I've read so many posts about the Valen mod, including the mod review, that I finally decided to give her a go. Woah, what a bloodbath! It started when we went to the Government district to kill some guy and just went downhill from there. Valen didn't much like the guards saying naughty things about her "Mistress" so naturaly a fight occured. Then, we no sooner popped into the Slums to kill Gaelen when we were surrounded by Amnish guards yelling about what we did and that we were sentenced to death. By the time we finished them off our reputation dropped to a whopping 1 but I knew it was really bad when some Jansen squirt started to attack us. Since I had Jan in the party I clicked off the AI, I didn't think he'd like us whacking his relatives. It was at that point I decided to quit the game, I just had a feeling that it was going to be more of the same and since there are reasons to keep going back to the Slums I just wasn't looking forward to a hostile town. Ah well, I guess ultimate evil just isn't my playing style.

There are a couple of ways to avoid becoming a mad slaughterer with Valen in your party. One is to wait on getting Valen for a bit, so that you can up your reputation a little and get certain parts of the game out of the way before you take her in. The other is to use the temple donations to keep your reputation up around 6-8, but this is expensive and a constant struggle.

Of course, you'll still always have key moments where Valen runs amok, so if you're not up for that...

That's one of the things I really liked about Valen. Unlike most npcs who just basically interact with whoever's in their own little mini-quest, Valen really acts like her own character who just happens to be traveling with you.

You have to do your best to keep her on a short leash, but there are times when it's just impossible. You'd better make sure you've got a decent party to survive, even with her power.

And yeah, next time you might want to have your rep around 17 or 18 to give yourself a nice cushion for those sort of things.

The worst Rep shot you'll take is from the Valen challenge... I tell ya, you'd want to be a real goody-two-shoes before that fight starts, because you can kiss your Reputation goodbye after that.