So I'm using exult (this allows cheats and such). I've defeated The Silver Seed portion of the game and got about up to where the banes are released and you have to figure out what to do next, then I had a game crash issue that took me a little while to fix ... and I kind of lost myself in the plot (not plot per se but "What Should I Do Based On Who I Talked To") and kind of want to run through it again more thoroughly.

At what point did you feel like it was appropriate to go to the silver seed? up to this point the only prompt i got to check it out was Karnax sayin' "yo... use this necklace at a serpent spot maybe?" but when you talk to the Dude who gives you the keyring it feels like he is chatting up major plot points that I might(?) discover later on (even though a lot of your responses are clueless)... So my question is like... 1) Is there more of a shoe-in dialogue that talks to you about the silver seed and checking it out later on (Again Batlin only just died so I've gotten no further than that) and 2) If you started it up do you feel dirty goin' through TSS for those crazy great items ahead of schedule?

I'm wonderin' cause if say, i restart, it's super tempting to just... God Mode through TSS and get all the great items / inventory management stuff and gr8 exp. but at the same time I kind of want to earn it during the narrative if there's more info about TSS down the way...

Would you restart and once you get knighted + Iolo jump in and god mode thru TSS just for all the great items and instant necklace port ability? or play it clean?

Unless you die, the first time it'll come up is whenever you visit Monk Isle, and that seems to be the intended point in the plot at which you may travel into the past. You generally want to get your spellbook before you visit the place anyhow, and you can't do that until just after your first proper visit to the Isle.

It isn't necessarily required to do it all at that time, however - there's a week-long cooldown until you plant the Seed, but you could visit and return a few times, taking on the areas as your party becomes better prepared to handle them. The northwestern maze isn't terribly difficult, but a low-level/low-geared party is going to have trouble with the northeast and southeast sections. Obtaining those items any time you're capable of reaching them is probably part of the intended balance, although using cheats to power through the whole expansion would break that assumption.

So other than the visit to monk island (via death) there's no driving line / dialogue later on to really press you to go check out the silver seed stuff? For example... perhaps later on someone would tell me more about how the necklace really works and what is really going on with the chaos/order war in the past, giving me more of a narrative / incentive to go there other than "just... test out your necklace ha ha ha! Wonder if it works *wink wink nudge*"? Is the instance you get the necklace pretty much the only dialogue in serpent island that tells you to "maybe.. check it out" or is there dialogue in the future (around / after the banes) that says maybe clues lie in the past? I guess it would make sense being an expansion that there's not an incredibly strong narrative connection compared to if it was originally developed together though.

Yeah, the maze poses no threat (you don't fight anything) so you can get the helmet of light immediately, but the spider cave / lich is definitely much more difficult without levels / gear for sure (I did it legit earlier before i had crash issues). You can get the ring of reagents pretty early imo, if you can survive the naga at the entrance of that trial too.

I spend time arguing with myself over whether it's not just worth speeding through TSS to get the benefits and enjoy the narrative because the battle system isn't exactly as awesome as the npc interaction / plot, versus being an honorable RPG player =p.

There isn't anything else to suggest paying a visit to the past, no. Keep in mind that, story-wise, all of that happened in an era that is now lost to the present-day inhabitants of the Isle.

In fact, the only other dialogue change in the current-day version of the Isle is that the druid in the northern forest will now mention the possibility that the Ophidians had a silver seed of their own when telling you his story, but this isn't done in a way that suggests it's a good time to go visit the past; it actually makes more sense if you've already been to the past and planted the seed.

The only other reference (if you consider it one) in the current-day version of the world is that visiting Serpent's Fang may allow you to figure out who Petra once was, but there's no way to act on that recognition (or even mention it to anyone), and if you're at the point of visiting Monk Isle then you've already met her.