Magic Candle: Won!

Eternal imprisonment in a candle feels like cruel and unusual punishment, even for an arch-demon.

I know, I know. Last posting, I was remarking about how much of the game I still had to play, and now I've gone and won it. Believe me, I'm disappointed. I still had "Snuffed," "Flicker and Dim," and several as-yet-not-worked-out plays on birthdays and "can't hold a candle to" to use as posting titles. But I was getting a little fatigued with the game (and frankly, judging by the drop in comments and traffic, I think you were, too), so I made a major push to get it done before the weekend. The "major push" involved about 20 total hours of gameplay over the last 48 hours, which was a little excessive even for me.

There were no consequences.

The Magic Candle ended up having two major "halves." The first half is a process of game world exploration and character development, culminating in the discovery of the Zirvanad, the book that describes the ritual we need to restore the Magic Candle. The second half of the game is a process of traveling around the land and gathering the various rituals and items specified in the Zirvanad. When I last posted, I had discovered about half of the items, and I slowly assembled the other half while visiting the large island of Upper Deruvia and several dungeons.

To make a long story short, I:

1. Returned to the unicorn on the island Heavenly and, using Sherro's High Call, summoned her and got the Green Ring of Order.

2. Explored the dungeon of Bedangidar. On an upper level, I found the elven sorceress Somona and rescued her, sending her back to her queen at Theldair. On a lower level was a magic sword called Brennix, once owned by the warrior Zilbann, that I gave to Giauz. It was, as far as I can tell, the only magic weapon in the game. It did up to 99 damage per attack, which was far superior than the long sword I'd been wielding previously.

You'd have to be really committed to role-playing to say "no" here.

 
3. Returned to Theldair and got the Elven Dream Dust from Somona.

For some reason, Somona had been trapped as a bird in a gilded cage.

 
4. Took a boat from Merg to Kraken Bay on Upper Deruvia. Explored. Found both the temple and the sleeping area of a god and got some statistical boosts from him.

5. Went to Shiran, the city of wizards. I was told I need a magic circlet to get Shir-Aka ash. I searched my notes and found references to it being in the possession of the Ogre King. Bloody hell--why didn't I notice that when I was at his tower? I returned to Shadrun, which turned out to be a good thing because a scroll in the tower had the words for the Bubble of Captivity. I got the Circlet from the Ogre King, returned to Shiran, and got the ash.

Technically, I got twigs from the Shir-Aka tree, which turned into ash.

I also picked up a Zoxinn spellbook while there, which had a lot of mass-damage and mass-heal spells, most of which I hardly used.

The mass-damage spells were very draining but occasionally fun.

 
6. Explored the tower of Thakass on Wizards' Isle. At the top, spoke to the "Mad One" and got the Blue Ring of Power.

It was a real struggle.

 
7. Wandered around and spoke to various NPCs until I got the clue I needed to the cloak in Kharin. Found the cloak in Crezimas, which I had already cleared. At this point I needed to get to the dungeon Sargoz. I had a teleportal combination but no origin point. Based on an obscure note I had taken, I tried it in Thakass and it worked.

8. Defeated Sargoz--the longest part of this journey. It was very hard. There were tons of water locations, snakes, magic barriers, and tough enemies. There were no stairs from level to level, so I had to find and map teleporters. I had to keep resting in rooms to replenish spells. I kept running out of "Fear" and "Freeze" which were the only things protecting me from high-level enemy spell-casting demons. I ran out of arrows and some mushrooms. The toughest battles of the game were at the end of the dungeon, and in my state I had to reload three or four times.

A difficult battle against Dreads and other demons.

I finally made it to the Furnace of Hades, used the cloak to protect myself from heat, and got the White Amulet of Light.

I felt like something by Orff should have been playing here.

 
9. Journeyed to the three "brick houses" containing levers needed to raise the Sunken Isle. Left one party member at the first two, pulled all the levers simultaneously, and reversed the journey to pick up the party members.

What are we supposed to make of an island raised by three levers? Is it just a bit of goofiness, or is Deruvia a world constructed by a superior technological civilization?

10. Visited Sunken Isle and read the Ritual of Awareness in a book in a brick house there.

Can you make anything out of these words? I don't think they're anagrams.

  
11. Re-stocked one last time and headed to the Hidden Vale to defeat Dreax.

Hidden Vale is surrounded by mountains. I had to teleport in.

 
I was surprised to find that the room with the Magic Candle wasn't at the end of a dungeon or something. You just wander into the castle in the Hidden Vale, and there it is. You don't get any kind of dialogue with Dreax, which is too bad.

 
The ritual takes a while and proceeds through multiple stages of using items and bellowing chants. The Zirvanad outlined it fairly clearly, and the only problems I had related to misspelling the long, foreign words. The ritual basically created a "Bubble of Captivity," transferred Dreax from the Candle into it, restored the Candle, and transferred Dreax back.

The Bubble of Captivity. Ignore the screen corruption on the right. That started happening late in the game every time I saved.

When I was done, I didn't even get a "NOOOOOOO!" from Dreax--just a whisk to King Rebnard's castle, where the court feted us, the king designated us "Heroes of the Candle," and we received warning of another archdemon raising forces in the lands across the seas. I was sorry that Min and the PCs I used as cheap labor couldn't be part of the proceedings, but otherwise, as CRPG endings go, it wasn't too bad. The trend lately (I mean lately on the blog) has been to dump the player onto a "You Won!" screen without any fanfare.

Couldn't it be "Heroes of the Flame?" That sounds cooler.

  
If you're interested in a half-hour video of the final stages of the game, here it is. It starts in the middle of Step 9 above. If you want to skip right to the restoration of the Magic Candle, it's at 23:30.

You'll see me avoiding almost every combat. After Sargoz, I don't think I fought more than three. There was no point. My characters were already maxed, or nearly so, in their skills, and an abundance of gems had long removed any need for money. In this, the game reminds me unfavorably of the Questron series, including Legacy of the Ancients, where the only reason to fight anyone was that they were standing in your way.

The teleport spell helped to avoid mind-numbing combats.

As you can see, I was needlessly worried about the number of days left to finish the game. I started with 999 and ended at 718, which means my quest took 281 days. Even if I'd started on "hard" level, with 600 days, I would have ended at 319. And, as it's been pointed out, there is a sorceress in the Royal Castle who can give you more time. I can't imagine what I'd have to do to need all that time. I do confess, though, that there were times in which I hauled my party all the way across the continent to get some clue, then restored a save rather than hike all the way back. In retrospect, I guess that was a kind of cheating, but even then I don't think I would have come anywhere near to running out of time.

I couldn't finish up without experimenting with the ways to fail in the game. They are:

1. Full-party death or death of the lead character ("Lukas" by default, "Giauz" in my case) without resurrection in time. They amount to the same thing, since when the full party dies, so does any hope of resurrecting the lead. (I didn't cover this much before, but when a character dies, you have to cast resurrection pretty quickly. Otherwise you're off to one of the castles for a replacement.)

2. Time runs out. When this happened, I expected that the game would give me some kind of  message about Dreax rampaging across the land, but it doesn't. In fact, you can still go into the Hidden Vale castle and find the completely-melted Magic Candle:

The game still lets you perform the ritual--up to a point. You can trap Dreax (I guess he didn't have anything better to do but hang around the fireplace), but when you throw the Shir-Aka ash and chant the ritual necessary to restore the candle, "Nothing happens!" The only way out of the game at this point is to break the bubble as in #3. Thus, the end of the counter puts you in a "walking dead" situation rather than ending the game outright.

"So...um...hey, Dreax. This is awkward."

By the way, it took bloody forever to check this out. It's not easy to run down the timer for 700 days. You can put the characters to sleep, but they wake up every 80 or so days complaining about hunger and you have to go buy more food. If you're sleeping outside, there's a risk of ambush; if you're sleeping at an inn, the owner kicks you out every two weeks. It took longer to run out the clock than it took to write all of this posting and most of the next one.

3. You get Dreax imprisoned in the Bubble of Captivity but then walk into the bubble, breaking it. Dreax escapes and immediately slaughters your entire party with spells.

Dreax stands triumphant over the slain party. My, he looks bad-ass.

I confess I was a little disappointed with the ending, for reasons that weren't the game's fault. In my YouTube video on gameplay, a commenter said, "Dreax might be a nice guy, you never know [sic]." I thought he might be spoiling the ending and that there would be a twist in which it turned out that Dreax was unfairly imprisoned. I also thought that maybe the gods would show up and have something to do. I'm also a little disappointed by the lack of a final battle before facing Dreax. I feel like I did a lot of character development for a combat system that peaked 8 hours before the endgame.

But while it was a little anti-climactic, I did enjoy the process of the ritual. Most modern games wouldn't allow you to screw it up, and would make the overall process a lot simpler. I liked that I had to take extensive notes and consult them for the proper order of things. I only wish Dreax had offered some reaction rather than simply dancing around.

On to the GIMLET!