Chaos Strikes Back: The Corbumite Maneuver

Corbum at last!

Well, I finally managed to find some of that precious, precious Corbum ore, and since I have to find four of them, it would be nice to think that I'm one-quarter of the way through the game (cue peals of laughter from Chaos Strikes Back fans).

Getting it wasn't easy. Thanks to a clue from Georges, I realized that I'd missed a secret switch in the long "dead end" corridor. This led me to an area full of dragons--at least six of them--but fortunately they were prowling around separate rooms. I killed three--easily solving my hunger problems for the next 20 hours of gameplay. In fact, I ran out of space to store any more dragon meat, so I figured I'd just run past the others and come back later.

A dragon busts out of his cage and heads towards the party.

It didn't appear there was a way out of the area, except for a cryptic message on one wall saying "DO YOU HAVE THE POWER?" right next to some weird-looking thing that reminded me of a retinal scanner. In The Bard's Tale, you could get messages on the wall like "IRKM DESMET DAEM," scratch your head, and move on. But if a message shows up on the walls in Chaos Strikes Back, you'd better figure out what it means. I'm still losing sleep over "FIGHTERS CHARGE."

Nearby, I found a set of "Powertowers" (which turned out to be leggings) in a chest. On a whim, I held these up to the retinal scanner, and lo and behold, a secret passage opened to my right. I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of this game.

Via several staircases and combats, this path ultimately led me to a room full of pits with a pillar in the middle and the Corbum ore gleaming in an alcove. The problem there was a pit in front of it. A nearby pressure plate closed the pit for a fraction of a second, meaning I had to step on the plate, rush over to the Corbum ore and grab it before I fell screaming to the lower level. It took me about nine tries.

There's the ore to the left. I think the other pieces are on other sides of the same pillar. Couldn't we gingerly work our way around the pits or something? Do we really need to approach from four completely separate directions?

Interestingly, the pillar continued on the next level down and had some nice armor in a niche there. On a whim, I stepped into the pits around that pillar and found myself back in the room that the game started in. So unless the second set of pits dropped me more than one level, that means the starting level is five levels up from the bottom. That really helps me organize my maps.

That Diabolical Demon Director level was starting to get on my nerves, so I'm glad to be out of there for now. It's hard enough to map it as it is, figuring out what all the triggers and plates and buttons do, without having to deal with the constantly respawning creatures. There's nothing more frustrating than running into a party of death knights while you're trying to figure out what you missed in a 105-square corridor.

Jackasses.

But back to the Corbum ore briefly. Given the nature of the room where I found it, I'm guessing that the other three pieces are on the other sides of the same pillar, and that the different "ways" converge in that room from different angles. Moreover, I'm guessing that at some point I'll find something that allows me to open this nearby forcefield and confront Lord Chaos on the next or upper level.

When I found the Corbum ore, I was already very overloaded, so I inspected it for its weight and found to my surprise that it weighs 0.0. This triggered a memory and I searched my blog and found that at one point in Dungeon Master, I found some "Corbomite," which was the solution to a puzzle about something that was lighter than a feather. I guess I should have kept it. (To stave off the pedantic: In the original game, the substance was called "Corbomite," as in Star Trek; in this game, it's called "Corbum Ore." I blended the two in the title of the posting.)

Back at the Junction of the Ways, I had to choose my next path. I decided to go with "NETA," the Way of the Priest. This time, I was smart and threw some debris in my backpath to note when it disappeared and I was teleported to some other area. Unfortunately, as usual, I had no idea what level I was on, so I had to start a new set of "side-maps" until I could figure out where they joined up with something familiar.

The "mummy imprisonment puzzle" area. Cs are cells in which I had to trap mummies to open the door at D.

NETA hasn't been very difficult so far. There was one puzzle that I was particularly proud of myself for having solved without any assistance from you. I arrived in a small area in which there were four "cells"--single squares with only one way in, preceded by an open door. In each cell was a pressure plate, but I noticed when I stepped on it, there was no sound and nothing happened. That's usually a good sign that you need monsters to step on them. Something about the cell doors being open made me think that the trick was to drive monsters into the cells and then close the door. Individual mummies kept spawning on the level, providing perfect candidates.

Welcome to Shawshank, Mr. Mummy! (This is funnier if you know that I was wearing a "Property of Shawshank Penitentiary" t-shirt while playing this.)

I had found a Horn of Fear upon arriving at the level and I tried that. I also remembered commenter Unimural saying that "War Cry" (which you get in the unarmed menu) is a priest skill. I had never spent much time with it. Between "War Cry" and the horn, I was able to fill each of the four cells with imprisoned mummies, at which point a previously-closed wooden door opened and allowed me to continue.

By the way, this level also had a couple of hidden pits, and if you can look at the image below and discern the invisible pit in front of me, you have better eyes than I do.

Beyond this was an area where I caught a scroll flying through the air. The text said, "Holy one, step forward with purpose and trust that I will guide you through the purgatory that awaits!" The room beyond had some gigglers, some poison monsters I'd never seen before, and a lot of spinners, but I found that if I did what the note said--just walk a straight line from the entrance--it guided me through spinners in a path that took me to the exit. One of the gigglers followed me and I fireballed him to death, at last getting a skeleton key.

In other news, I managed to connect yet another area to my previously-mapped part of the bottom level. They all join at the teleporter in the center, which prevents you from getting to one path from another.

Thanks to my experiences in this session and your comments, the layout of the dungeon is becoming clearer, and while I'm not a huge fan of it, I grant that it's very interesting and unique. I've mapped parts of at least 9 levels. Each of the "ways" exists on multiple levels, wending aside, above, and below the others, joining at the bottom Level (as you see here) and the "Diabolical Demon Director" level. Traveling each "way" is very much a process of moving from the bottom upward, and when you arrive at a new level, you never know how long it's going to take. Some of them are literally four squares, stair to stair, and others open up into vast mazes with respawning monsters.

As I close for the night, I have reached the Diabolical Demon Director level again--much quicker than I would have assumed, although that leaves me in a bit of a quandry because I don't know what to do. On my previous exploration, I found a door marked DAIN, the way of the wizard, but I didn't find anything marked NETA. But I have two keys that I didn't have before--turquoise and skeleton--so perhaps they will be my salvation. Here's something I think is a non-spoiler question: Why is the Diabolical Demon Director level called that? Is there someone with that name on the level whom I've yet to meet?