Dungeon Hack: Won One!

That drawbridge has no chains. How were they ever going to get it up again?

     

In my second entry on Dungeon Hack, I was relatively positive about the game. It was challenging but fast, and the character I chose (a cleric/mage) had a variety of powers. I was enjoying swapping among them and blasting my way through the hallways. This never entirely went away, though there were times that it ebbed a bit. The game ended when I was ready for it to end, and I'm glad I didn't do something crazy like set the dungeon to 20 levels.

   

I ended the last entry having explored most of Level 6, fighting my way through mummies and trolls. The "boss" creature on the level was a bizarre (even by D&D standards) creature called a "slithermorph." It crawls around the dungeon floor, eating carrion, looking like a black pudding. But then suddenly it rears up into the form of a four-armed lizard holding a dagger. 

      

Why not four daggers?

    

Slithermorphs then joined banshees as the Level 7 foes. Neither of these creatures have special attacks in this game, but they hit relatively hard. As I carved my way through them, I reached Level 11 as a mage and acquired two artifact items: The Chainmail of High Priest Myrh +3, and the Mace of High Priest Myrh +3. I also found Bracers of Protection +2. These artifacts offered such a boost to my armor class that I stopped wearing the Cloak of Protection and simply took off my armor when I wanted to cast a mage spell.

       

Having a bunch of banshees around kind of ruins the point of banshees.

       

Alas, that desire happened less and less as the game went on. There are two major problems with mage spells in the game. First, you have to learn them from scrolls, which appear randomly. I never found a scroll with "Fireball," "Haste," "Lightning Bolt," or many of the other spells I would have liked. I never found any Level 6 spells at all, meaning the two slots I eventually acquired in that level were completely wasted.

   

Second, the spells are horrendously underpowered. I could kill a troll with three or four hits from my mace. I could easily exhaust half of my offensive mage spells on that same troll. The best offensive spell I got was "Snilloc's Major Missile" at Level 5, and it took three of these plus a regular "Magic Missile" to kill most enemies. Worse, the cooldown period between spell castings is so high that you have to backpedal halfway across the dungeon over the course of casting those three or four spells.

  

Level 7's boss was an umber hulk.

     

I stopped using "Spiritual Hammer" as my primary weapon at some point. It's a great spell, but underpowered compared to my Mace +3. Thus, I had to start getting into the face of more enemies. I also found a Maul of the Titans +2 on the level, but the game insisted I wasn't strong enough to wield it despite a strength of 19.

I never found any information to explain who Myrh was. It would be nice if the scrolls had covered the particular hero whose items you find. Instead, I got a few scrolls talking about Midnight and a bunch of others offering hints for specific creatures.

     

That would have been helpful a level ago.

       

I reported last time about the oddities related to the timing of an enemy's movements and attacks. I tried to analyze the timing for this entry because it really started to bother me. Enemies are capable of things that seem like they should be impossible and I think were impossible in Eye of the Beholder despite the games sharing the same engine. These impossible actions include:

   

• Turning, moving a space, and attacking in one very quick motion.

• When you come upon an enemy from behind, doing an about-face and attacking you before you have time to react.

• Scoring a hit on you even if you back away immediately after stepping up next to a creature.

      

Notice how this undead beast turns, moves, and attacks in one motion. The swipe of his arm isn't necessary. If the attack animation begins (e.g., the arm raised), it always finishes, even if I dart away before it completes.

       

Based on my investigations, this is what I think is true:

    

• The game uses cycles of action and inaction for enemies, each lasting a couple of seconds. If the enemy is in its "action" cycle when you happen to wander into an adjacent square, the enemy will inevitably get to attack you, even if you immediately step away or even if the enemy has to turn to make the attack. 

• The player's movement is tracked on a different timer than the enemy's. Thus, you get ridiculous situations like stepping away from an attacking enemy and not having the attack "connect" and do damage until you're several squares away.

• If you step up next to an enemy while it's in its "dormant" phase, you can attack with impunity.

    

Especially on Levels 8-10, where enemies could swat away all my hit points with a single attack, I learned to lead them to long corridors, watch them step forward, then dart in, attack, and pull back. This ensured that I only ever got up to them during their "inaction" phase. I tried for a while luring them to large rooms, where I could run around and attack from behind, but that didn't work because of the problems listed above.

    

I've seen more attractive medusas.

   

Level 8's creatures were medusas and shambling mounds. I freaked when I saw my first medusa and used a Scroll of Protection from Petrification that I'd been holding. It only lasted about half the level, but I never got stoned by any of the medusas despite engaging them in melee combat repeatedly. Maybe I just have good saving throws. They did poison me a few times, however, requiring me to sacrifice some of my L4 spell slots for "Neutralize Poison." The first time, I had to find one of those magic coin-taking machines, which heal all your hit points for a silver coin and all your conditions for a gold coin.

    

My kingdom for a Wand of Defoliation.

     

Shambling mounds were the toughest enemies so far, capable of killing me instantly. I made Cleric 11 at some point and got Level 6 spells, including "Heal." I also hit Mage 12. I have no idea what the boss level was on Level 8--some kind of dude with six spider or scorpion legs. This game's version of a drider, maybe?

      

Or a scorpi-taur?

     

Level 9's enemies were hags and spirit nagas, which look like something out of Beetlejuice. No special attacks on either of them. It's funny how level drain and other special attacks were weighted towards the first half of the dungeon. I found the High Priest Myrh's holy symbol, but I'm not sure if that does anything that my holy symbol doesn't; spell power is based on the character attributes, right? 

   

The boss was a Feyr, a tentacled blob with three mouths and a row of five eyes. It also was capable of phasing in and out of visibility. I reloaded after my first attempt and cast "See Invisibility," but he still killed me about four more times. I had to do a lot of hit and run work on him. When he died, I hit Level 13 in both classes.

       

I slowed this one down. Note how when I come up on the feyr, he instantly turns around and attacks, even though I dart away before any attack animation plays. I don't actually take the damage and die until I'm already away from him.

      

Then it was time for the final level. Routine enemies were undead beasts and ettins--again, no special attacks, but they were very fast and had the ability to kill me with one hit despite my -9 armor class. I rounded out my equipment kit with Myrh's Helm +3. The level featured a lot of long corridors, fortunately, and I was able to get most of the enemies from a distance.

    

You already saw the undead beast; here's the ettin.

        

The final boss was--I don't know. Tell me if you can. It's nothing that's in the manual. An owlbear, maybe? It has some things going on graphically that I don't understand. 

        

Any thoughts?

     

I didn't stand a chance against him. He was far too fast. If I bungled a strafe or move backwards, he'd kill me instantly. I don't think he missed even once despite my low AC. After he wandered down a side hallway briefly, I ran past him, thinking I could find the sorceress's orb without killing him, but there was nothing on the other side but empty corridors. Apparently, the boss always has it. 

    

Fortunately, I had saved a few emergency items. One was a Wand of Paralyzation. That did the trick. It took a couple of uses (it lasts a variable amount of time), but they were long enough that I could whack away his hit points while he was stunned. 

    

The paralyzed whatever sits still while I hit him.

       

He dropped two scrolls and a potion when he died, but I never got a chance to look at them. The game said: "I've bested the final monster! And the orb--I see it right there!"

       

I do not, in fact, see it right there.

     

The endgame cinematic took over, showing the character exiting the dungeon with a literal wheelbarrow full of treasure and wheeling it up to the sorceress. She picks it over for a few minutes and pulls out the orb. "My thanks, adventurer," she says, "Now come, it is time for us to leave." The adventurer doesn't leave, though; he just spends the closing credits kneeling by the wheelbarrow inspecting one shiny bauble after another. 

    

This is going to take a while if you insist on doing one at a time.

       

Miscellaneous notes:

    

• Except for "Improved Identify," I don't think I cast a single mage spell on the last three levels.

• Another fun alternative to a lock and key:

        

Is this a flat-screen television?

      

• For all the manual's promise that "once you identify one type of potion (or wand), you'll automatically know what the others of its type do," I don't think I found more than one of anything.

• On a couple levels, I got a message that I felt like there were spiders crawling all over my body; a few squares later, I got a message saying it went away. Does anyone know what that was about?

          

Worry more about the spirit naga.

        

• The last four levels all added teleportation cubes to the navigation mix. You enter, and they deposit you elsewhere on the level. 

      

A teleporter cube. I thought it was a gelatinous cube at first.

    

• I lost sound at some point on Level 9. The game rendered every effect as a high-pitched squeal. Quitting and reloading didn't help. I eventually gave up and turned it off. The issue didn't recur when I started a new character.

      

Almost immediately after I won, I started a new game and tried to pick the hardest options that I could think of. I chose a chaotic evil male gnome thief and rolled until a dexterity of 9 and a strength of 7. I set the dungeon to "Hard" with permadeath.

       

The weakest character I can conceive of.

     

The character started with leather armor and a short sword. I killed about six goblins and orcs but didn't have any way to heal when they hit me. I didn't last more than 10 minutes. 

    

My heart may not have been in it.

     

So I tried another tactic: randomization. Using random numbers, I ended up with a true neutral half-elf fighter/thief with great strength and charisma (what does charisma do in this game?). For difficulty, I ended up with:

  

• 11 levels.
• Monster amount of 6 on a scale of 0-7 (same scale for all below except where specified).
• Treasure amount 7.
• Food availability 3.
• Illusory walls 1.
• Key frequency 7.
• Magic traps 4.
• Pit frequency 7.
• Hints 3.
• Magical zones on.
• Water level on.
• Multi-level puzzles on.
• Undead off.
• Food consumption 2.
• Monster difficulty 0.
• Magic power 5.
• Poison strength 7.
• Permadeath
• Enemy spells on.

        

Five minutes into the level, I had eight keys and key-equivalents.

     

I'm going to do my best with this one. The very low enemy difficulty will hopefully offset the permadeath. In the meantime, your assignment is: download this game, play your own preferred character or randomize one, and report on your experience. I can't afford to play a single game for too long, so help me document as much as we can.

   

Time so far: 11 hours (the winning game took about 8).

The Red Crystal: Chipped and Cracked

 

I'm offering money for a town I already somehow own. This is the least of the problems I experienced this session.

         

The Red Crystal turns out to be hilariously broken, which likely explains why there are no walkthroughs or videos longer than 15 minutes to find online. At the end of my first entry, I had discovered some fairly bad mechanics (NPCs, combat), but this session produced a plethora of bugs that--and here I have to give the game credit--I've never seen before.

   

A lot of the bugs have a common theme. The game seems to get confused about the relative positioning of things, whether the character on the map or items in the inventory. Just a sample:

    

• When you sell items at a shop, the game often sells the "wrong" item--that is, a different one than the one you selected in the menu.

• As you explore towns, the game thinks you've walked into buildings that you are nowhere near.

• When you exit buildings, the game often puts the character on the far end of the map from where the building actually is.

• You often use items and completely different items vanish from your inventory.

     

This isn't a bug, but NPC icons look exactly like yours, leading to some confusion.

       

• The game gives you an option to "Bribe" before every battle, including those with insects and animals, but they never take it. 

• NPCs to whom you deliver quest items often take completely different items from your inventory, including quest items meant for other people.

• The game frequently crashes on NPC screens.

• Wandering NPCs sometimes turn out to be houses which say "nobody home."

       

This is the result of an NPC running into me, not me running into a house.

     

• When you start up the game, it gives you a copy protection screen asking you to type a specific word from a random position, page, and paragraph in the manual. It took me a while to figure out its conventions, including paragraphs that start on a previous page don't count but headings do. Even knowing this, the game tells me that I entered the wrong word about half the time and boots me to DOS.

     

There are other things to talk about that may be bugs but may just be weird mechanics.

   

Since the first entry, I exhausted myself exploring Gronk's castle, leaving with nothing to show for it except a Lost Crown and something called Hunwell's Skull. For all I know, one of those two things is one of the "Seven Secrets of Life." I mean, I expected the secrets to be textual, like "brush your teeth between meals," but they could be physical objects.

   

I made lots of money, so I returned from the castle to the nearby town of Groth. There, I visited an NPC who asked me to find the Lost Crown in the first place. He gave me 3,050 gold coins for it and said he'd give me more when he was restored to his rightful throne. What I didn't notice until later is that he didn't take the crown from my inventory, but rather a random club. I was later able to visit him again (accidentally) and get another 3,050 coins. He didn't take the crown the second time, either. It did disappear from my inventory later, when I tried to use a potion.

        

Notice that he hasn't actually taken the crown. He took a club.

      

Also in town, I purchased a "bull axe," learned the "Door" spell, and acquired the deed to the town for 1,732 zetos. I set taxes "fair."

       

The rate before I arrived was set to "exorbanant" [sic]. The people are going to love me.

         

Towns are horribly annoying to navigate. First, you get absolutely swarmed with NPCs as if they're trying to attack you. Second, wandering NPCs have absolutely no use whatsoever. None. All the useful NPCs are in houses. Wandering ones don't give you the slightest hint or advantage. They just deliver stock lines, like most of the NPCs in Ultima II. Soldiers say, "Move on, desert rat!" Merchants say, "What can I do for you?" but don't do anything for you. Dwarves say, "Good day, stranger." And you have to stop, wait, and acknowledge every damned one. As above, sometimes wandering NPCs turn out to be houses. I don't know how that works.

        

As you've already told me 25 times.

     

And speaking of houses, you have to thread yourself through the town carefully, because a building will read your approach from a mile away. You can point yourself vaguely at the wizard's tower, move a millimeter, and suddenly find yourself in the tower. Other times, you can wander back and forth on top of a building and not enter.

   

I returned to Gronk's fortress to try again. Enemies remained relentless and combat never really got any better. It did get shorter. My sword had done maybe 5-15 points of damage on the right attack setting, but my axe did more like 15-40. However, the sword would do small amounts of damage even if I didn't choose the optimal attack type (one of nine options as covered last time). The axe would just miss if I didn't choose the optimal option.

     

This was one of my weaker swings, but I didn't get screen shots of the stronger ones.

      

Slowly, I mapped, taking screenshots as I completed each level, since the game forgets each level as you move to the next one. I found some gold armor and put it on, raising my armor from 7 to 8. The game's approach to armor is weird. It disappears when you use it (put it on), and the effects of multiple pieces of armor are cumulative. By the end of this session, I was wearing gold plate over my gold plate and had three sets of boots on.

     

I found my way to the bottom level of the dungeon but got stuck there. The bottom level has a weird blue tone. It is full of invisible walls that appear on the automap but not the main screen. In the southeast corner is a hallway heading east, but there seems to be no way to get into it. The game has a secret door mechanic, but with no wall to see, there's no door to find. I hunted around the level multiple times and could find no way to access the attached area. I don't know whether that's a bug or whether I missed something.

       

The weird bottom level of Gronk's fortress. I can't get to that area to the east.

     

I made my way out of the dungeon--this time, I had risen to Level 5--and decided to try the dungeon in the northeast corner of the outdoor map. On the way, I stopped in the isolated town of Stalnaker. There, an NPC named Solas gave me a sword that did over 100 points of damage when I chose the optimal attack position, so no complaints there--except that NPCs kept stealing it when I tried to give them other things, forcing me to reload.

      

Nice! See you in Dragon Age 4!

    

I went to town hall to see how much it was to buy the town. What I didn't notice is that at some point, the game decided I already owned the town, and put "Owner: Chester" in the town information block. So when I offered 3,200 zetos for the deed, the game told me that I was paying myself (I didn't get them back, though). The deed appeared in my inventory.

    

An NPC named Pizunni said he was sick and needed an elixir. I bought one from the nearby mage's tower and returned it to him. He took my Solas Sword instead, and the game froze on this screen, so I never saw the rest of her message. It happened again after a reload. I had to give up.

      

Hey! That's not going to cure your illness!

    

In the northeast corner, I visited the city of Nazar, where nothing interesting happened. North of it was the Temple of the Undead. I entered and found a scroll on the ground that said, "Only Xoptaous may enter." There were no exits from this room. I assume I have to find something somewhere else that lets me disguise myself as Xoptaous.

When I exited the dungeon, I was all the way on the south edge of the world map even though I had entered the building in the northeast. 

    

Not for long.

      

I went to the closest castle, Tagar's, and explored seven floors without finding anything that seemed like a Secret. One by one, I lost all the items in my inventory while using my Red Crystal to view the entire automap without having to explore everything. I still couldn't get past a certain point. I had paid to learn spells in the towns, including "Crystal," "Detect," "Aware," and "Door." These are supposed to help make maps, find secret doors, and create doors in blank walls. I couldn't get a single one to cast. Maybe knights just aren't good at magic.

   

Anyway, with all those inventory items missing, it's probably a good thing I didn't find the Secret. I'll have to reload from before visiting the castle. I wish I knew what the secrets to exploration are so that I could find at least one of the Secrets of Life. I wish I even knew what I was looking for.

      

Do these rocks have anything to do with it?

     

It's probable that I'm not going to be able to continue with the game and will have to code it "NP" for "not playable." However, I'll leave it open for a little while in case someone comes along with any intelligence--including perhaps author Charles Griffith, to whom I've sent a message. In the meantime, I had a look at Computer Gaming World's April 1994 review of the game by Alan Emrich and Petra Schlunk. It is easily the harshest review I've ever seen in the magazine. They encountered many of the problems I described above and several that I didn't. They were unable to get multiplayer to work, for instance--although it turns out that if you do get multiplayer going, the only thing that you can do with the other player is trade off who fights in combats. You can't even talk to each other.

    

They do offer that: "The seven secrets of life are decent pieces of sage advice, told by one of life's truly great adventurers, co-designer Bruce Williams (founder of QQP)." I don't really know how to interpret this. Do you meet Bruce Williams on top floors of the castles? Is his advice written on scrolls or something? Or am I misinterpreting what CGW is saying?

The review concludes:

     

Frankly . . . we can't believe that it says QQP on this game's box . . . Like Babe Ruth, when QQP steps up to the plate and connects with a game, they hit home runs and the fans come back anticipating the next one. When they miss, however, a strike-out seems all the more disappointing. We fear that this foul ball has hit them in the face, leaving a black eye that may take some time to completely heal.

         

Well, QQP came back all right, publishing more than a dozen strategy games and casino games before the company was sold in 1995. (It was sold a couple of times after that, too; its assets currently seem to be held by Digital Leisure, a Canadian company.) They never tried another RPG, though.

Ed. I just realized from the screenshots that despite reloading when something important disappeared, I somehow lost Hunwell's Skull at some point. I hope that wasn't important.

     

Time so far: 8 hours

Dungeon Hack: Blitzkrieg

A minotaur prepares to swing his axe, which looks like it ought to be impossible with the height of the ceiling.

        

I started over after the first entry, deciding to go with a slightly easier game. I lowered the levels to 10, kept secret doors turned off, said "no" to the water level, and created a mage/cleric named Tirena. She got some decent statistics within the first few rolls:

         

No one's pretty or healthy after 10 levels in a dungeon anyway.

       

A mage/cleric is a bit of a handful. Like all characters, she has two hand slots available, but she has at least seven potential things to put in them:

     

• The primary weapon
• A shield
• The cleric holy symbol, for casting cleric spells
• The mage spellbook, for casting mage spells
• Usable items, such as wands, potions, and scrolls
• Items that I want to identify
• Conjured magical weapons

        

Add to this the fact that the character can cast cleric spells while wearing armor but not mage spells. I'm constantly swapping items in and out of slots depending on what enemies I'm facing and how many spells I have left. I mind this less than I might have expected. If I was playing a party of four characters, it would probably be too annoying to bother with, and I'd end up under-valuing one of the two classes. With only one character to manage, constantly swapping things in and out gives me something to do between battles.

    

I've completed six levels. As we discussed last time, each level offers two types of enemies plus a single "boss" enemy who's a higher level than the regular two. Level 1, as before, gave me orcs and goblins. The boss was a hobgoblin. I found a Ring of Feather Falling and a mace +1 among various lesser treasures.

   

One of each.

      

Level 2 served up hobgoblins and troglodytes as the main enemies; the boss was a ghoul. I had my first level-up, with both classes reaching Level 4 (I started at 3). Before I finished the level, I ran into a pit trap and fell to Level 3, which had shadows and ghouls. It was a while before I found the stairs back up to Level 2 and discovered that the "boss" there was also a ghoul.

  

I realized at some point during this process that there's no reason to conserve anything, particularly spell slots. Since you only meet two types of monsters on each level (with that one exception), no monster is any different than any other. Might as well blast away. I fell into a habit of exhausting my mage spellbook (mostly "Magic Missile") before donning the armor and spending the rest of the day with my cleric spells and equipment, only to repeat the cycle after the next rest.  

       

This isn't what I normally think of as a "troglodyte."

       

Shadows and troglodytes both sap strength, but it's not permanent. Ghouls can paralyze for a while, but paralysis just stops you from acting, not moving. You can run away until it wears off. 

    

Still, I was motivated to stay out of melee combat, and it was in messing around with spells that I discovered how awesome "Spiritual Hammer" is. Is it this awesome in other D&D games? I've been ignoring it for most of my gaming career, apparently to my detriment. It creates a magical throwing Thor hammer that comes back to you. If you miss an enemy on the initial throw, it might hit him in the back on the rebound. And you can summon one for each hand!

      

Hammer time!

     

By the time I finished Level 3, I was loving this game. After the first session, I thought I'd be bored with it. But now I was charging through the hallways, hurling double hammers at every shade who approached, getting them coming and going, blasting away with my mage spells, slamming keys into doors, barely ever having to pause to get my bearings because everything is so linear. The key to the enjoyment of this game is that it plays fast. There's no point mapping anything because it's all randomly-generated (and the automap does a great job). There's no point waiting because enemies respawn. There's no point conserving because every level brings new stuff. It's probably worth holding one high-powered item in reserve for a particularly tough boss, but otherwise Dungeon Hack is a game of swift offense.

    

That isn't to say there aren't some problems. Chief among them are horrendous timing issues. Even with the emulator cranked up to a level way above an era 486, I suffer maddening pauses sometimes when moving and turning. It's particularly annoying when this happens in combat, causing me to over-turn and get disoriented.

      

Foreshadowing?

      

Meanwhile, forget about the "Combat Waltz" or any other dance moves. The only way to not get hit by enemies is to not get next to them. This can be difficult. Enemies sometimes dither in one square for several seconds, and other times they seem to move three squares at once. If the enemy does get next to you, and the game's clock decides that homeboy gets an attack, all the shuffling and running in the world isn't going to avoid it. The particularly annoying (and slightly amusing) thing is that the game's combat timer isn't synced well with the characters' positions. There are times that I'll get adjacent to an enemy, then run backwards down the corridor. Ten seconds later and ten steps away, the game suddenly registers a hit and the character goes "oof!"

 

Enemies oddly cannot step and then turn in one move, but they can turn, step, and even attack in a single move. Take this guy:

        

He's closer than you think.

     

If this were Dungeon Master, I'd have enough time to go make a sandwich. There, he would have to turn to face me, then pause, then step into the square in front of me, then pause, then attack. But this guy probably did all three of those things in the nanosecond after I took the screenshot. In Dungeon Hack, you can be two squares away from a monster who's facing the wrong direction and it's still too late.

    

I've learned to live with these aggravations because everything else happens at a good clip. By the end of dungeon Level 3, I had reached character Level 5 for both of my classes. I found a pair of Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength and two Shields +1. 

  

Level 4 brought the first level-drainers: wights and shades. I tried to suck up the level drains at first, but it happened too many times. I learned to just rely on my hammers, keep out of their way, and reload if they hit me. I got "Negative Plane Protection" at some point, which stopped the draining.

       

Yeah, screw that.

      

The enemies were worth an incredible amount of experience. I arrived on the dungeon level at character Level 5 in both classes, and I left at Level 9 as a mage and 8 as a cleric. Along the way, I picked up a pair of leather boots, a book that increased my wisdom by 1, and a Stone of Good Luck. I frankly don't know what that latter item does, or how to use it. It doesn't equip in any slot and it doesn't activate from the hand slots. 

         

Taking damage from a shade.

       

The game follows Dungeon Master's convention of never telling you, in-game, what any of the enemies are called. You have to look them up in the manual. The "boss" enemy for dungeon Level 4 was an armored guy surrounded by a blue glow, and he doesn't correspond with anything in the manual. He carries a sword and shield; death knights carry a two-handed sword and have skeletal faces. Steel shadows are just animated armor, so they don't go with the fact that this guy has a face. Swordwraiths don't carry shields, and their armor looks completely different. The manual does warn that its list may not be comprehensive.

    

Any ideas what this guy is?

      

Whatever he was, he was fast. All the backpedaling in the world didn't keep him from catching up with me. After he killed me twice, I decided to try my Wand of Fire on him, and he died in one shot.

   

As you explore, you occasionally find message scrolls that give you hints about the game and perhaps fill in some semblance of story? It's too early to tell. This is what I have so far:

• "More than once, the ogre slug I was fighting attempted to hit me with some sort of corrosive spittle."

• "As well, Midnight had a shield, one that would absorb some damage meant for her." [Isn't that what all shields do?]

• "But in order to see illusions, Midnight relied upon her Helm of True Seeing. With it no . . ."

• " . . . ical instrument, this Lute of Well-Being, is also said to strengthen a weakened bard."

• "I wish I had the power of the 'Neutralize Poison' spell. Twice I was struck by the poisonous sting of the wyvern."

     

Did this one appear for the wrong character class?

      

The manual mentions that you might find artifacts from a famous adventurer who preceded you, and I guess in my case, that's "Midnight."

        

Some miscellaneous notes:

    

• The game has a lot of clever ways to offer locks and keys. There are half a dozen different colors of locks and keys to start. Then, sometimes instead of a lock and key you'll have a gem and a mosaic that the gem needs to be placed in, or a plume from a helmet and a relief depicting an armored knight that takes the plume, or a mallet and gong, or a pearl that has to be placed into a clam shell. They're still just very rote, linear puzzles, but at least their variety makes them kind of fun.

       

Just when you thought you'd seen every way to open a door.

    

• I mentioned it last time, but I'll also call attention to the wide variety of things you can click on just to get an atmospheric message.

        

To eat, I would think.

       

• It took me a while to figure out that you can learn spell scrolls by clicking in the spellbook with them.

• Mage spells seem a little underpowered so far. "Magic Missile" significantly underperforms physical attacks. "Ice Storm" often misses. "Hold Undead" didn't work on the undead I faced on Level 4. But the mage class is still worth it for "Improved Identify." 

 

I think this is the only "bad" piece of equipment I've found.

       

• Having played a few hours of Baldur's Gate 3, I have to say that I find the simplicity of AD&D2 refreshing, where you find a Mace +1 and then a few hours later, you find a Mace +2--instead of a mace that gives you +1 but only in the sunlight and when you have a psychic link with at least one enemy who has taken damage from one of your companions earlier in the same round.  

        

I thought that would be enough for one entry, but it's not, so let's do another couple of levels. Level 5 bucked the previous trend by offering only one enemy type and no "boss": Minotaurs. The level was a labyrinthine maze, and they were waiting around every corner. I had several reloads when I couldn't dodge their two-handed axe attacks in time.

There was another clever stand in for a lock-and-key where a relief on the wall depicted a planet with three moons. The space for the planet was empty; I had to find the orb to stick there.

      

Another clever alternative to a key and lock.

      

The level had a brief section in which, when I entered, my character announced that she was suddenly famished. While in this area, food depleted at a much higher rate. It wasn't long before I was out of it, though. I had plenty of food anyway, plus my character was capable of casting "Create Food and Water."

   

Items found on the level helped me resolve the cleric-mage armor problem. A Ring of Strength allowed me to remove my Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength and put a pair of Bracers +1 in that slot instead. Then a Cloak of Protection +3 took the place of my chain mail. With this setup, my AC is 1 instead of 0. Good enough.

        

Just a shot of the Level 4 cleric spell list.

       

Minotaurs didn't provide nearly enough experience (at least relatively) as the shades. I only gained one cleric level before heading down to dungeon Level 6.

     

Level 6 brought back undead, specifically mummies. They were joined by trolls. No level-draining, but both of them hit hard enough that I did everything I could to stay out of melee range. I hit mage Level 10 at some point, but I ran out of time before I finished the area.

       

The low ceilings have given the troll a flat top.

      

Short entry, but it's a busy week. This is a good game for a busy week--not much plot, a decent amount of forward momentum. There's only so far you can get on momentum alone, though. We'll see how I feel about the last four levels.

   

Time so far: 7 hours (only 4 on this character)