I'm slowly moving up the power ladder - after a brief but memorable trip from The Grid - where a map had pointed us to loot - along The Crater - where the Beak Things scared us away - down to The Hook to check out the slaver cities; then finally around to the High Bonefields, where we learned that bonedogs can come in both much larger sizes as well as much larger packs; we limped our way up through The Swamp to the Border Zone, back to our home base.
We caught a bit of luck when a wandering assassin happened to pass by where our party was crashed on sleeping mats, trying to heal up. We scooped up all the unconscious and/or severely limping members and tagged along behind him. With his help, we fended off two groups of the swamp spiders, before he led us to a small town in the southern portion of the Swamp.
Actually ended up buying a house there, since they didn't have a bar to sleep in. Healed up, and finally got back home and dropped off all the research loot I'd picked up.
Decided to take on a tower I'd passed by earlier. Turned out to belong to the Dust King. I noticed that the man himself was standing outside the tower, so tried to pull him without pulling aggro from everyone. That failed, but it turned out that my party is (finally!) well enough trained that a dozen or so well-equipped Dust Bandits are no longer a major worry. We took them all out, stripped them (and the tower) of anything valuable, and turned in the King for a sweet 35,000 cats.
Managed to upgrade my parties average armor level from Shoddy/Standard to something closer to Standard/High. Feels good.