Magic Candle: Melting

The party blithely decides to walk through molten lava.

I can't say I love the dungeons in this game, and thinking about it, I realized why. I'm primarily a fan of dungeons that either A) you can map on graph paper; or B) you don't have to map at all. The former category is best represented by the gridded dungeons of Wizardry and Might & Magic. Later in the history of CRPGs, we come upon plenty of examples of category B, either because the game offers automaps (Might & Magic VI, the Infinity Engine games) or because the dungeons are so moronically simple that you rarely have to remember that you haven't explored a particular passage yet (Skyrim).

(Completely out-of-the-blue, complete non-sequitur: The Elder Scrolls games should make it so you have to actually read to the part of the book that has the hint that causes you to increase your skill; you shouldn't get it automatically upon opening the book. Thank you for listening.)

The Magic Candle occupies that in-between area. Sure, the dungeons--like the overland--are tiled, but the isometric perspective means that it's tough to figure out exactly how to draw the walls, and I'm not going to waste a lot of time calculating exactly how many tiles a room has. Perhaps more important, it's not necessary to map every square of these dungeons. Games like Wizardry depend on encounters that only exist when you arrive at particular squares, so you have to make sure to hit every one. In The Magic Candle, it is, rather, only necessary to remember that you haven't been down a particular corridor or in a particular room. While much more general than mapping every square, it is, paradoxically, more difficult for me because, since I don't have to literally draw every square, it's difficult to know exactly what to draw. I mean, I could make a general sketch of the dungeon layout, but without the lock-step certainty of grid squares, I'd probably screw up the proportions. In short, I'd guess I'd rather have a lot of work that's easily accomplished than a little work that's complicated. You know what? Screw you. It's my blog; it doesn't have to make sense.

Much of my playing since the last entry has been in three dungeons: Sudogur, Meardom, and Crezimas. The first was a result of the main quest. After I got the hoyam essence from the dwarves, I explored the northern areas of Deruvia until I found Wolf Rock. Luring the White Wolf with the hoyam essence, I was rewarded with the Star-shaped key to the vault containing the Zirvanad, which contains the instructions to restoring the Magic Candle.

He just dropped it to me. Ultima I-II or Questron I-II would have made me kill him to get the key.

Plenty of NPCs had clued me that the Zirvanad was in a vault under the city of Lymeric. I traveled there, and after spending some time with Aksimento increasing my learning skill, I plunged into the dungeon.

This is the game's clue that you need the "Walkwater" spell. Since I otherwise haven't heard a peep about where to get the Demaro spellbook, I'm glad I chose Eflun.

It was long and hard. The maps were bigger than in other dungeons; there were multiple stairways and portals; and there were lots of rooms and ambushes. There were over a dozen places where I had to use "Walkwater" to stride across rivers, and continually memorizing and casting it got old.

The good thing is that there don't seem to be any "random" encounters in dungeons; once you clear an area it stays clear, so no matter how bad you're screwing up your navigation, you're generally making progress.

Wouldn't it have made more sense if this tome had been stored in, say, a cabinet right next to the Magic Candle? Perhaps with all of the artifacts needed to complete the ritual?

Despite my stubborn refusal to map, I ultimately found the vault containing the Zirvanad. The text gave me the major steps I need to finish the main quest, and I present it to you in its entirety:

Should the candle start to melt:

Three magic users must enter the hall and locate the three lightning stones. Each magic user must possess one of the following items: the white amulet of light; the green ring of order; the blue ring of power. The holder of each item must stand on the stone of its color: blue on blue, white on white, and green on green. The holder of the white amulet starts the process by changing the "ritual of awareness." It is essential that the steps described herein be executed in the exact order specified.

(Three of the following spells must be cast immediately after using magical dusts and ashes. Do not allow the dust to settle before chanting the magical words.)

Next, the wearer of the blue ring must throw crystal dust into the air and conjure a "Bubble of Captivity." The bubble will cage Dreax while the candle is being repaired. Once the bubble is formed, it is time to transfer Dreax from the flame of the candle into the bubble. This is done by the green ring holder who sprinkles elven dream dust in the air and chants the "Three Words of Will" while the dust floats around the candle. Without the effect of the dream dust, Dreax cannot be contained within the bubble for more than a few seconds.

Following the transfer, the green ring holder chants UDE, SAMAID, and DEHUBLE to prepare the candle for repair. Immediately, the blue ring holder must fling a pinch of shir-aka ash in the air and chant EXITERALMISTO, HAXOBEZ, BEHSAIM before it settles. At this point, if all was done properly, the candle would be whole again.

There now remains one last step: the task of transferring Dreax back into the candle's flame. This operation is performed by the amulet holder chanting EKBURAMITRAL, HOX, BEGONE.

So, it sounds like I need to find a few things: the White Amulet of Light; the Green Ring of Order; the Blue Ring of Power; Crystal Dust; Elven Dream Dust; Shir-Aka Ash; the "Bubble of Captivity" spell; and perhaps the words to the "Ritual of Awareness" and the "Three Words of Will" if those aren't things that I just divine while holding the artifacts.

From consulting my notes, it appears that I've learned that the Blue Ring of Power is held by a mad wizard in Thakass Keep in the far northeast. I also had a note to return to Belazar in the Royal Castle once I'd visited the Zirvanad. He told me that the Green Ring of Order is kept by the Last Unicorn, and to lure it, I need to learn "Sherro's High Call" from the elves. He didn't give me much of a clue of where to go to do that.

He's dying, so we're going to forgive him the poor grammar.

I'm ahead of myself, though. Before I visited Belazar again, I went to Port Avur. My explorations of Sudogur had left me rich beyond the dreams of avarice. I'd already made a bunch of gold killing enemies on bridges on the way to Wolf Rock; for some reason, enemies on bridges have 3-4 times the amount of gold as normal enemies, perhaps because they extort travelers. Also, the moment I exited the dungeon after reading the Zirvanad, all of the wilderness encounters seemed to re-set. I'm not sure if this was because of the plot progression or because a certain amount of time had passed. Either way, I gathered a lot of gold from low-level enemies who could barely scratch my skin.

It's like my characters had the Crown of Barenziah.

But this gold didn't compare in the slightest to what I got from all the gems I found in Sudogur. By the time I had sold them all, I was flush with about 12,000 gold. I bought all the spellbooks I knew how to find for all characters who could use them, I stocked up on nearly the maximum complement of mushrooms for each character, I bought everyone steel plate armor, and I spent the rest on melee, bow, and magic training until I started getting messages saying I couldn't train any more.

After I finished talking with Belazar, I decided to put my new skills to the test in Meardom, the dungeon beneath the Royal Castle. I still didn't have any plot-related reason to be there, but the king's uncle thought it was important that I find something. I explored it exhaustively, and the only thing I found was an obelisk that had some strange words on it. I'm supposed to read about obelisks if I ever visit the library in Delkona, but right now I have no idea what they do.

At this point, I did something either bold or stupid. I didn't feel like backtracking the five levels out of Meardom, so I used the teleportal chamber I found there. Unfortunately, I only had one teleportal combination from Meardom to somewhere else, and that somewhere else turned out to be Udar, on the absolute opposite side of the map. Figuring "no guts, no glory," I took it.

Well, the area was absolutely swarming with enemies, and while they had the same names as enemies I'd already faced and killed in abundance, they were super-charged versions, with higher armor classes (Min can't even do any damage to most of them) and hit points.

Jerrahs on the other side of the map have ACs of 4 and stamina levels of around 30.

I soon started to run low on mushrooms. Wading through combat after combat, I made my way to the nearest town, Kharin, and found that it only had one shop: an armor shop that sells "Methreal." While I'll definitely want this, right now I need mushrooms. I left the town and fought my way through the mountains to the Crystal Castle, where at least I had some reason to be.

This is in the exact opposite corner of the map from the Royal Castle. They're like bookends.

Fortuitously enough, Crystal Castle related directly to the main quest. A wizard named Pindalf knew something about the Ritual of Awareness, which is in a book called Zilmaeron in the Tower of Ruhan on the Sunken Isle, and only someone named Meliso in Bondell knows the location. Great, that's way on the other side of the map.

Is this supposed to be a play on "Silmarillion"?

It also turned out, through dialogue, that Crystal Dust (needed as part of the ritual) could be found beneath Crystal Castle in the caverns of Crezimas. Hence, my third dungeon.

I had been prepared for it by the manual and some of your comments, but I was still vaguely surprised to find that Crystal Castle offered a Knights' Room (complete with proper punctuation, which is unusual for both this game and 1980s CRPGs in general) containing an entirely new roster of potential characters. I confess I don't really get this. Yes, some have slightly better stats than my existing characters, but not enough that I'm going to dump any of my current party after investing so much time and gold in their development.

Impostors!

Crezimas, beneath Crystal Castle, is a unique experience. I have a specific quest to kill every living monster within the dungeon--including both rooms and ambushes--so that the castle could re-open the mine and get me some Crystal Dust. The Queen apparently has an ability to sense how many monsters are left on each level:

Because ambushes only trigger on specific squares, I had to make sure I hit every square in every area, which I suppose is the exception to my earlier statement that it's not necessary to map every square. Because I only detect ambushes about 50% of the time, and each successful ambush gives the monsters an entire round to surround and attack me, wandering into this dungeon was courting disaster.

How did they all manage to hide?

So far, I've found the dungeon denizens easier than the ones outside, but my low arrow and mushroom totals have complicated things (I still don't know where to restock nearby). Although I've cleared a couple of levels, it seems likely I will have to depart the dungeon and return when I'm better-supplied. The dungeon is also swimming with lava, but fortunately I had previously purchased boots for all my characters, so I can just walk through it. We all know how effective boots are against lava.

As is my wont, let's conclude with a few random notes:

• The dialogue system in this game is very sensitive. The nice thing about Ultima IV and Ultima V is that it would pick up your meaning from the first four letters. Asking about BRITISH, BRITAIN, or BRITANNIA will get you the same responses, and you could just type BRIT if you wanted to save time. Not so with this game. If you want Vixeskre to tell you the teleportal combination from Vocha to the Ice Plains, you'd better be sure you ask him about TELEPORTALS, not TELEPORTAL, 'cause with the latter he looks at you like an idiot and pretends that he doesn't know what you're talking about. Similarly, Belazar has a lot to say about THE LAST UNICORN, but nothing about LAST UNICORN. Apparently, definite articles are very important to him.

• Even when you have the sound turned off, the game makes an annoying beep when you hit a wall. This may be an emulator issue rather than something programmed into the game.

• Opening chests in dungeons runs the risk of poisoning or causing disease. In both cases, the remedy is simple: eat the appropriate "cure" mushroom and then whatever other mushroom or potion you need to restore your stamina and energy. I'm not sure if the traps are scripted or if the character's dexterity provides a way to avoid them, but either way it's a little pointlessly annoying.

This turned out to be the chest where the Forces of Darkness store their weed.

The highest number of postings I've had on any game before "Won!" is 12, with Might & Magic II. I'm up to 7 with The Magic Candle,  and I suspect it's going to beat the record. When I finally visited the Zirvanad, I basically felt like I'd finished the prologue. I hope you're all enjoying this one.