this point. What happened? EDIT: Perhaps I need to leave her house, rest/pass time, then return. Emotion-less The emotion scroll shows as Transmutation when it's really Enchantment (normally light blue). I also couldn't scribe it into my Wizard spellbook. Delayed Blast Fireball Scroll-less The DBF scrolls I made via Scribe Scroll and put on level 2 Spugnoir could not be used by him either by the radial menu or the inventory use button. My main Wizard (Wiz14) could use them. Purple Ray of Clumsiness This spell is Transmutation, not Necromancy. Its scrolls should have green ribbons instead of purple. Dominate Monster: Balor Likes 'em Small Dominate monster (as cast by a summoned Balor Guardian) has a size limit of Medium. Is this intentional? It seems not.
Ariel does refresh her scrolls. It just takes time but I don't know how long. I have scribed all the scrolls I can that she has.
Holy Word Wonkiness Shadows in the Moathouse Respawn were not affected by holy word due to a "racial immunity."
Penetration of the Archmagi I can't tell if the Robe of the Archmagi actually adds its +2 spell penetration. If it doesn't, pweath fix!
Hickory Branch Forced Stealth I was forced to use a Ring of Invisibility to stealth through the area due to certain large fights (involving perhaps 100+ creatures) causing the game to crash repeatedly. One of my saves got corrupted, and may have been from fleeing Hickory Branch.
I usually use my ring of invisibility there. Then I attack that big group of many creatures from the back one at a time. I am assuming it is the fight where there are many archers and they are arrayed in a line with healers in back of the line. The walkthrough tells you to do the invisibility thing also.