Amberstar: Won!

The final screen sets up the sequel.

        
The solution to the final pieces of the Amberstar seemed to be found in actually asking NPCs about the AMBERSTAR. I don't know why that didn't occur to me earlier. If I'd made it standard practice from the beginning, who knows how it would have changed the order in which I did the quests. Thank you to everyone who helped with hints as to specific NPCs.
 
Of the three pieces I still needed, two were relatively easy. One was, despite my side comment in the last entry, in a chest in the underworld, to which you are directed by giving an herb packet to the old thief Atacar. Getting to and from the area was harder than actually getting the Amberstar piece. I thought it would probably be easier to arrive via the whirlpool (which is closer to Ship's End) and leave via the castle (which is the only way to leave that I know about). But there were no more ships to buy in Crystal, so just one entry since I openly wondered why anyone would ever need to buy a ship at the Shipyard of the Far Isle, I bought a ship at the Shipyard of the Far Isle.
 
Once through the whirlpool, it was a simple matter of walking to Ship's End, finding Atacar, and giving him the herb packet. He directed me to a tree in the city's cemetery where I found a treasure "map." I put that in quotes because the map was described to me in text: the northernmost of three piles of ash surrounding a volcano. It didn't take me long to find it. It was in a chest with some potions and a magic globe that casts "Light 3."
         

The treasure location.

        
It took me longer to get out of the area, mostly because I was so paranoid about having to fight octopuses that I did everything I could think of to get around them. I also had trouble remembering the specific route through the castle. I eventually found it, though, and arrived back on the continent at the windgate hub.
  
For the second piece, I got a clue from the very first NPC I talked to, Annorel, the head of the rangers' guild. She said that the current rangers' guild was a recent incarnation, and that I might find a piece in the ruins of the old rangers' guild, which is on some islands east of Crystal. She gave me a Staff of Opening for when I found it. We flew there on that eagle and spied an island with a ship's dock but no clear use. I landed there, used the staff, and found the opening.
         

Finding the hidden entrance.

           
The old guild was small and quick. I battled through a few parties of bloodsuckers (basically stirges) and soon found the chest with the Amberstar piece. It also had a bunch of gems. I ran out of reasons for money long before the last entry, and that didn't change in this one.
 
I suspected the third piece would be in the dwarf mine, for which I still hadn't found the password. I had a decent idea where to ask, though: Bothor, the otherwise-useless dwarf in Illien. When asked about the AMBERSTAR, he volunteered that his uncle Donner in Gemstone knew where to find a piece, and he gave us a letter of introduction. I scouted around and didn't find Donner, but I did find a dwarf named Andamael who said Donner was living in a mountain to the northwest.

Donner's house was at the end of a short dungeon with rats. When we found him and gave him his nephew's letter, he related that the dwarves of old embedded their Amberstar piece into a crown, which must have been left in Dora's Mine when the dwarves were forced to abandon it. Unfortunately, he didn't remember the password to the mine and thus sent me back to Bothor, with another letter in my backpack, which seemed like unnecessary padding. Bothor said the answer was to say the name of the mine backwards.
        

This episode has a Tolkienesque quality.

          
It still took me a while to get in, first because I had misinterpreted the runes and thought it was called Bora's mine. Second, I didn't imagine the possessive was part of what I had to say backwards. So I tried AROB, then took another look at the sign and realized my mistake, then tried AROD, then got really annoyed for a while before realizing it was SAROD.
          

It takes longer than it should have.

        
The mine was an annoying three levels, populated by hundreds of giant rats (not even swamp rats, just regular ones) and spiders. The battles weren't hard, but it was easily the most combat-heavy dungeon in the game, which wasn't something I enjoyed in the final hours.

We found the crown relatively quickly: a trap near the entrance dumped us down to Level 3, near a hole back up to Level 2, where a chest contained the crown. The difficult part was getting out of the dungeon, which was a maze of stairs, spinners, hidden doors, and teleporters. There was a final battle with probably the weirdest enemy in the game: a giant rock with a demonic face. I guess that's what drove the dwarves out of the mine. Anyway, we finally made it and took the crown back to Donner so he could remove the Amberstar piece.
        

I think the graphics department could have spent a little more time on this one.

       
With the 13 pieces finally in hand, we flew to the altar that I had previously discovered. There, we encountered a relatively difficult lore puzzle. The altar indicated that each piece of the Amberstar was associated with one of the major powers (gods and demons) of Lyramion: Mork, Nut, Geb, Harachte, Sobek, Sansri, Tarbos, Bralkur, Marmion, Gala, Bala, and Talmit. The altar gave us descriptors of each entity and we had to choose the appropriate piece. A wrong choice was instant death for the selected character.
       

That seems an awfully harsh punishment for not paying attention in Western Civ.

         
I had paid attention to the game's lore but I hadn't written down most of it. I shuffled through a lot of past screenshots as I tried to figure out the right associations, but some of them were pretty obscure. I was pretty sure I'd never heard of "Talmit" at all. I had to reload about half a dozen times before I got them all right. Here is the list of descriptors:
          

• Knowledge: In my last entry, I made fun of the monk who described Mork as the "god of wisdom." That seemed close enough, and I got it right.

• The Ally: Ally of who? It seemed to me that Marmion, Bralkur, and Sansri were all allies of each other. After dying when I tried Marmion, I got it with Bralkur.

           

"I don't even know him!"

         

• Master of the Sea: I guessed right that it was Sobek. My reasoning was that the temple at Ship's End was to Sobek.

• Mother of Life: One of the first things I looked at in the game was a statue to Gala, goddess of life.

• Falsehood: I died twice trying Marmion and Tarbos. The answer was Sansri. I had her pegged more as the goddess of snakes, but I suppose there's a longstanding snake-falsehood link in Christian mythology.

• Friend of the Eagles: I had no idea, but I got it right with my first guess, which was Nut. 

• Evil: That had to be Tarbos or Marmion. I guessed Tarbos first and got it right.

• Power of the Earth: Again, I had no idea. I died guessing Harachte, then again guessing Talmit. It was Geb.

• Mother of Death: The second thing I looked at in the game was a statue to Bala, goddess of death.

• Fire: Harachte was the answer, which I guessed right based on the "Globe of Harachte" that I was carrying, which acts as a torch. 

• Traitor: Between the two I had left, that was Marmion, easy.

• What is Coming: I guess Talmit is the god of the future or prophecy or something. I'd like to know where that was mentioned in the game.

    
The altar's voice told us the Amberstar was reunited. At first, I freaked out a bit because it didn't appear in my inventory, but I soon realized it was part of the interface.

Now, suddenly, we're in a big hurry.

I went through a final round of leveling up. My final levels were between 18 and 28, with Drobanir the fighter getting the highest level and my wizards getting the lowest. Most of the characters reached maximums in their primary skills, and I had thus been dumping their most recent allocations of skill points into useless secondary skills. But my two paladins had their focus split between combat and magic and never maxed out in either skill set.

With the Amberstar in hand, I hoped that the final castle would be quick. I was hoping that the door would open to one big main chamber and a final battle. But of course I wasn't so lucky: it was a multi-leveled nightmare with multiple battles with "yellowslimes," capable of causing disease and paralysis. Sometimes they attacked with large Sasquatch-like creatures whose names I didn't catch.

There were about two dozen of these.

        
In some chest, I finally found the Gray Wizard spell "Magic Sphere," which casts all of the game's enhancement and protection spells at once, at their highest levels. I think this is probably the only place you can find it. It would have been helpful a long time ago.
     
After what seemed like forever, I finally encountered the demon Bralkur. He threatened me and attacked. I had received that scroll from Sansri that I was supposed to destroy in Bralkur's presence, banishing him from the realm. The problem was, it didn't work. The scroll cast a spell called "Banish Demon," but Bralkur resisted it every time. I thus had to kill him the old fashioned way, which wasn't as hard as it perhaps should have been.
        

Bralkur manages to resist a scroll that's supposed to kill him exclusively.

       
A Staff of Runes found behind Bralkur opened the way to the final battle. I arrived in the final chamber just as Marmion and a circle of black wizards were completing the ritual to return Tarbos from the moon.
    

Keep in mind, they've been at this the entire game. This was a long ritual.

Marmion needs to work on his smack talk.

    

The resulting combat was perhaps the most enemy-heavy combat in the game: six Level 8 wizards, six Level 12 wizards, and Marmion. They somehow wiped away all my buffing spells (Weapons Power 3, Anti-Magic 3, Armour Protection 3) just as combat began. I soon ascertained that the wizards were completely immune to magic. None of Trasric's damage spells did anything to any of them, whether I targeted individuals, groups, or the entire field. Thus, he was relatively useless. Satine spent a few rounds getting our buffing spells, plus "Mass Haste," back online. Everything else came down to physical combat.
         

Trasric realizes he can sit this one out.

          
The wizards themselves focused on group damage spells, which suck but are recoverable with healing, scrolls, and potions. I'd much rather face damage spells than spells like "Stun," "Stone," "Sleep," and so forth, none of which they seemed to have. We basically just had to whittle away at them round after round.

Marmion himself was invulnerable to most of my weapons. I noticed this with a few other enemies, and I don't understand how the game decides how powerful a weapon has to be to damage a particular opponent. My thief's Assassin's Blade, one paladin's Icebiter, and my fighter's Firebasher all did nothing. The only thing that would damage him was Sansri's Whip. It's a good thing I kept that.

It was a long combat, but I won it on the first try. Afterwards, I walked up to the portal, thrust the Amberstar into it, and prevented Tarbos's return.
        

I'm glad it was instinctive because otherwise we might not have done the only thing we could have possibly done.

        
Shandra's voice (the wizard from Twinlake) spoke to us at this point, bidding us to enter the teleporter he'd just opened for us. We did, and the endgame sequence commenced. It consisted of Lord Karwain (ruler of Twinlake) praising us in an audience and then announcing a feast in our honor. He invited us onto his balcony to look out over Lyramion, where a dragon flew by accompanied by an eagle. But we noticed that Lyramion's third moon had started to glow ominously red, setting up the second game in the intended trilogy, Ambermoon.
       

The lack of capital letters in this paragraph bothers me.

This is the game's equivalent to "the eagle flies with the dove."

        
I was impatient for most of this final session, and I feel like the final dungeon, in particular, could have hustled it along a bit. I wish the final battle had been harder but had made better use of all the characters. But I liked the lore puzzle, as poorly as I did, and I thought the final game sequence was suitably rewarding.

This is a pretty short entry, but Amberstar has given us enough material to deserve a separate "Summary and Rating," so look for that coming up. After that, we finally get to move on to a new game (on the official list) for the first time in a month.
  
Final time: 50 hours