Eye of the Beholder II: Poorly Coordinated

The bad guy makes threats.

           

Things are starting to get much more difficult in the temple of Darkmoon.

When I last wrote, I had just achieved the "mark of Darkmoon," which would allow me access to a previously-inaccessible area of the temple's second level. The magic mouth let us pass with no problem. There was some kind of glass shield blocking passage on the other side. I just swung away at it with my weapons, and it shattered.

            

Every bit of vandalism advances our cause.

        

The corridors led to a stairway, which led upward to a very small level with no enemies and not much treasure. It was oddly purposeless. I was worried I had missed something but I tested every wall--even those that shouldn't hold secret doors--and only found one. It led to a teleporter, which led to a small area with a couple of treasures and another teleporter back to the main area. Ultimately shrugging, I continued upward.

The next level started with a curious puzzle involving two busts of the same elf stationed in alcoves. San-Raal reported that the statues were "sources of powerful magic," and a nearby plaque said, "disperse the magic," so I tried casting "Dispel Magic" on them. It worked; casting it on each bust opened a secret wall.  

         

Ours is not to reason why.

        

In a room nearby, I found the old elf from whose visage the busts had been carved. What he said didn't really make a lot of sense. He had come to the area to study the magic of the bulettes--more on them in a second. Apparently, there was some rumor that the creatures released magic when they died. He goes on:

       

I constructed this dais to siphon the magic and store it as a reservoir. To my horror, the dais not only collected the magic but the creatures' intelligence as well. It binds my body here, feeding off of my magic powers. It wracks my mind and body with unbearable pain. It laughs at my pleas to release me or let me die. If you would allow me to physically touch you, I could release the inherent magic from my body and my body and spirit would finally be free of this magical snare.

            

Ah, the old "I'm trapped by a curse and need to physically touch you to free myself" ruse. You must think we were born yesterday, you old perv.

       

None of this makes any sense, but whatever. I let him touch Gaston and he died and Gaston got a bunch of experience and rose a level. I do like that Eye of the Beholder II offers so many of these special encounters, but they could have tried harder to make them coherent.

It wasn't long before I encountered one of the bulettes, also known as "landsharks." I read up on them in the first issue of Dragon magazine, where they first appeared, and it doesn't sound to me like they're particularly intelligent or release magic when they die. (I did learn that the name is pronounced "boo-lay." Well la-di-dah.) What they do is pound you for an incredible amount of damage. Two bites can kill one of my lead characters. "Hold Monster," damage spells, and dodging worked reasonably well when the geography cooperated. It often didn't, and they occasioned a lot of reloading.

            

These guys are hard.

         

The second monster introduced on the level was the lesser basilisk, which is theoretically capable of petrifying characters. I say "theoretically" because I couldn't even make them do it. Either I have good saving throws or they were just getting the worst rolls. Either way, I think Bugsy got petrified once, when we entered a room literally full of them. Otherwise, the creatures died from regular attacks about as easily as the dire wolves at the beginning of the game. It's good that they weren't too hard because they respawned like crazy.

             

I couldn't make these guys turn me to stone.

            

This level way overdid it with the navigation puzzles. There was an area of multiple teleporters that I had to carefully map. There were areas of "moving pits" where I had to time my travel down a corridor to avoid falling in. There was one fun puzzle with two rows of pressure plates in front of a moving piece of wall. Every time I stepped on a plate, the wall moved closer to my side of the room. Since it only had three squares to move within, stepping on two consecutive plates brought it right in front of me and prevented passing. (I'm aware that I'm not describing this well; if someone can do a better job in the comments, please give it a shot.) To pass, I had to throw an object to a pressure plate on the other side of the room, "faking" the wall and darting past it before it returned to my side.

         

By far, the worst area of this level was in the northwest, where there was a series of about 10 pressure plates in various corridors and an equal number of vents bellowing fireballs in various directions when you stepped on the plates. I had to carefully map which plates triggered which fireballs in which directions, then find ways to dart around the area, avoiding fireballs, and finding pockets of safety, all of this involving the kind of manual speed and coordination that I'm not good at. Complicating things was the presence of at least half a dozen bulettes, who wandered the area and often triggered the plates themselves. I must have spent two hours and a dozen reloads in this area alone, but it produced some clearly-necessary keys. 

Note all of the annotations on the western side as I tried to figure out how to get safely through the area.

         

I determined two things during the experience. First, "Wall of Force" stops fireballs and is thus a godsend in the right location. Unfortunately, I can only memorize one of them. Second, if you kill enemies by using the traps against them, you still get the experience. This came in particularly handy on the next level.

    

The party prepares to experience another death-by-fireball trap.

       

This area opened the way into the toughest challenge of the game so far. I encountered a magic mouth that challenged me to enter a teleporter after dropping my spellbooks and holy symbols in an alcove--I could cast no spells on the other side. ("Your spellcasters would make this battle a lopsided affair.") After saving and casting all the buffing spells I could think of, I dropped my items and entered. I found myself in a small area with three bulettes with no room to maneuver, but after a couple of reloads, I was able to kill them with a combination of melee attacks and a Wand of Lightning.

      

Fighting with no spells was lopsided the other way!

         

Nothing special happened after I returned, and the mouth acted as if I hadn't accepted the challenge. I started to move on, but then I realized that I had forgotten to drop my paladin's holy symbol in the pile. When I did that and entered the teleporter, I got taken to a new area. This one also started with a bunch of bulettes. They did a rough job on us. Shortly afterwards, we ran into a wall that we had to smash open. The kicker is that the wall did 8 points of damage to every party member every time we hit it, and we had to hit it 6 times. (Range weapons and spell scrolls didn't help.) This posed a problem, since Shorn and San-Raal don't have 48 hit points total and my other characters had been damaged by the bulettes. I had to reload from outside the area, enter again, and make sure that my party took virtually no damage from the bulette fight, then rely on potions and scrolls to heal everyone enough to pass through the wall.

The area culminated in a battle against some kind of fat abomination with wings, curly horns, and an elephant's trunk. It doesn't appear in the game manual. The next level was full of them. He started down a long corridor, so he wasn't hard to beat with my Wands of Lightning and Fireball and various ranged weapons. Beyond him was an "Eye of Talon" that I needed to open the way to the next level.

            

Anyone know what this is called?

       

I should mention here that both this level and the next were full of small areas interconnected by up- and down staircases, pits, and teleporters. Mapping them all was a bit of a nightmare, and I gave up on trying to keep track of what "level" I was on at a given time. This setting really needs some kind of "Locate" spell that will give X, Y, and Z coordinates to facilitate proper mapping.

Next level was full of these lumbering elephant monsters, which pack a punch but aren't as hard as bulettes. When they're close, they make a loud rhythmic thumping that's suitably intimidating. Midway through the level, I found a corridor with a pressure plate that launched two fireballs every time I stepped on it. A little alcove allowed me to dart to safety. There were at least 15 of the monsters in rooms at the other end of the hallway, so I spent a long time leading them back to the hallway and killing them with the trap.

           

Letting a fireball trap weaken the elephant-goat-bat-bear thing.

         

The level had a lot more of the "moving pit" traps, including two 3 x 4 rooms full of them, and it only took me a couple of experiences falling to the previous level before I started just saving and reloading if I fell. Again, challenges of manual dexterity aren't my strong suit, and I fell a lot. It seems a little unfair that my characters can all have dexterity of 18, but their success depends on me--perhaps another way that AD&D rules don't really fit this engine well.

           

Thread your way through this! (It's a little sped up.)

          

The hardest puzzle on the level was at least an intellectual one. It involved an area with four pressure plates, two teleporters, and six more pressure plates behind glass shields. I soon determined that various combinations of the original four pressure plates "configured" the destinations of the teleporters. There were pits in front of the teleporters preventing me from walking into them, but I could throw objects into them, and they would appear behind the glass walls on one of the six pressure plates there. The goal was to get an object on every one of the six plates. Through trial and error, albeit quite long, I figured it out, which opened the way forward and also allowed me to enter the previously-glassed-off areas and collect my stuff.

Towards the end of the level, there was a humorous moment when "Khelben" appeared in a vision. He told me that Dran Draggore was planning on unleashing some horrific magic against us, but we could prevent it by taking a magic amulet, letting Draggore's minions kill us so that Draggore would believe us to be dead, and then letting the amulet resurrect us. It was a nice try on ol' Dran's part, but even if I had believed the story for a second, the fact that the amulet was cursed kind of gave him away.

       

Sure, sounds legit.

        

We killed the minions as normal. The vision re-appeared, with "Khelben's" face dissolving to reveal Draggore. He ranted and threatened us and disappeared. On we went to the next level.

One thing that's starting to annoy me is the number of places where you have to take unavoidable damage. It started with the "light pads" an earlier level and continued with a "glyph" on the floor here, and a few places where I don't think there was any way to avoid a fireball. Also, that part where I had to just stand there and take the damage from hitting the door. Maybe there was a way around some of these, but I don't think so. I feel like there should always be a way for a clever or agile player to avoid damage.

         

The party takes damage from an unavoidable glyph on the floor.

         

This session was good for levels. Bugsy went to Level 10 as a thief, Marina went to Level 11 as a mage, Gaston increased to Level 9 as both a ranger and cleric, and San-Raal went to Level 10 as a mage. I didn't get any new spell levels, though.

On equipment, I have a lot more keys than makes sense, but perhaps there are redundancies on the tougher levels. No weapon upgrades, but we just found some kind of wand or mace called "Starfire" that casts some kind of "mystic defense" spell. Also, rather ominously, we keep finding polished shields that resolve to "Medusa shield" when "Improved Identify" is cast on them. I swear I've found about six of them so far. I guess the game is giving a fair chance to all six of the characters, but not all six of them are capable of carrying shields. Medusas, incidentally, are also not in the manual.

       

The game is starting to over-do it on these shields.

     

Checking on monsters, I still have mind flayers, salamanders, hell hounds, frost giants, and aerial servants left to experience. That would suggest three more levels, but since this session showed that the game is capable of introducing monsters not in the manual, I have no idea how many levels there really are. I'm still enjoying it, but not all of the time, and I wouldn't mind if it wrapped up before the 40-hour mark.

Time so far: 34 hours

*****

Those of you who said that Heroes of the Lance was not an RPG are correct. I knew you were correct before I started playing, but I thought it was important to document it as a D&D game, since D&D is responsible for so much we experience in the RPG world. After an hour with the game, I no longer think so.