Beneath the Clouds of Xeen

Walking around the edge of the world.

          

I ended my last session wondering how I should begin my explorations of Xeen, and it took me an hour or so into this session to come up with a solution, which turned out to be the most obvious solution, but that often happens in life.

   

I began by finishing the clean-up of Rivercity. I hadn't been able to beat the Yang Knights mid-way through the last session, and they were still tough at the beginning of this one. I could only hit them about 1 time in 15. I ended up using a lot of my gems on "Fantastic Freeze," the best offensive spell that I have at this point, plus burning through a lot of the magic items I'd collected. Their leader, "Captain Yang," was particularly difficult. But I eventually got through them and was rewarded with a couple of chests, one of which had 50,000 gold. My financial worries seem to be temporarily over. I stashed about half of what I had in the bank, along with a couple hundred gems. I don't know if you earn interest on gems, but I'm going to find out.

     

If I were "captain," I'd demand the more colorful armor.

     

After this, the outdoor explorations began. My first thought was to go "organically"--to simply role-play the party. I was in Rivercity, near the lake in which Darzog's Tower resided. One "Walk on Water" spell could take me across the waves to the tower. The tower was the site of my main quest. Why not try it?

        

Ah, right. That's why.

       

I soon came across a small island with a fisherman in a hut. He complained of "lake beasts" ruining the fish supply and wanted me to kill them. No problem; I probably would have done that anyway. I soon ran into one of those "lake beasts," looking like the Loch Ness monster. It looked back at me briefly and casually tossed off some kind of missile attack that killed everyone immediately.

   

So much for the "organic" way.

   

All right, I decided, if I'm going to be exploring the central lake last (which seemed suddenly likely), then there was an obvious exploration pattern that would get me there last: start at the outer edges of the map and work my way inward. I thought I'd make a run around the perimeter to start. I reloaded from Rivercity and took the teleportal mirror to Vertigo, which is in area F3, on the edge of F4 (maps go from A1 to F4). I walked east from there to the eastern edge of the map and then started making my way south. As I explored this literal edge, I thought of some things my characters might do in real life, like lie down and poke our heads out over the edge to see how "thick" Xeen is. I mean, it has to be thick enough for dungeons, right? I started to ask the same questions I asked in Ultima VI. If you take a dungeon all the way through, do you experience a gravitational shift in the middle? Where does the water go? Since it seems to leave the planet, how is it ever replenished?

      

We caught that bottle just in time.

      

My exploration worked okay for a while. I finished the eastern and southern edges of F4, fighting some toads along the way, then cut through the southern boundary of E4, fending off skeletons and zombies. D4 became a problem, though. There were clusters of deadly insects called "stingers" that I could kill if I really threw everything into it, but that got exhausting quite quickly. Even by then, however, I realized this was no fun. I was losing any sense of theme to the various map areas. Even though they're comically small, the creators did take pains to give them some kind of theme.

   

Thus I changed my mind and did the most obvious thing. I returned to F4 and set about exploring the entire 16 x 16 map, minus a few squares to count for the ragged edges.

   

On the game map, F4 comprises Toad Meadow and the Witches' Tower. Toad Meadow deserved its name: it was full of giant toads, as well as giant snakes. The toads were capable of inflicting "sleep" with their tongues, but they otherwise weren't hard to kill with melee attacks. There were several locations where I could find Phirna Root for the healer outside Vertigo, but the game would only let me take one at a time. There was no one monstrous toad as the graphic on the game map suggested, which was a little disappointing.

    

The one non-hostile resident of Toad Meadow introduces herself.

     

An old woman named Valia lived in a house in the south of the meadow. "Before I die," she said, "I wish to see the witches of Toad Meadow destroyed." She went on to explain that she has spent her life hiding a unicorn named Falista from the witches, but now the unicorn has disappeared, and Valia fears that the witches have "killed her for her alacorn's magic." She gave me the key to the tower.

   

(Before researching this word just now, I didn't know that alicorn has been used since the 17th century to refer to the horn of the unicorn. There was a similar quest in Might and Magic III, with that spelling, but I just kept referring to the item redundantly as an "alicorn horn," thinking that alicorn was just some variant on "unicorn." The game's spelling here is a bit unorthodox and is often used to describe a unicorn-pegasus hybrid in other games.)

   

We found the tower in the center of the meadow. As we approached, a brief cinematic took over in which some weird guy with runes on his face said, "I see you have the key to this tower.  You may pass, mortals." A few things mildly annoyed me about this. First of all, that's not how a key works. You don't show it to someone; you insert it into a lock. Second, every time some RPG being calls me "mortal" with a sneer, I feel compelled to show him exactly what mortality means. How do these witches--who, as we're going to see, were charitably maybe Level 1--have the ability to summon an "immortal" guardian for their tower?

          

What is this guy's story?

       

Beyond that, the tower itself was easy. The witches had spells, but for the most part they didn't even damage us. They died in one hit. As we explored the four levels of the tower, we freed their prisoners from cages and opened various chests; opening the cages and chests did far more damage (and disease) to my party than the witches or their various goblin minions.

    

One of the more colorful enemies so far.

        

There were also skulls in various alcoves who provided hints and spells for gems. "Don't forget to use the levitate spell before you enter the cloud world!," one said. I didn't know what that meant until I got to the top of the tower. The roof was a small area of stone from which clouds went off in all directions. The automap indicated that I was looking at an entirely new map, not a variant of the surface map. I cast "Levitate" and walked around a bit on the clouds, and it appears that you can even move between maps up here--that the game has an entirely separate, second "map" with the same number of squares as the surface, but this one above the clouds. (Never mind the absurdity of a four-level tower poking above the clouds.) I either never knew or completely forgot about this. The subtitle makes a lot more sense.

         

On a particularly sunny day, I guess you can't get around this way.

        

One of the freed children told us the password ("Rosebud") that opened the door to where the witches had stashed the alacorn. We snatched it and returned it to Valia, who gave us all the "Crusader" skill plus experience.

    

     

F3 was next, starting with a return to Vertigo for healing (I don't have "Cure Disease" yet). Dorcas had also gotten cursed somehow. On the way, we found a bottle floating in a pond with a message from Crodo: "Help! I am in Darzog's Tower!" I believe messages-in-bottles are making their appearance here for the first and only time in a Might and Magic game. 

       

When psychic projections failed, Crodo resorted to more classic methods.

    

I had explored F4 from the outside-in, but I did F3 in east-west strips, moving north. It was a temperate region, with forests and lakes and mountains. Special encounters included:

 

• A fountain that raises you five levels (in addition to the already-discovered ones that raise your hit points and armor class). I'd mention here that walking costs 10 minutes per step, so it doesn't take long to pass a day and for the fountains' effects to wear off. Fountains don't really benefit you while you're exploring; they're for visiting later, using careful timing to maximize their effects before difficult combats or indoor areas (where time passes more slowly).

      

      

• A hermit named Orothin asked me to find his lost bone whistle, which activates two statues in the area that teach "Cure Poison" and "Cure Disease." He lost it in Pitchfork Creek, which is in E3 or E4.

• A ranger named Derek, living in a wagon, searching for his fiancee, Celia. Zombies kidnapped her and took her into the Forest of the Walking Dead. That appears to be in E4.
  

• A shrine that conferred +50 poison resistance. These shrines and fountains are useful, but I wish the creators had just made them apply to the whole party. Instead, you have to activate it and then specify each character. Who visits and only applies the bonus to one character? This is a flaw in the otherwise excellent interface.

• Myra the Herbalist, already encountered, who mixed up several Potions of Antidotes for each Phirna Root we brought her. These were swiftly obsolete.

• An orc outpost that I burned for experience. Not burning these outposts doesn't seem to infinitely generate more monsters the way it did in Might and Magic III. That suggests the number of experience points in this game is fixed, except perhaps for the arenas.

     

There were a few orcs, but I'd killed most of them in earlier sessions. The Red Dwarf Mines were the only "dungeon."

   

F2 showed lava, and I didn't think I was ready for that yet, so I moved down to E4, a forested area full of skeletons and zombies. I did it in north-south strips moving west. The enemy "camps" were "shrines to the undead," which we could desecrate for experience and items. I found Orothin's bone whistle among a pile of bones at the top of the map. We went back and gave it to the hermit and got 15,000 experience points plus the two spells taught by the statues.

        

I had to laugh at "destroy the furnishings." I pictured the party slashing couch cushions.

How, precisely?

        

The area's dungeon was called the Temple of Yak, continuing an unfortunate Might and Magic tradition that began with the Temple of Moo in III and will move on to the Temple of Baa in VI. Once again, there was a door guardian--some kind of orc. I had the entry item, a Stone of Yak--a cursed mermaid gave it to me while I was exploring the edge, saying she wanted me to recover a potion that would restore her tail.

 

A pit trap opened beneath us soon after I entered. I wasted some time with the "Jump" spell before I remembered that the "Levitation" spell would let us walk over them with impunity.

       

A pit trap flanked by boxes I'm too weak to open.

     

Regular enemies varied from easy skeletons to moderate Yak clerics and priests to tough Yak liches--the latter only coming out if I disturbed their coffins. The Yak liches were immune to magic and had a powerful "Sleep" attack. If I could keep most of my party awake for a few rounds, I could kill them with physical damage, but a couple of times they rendered all but one character comatose and then made short work of him.

        

Some of the enemies in this dungeon.

     

Other aspects of the dungeon were a bit tough. There were a bunch of crates that even my paladin couldn't open, so I'll have to come back when I have more strength (or identify a fountain for a temporary boost). One special lich, called the "Yak Master," just wiped the floor with me. I'm not entirely sure I figured out a puzzle that involved turning some switches. There were some pools to bathe in that just seemed to disease me (one gave me 25,000 experience points and then immediately killed me). I had to leave about half the dungeon for later.

        

This would be a good name for one of my cats.

       

Whoever you designate as the "opener-and-searcher-of-things" (boxes, doors, beds, piles of rags and bones) takes some serious abuse. In my party, it's Suss the Ninja. Open the door--boom, trap removes half her hit points. Search the pile of rags; she gets diseased. Open that sarcophagus; she's cursed. Search that chest--now she's unconscious and her armor is broken. 

   

But I did find the mermaid's Elixir of Restoration, plus a couple of coins called "King's Mega Credits." The resulting experience was enough to get us to Level 11, after which the next level seems laughably far away.

 

I'm enjoying Xeen, but its weaknesses seem somehow more apparent to me this time than in past games. In some ways, the world feels like a giant "to do" list, with every square a task. You just kind of mow your way through the world, accomplishing everything there is to accomplish, leaving a barren square behind you. It's almost as if you start the game on a world teeming with life, and you slowly kill all of it. Even the NPCs' huts are usually empty after you've solved their quests. Plenty of games have featured a similar approach, of course--tiled movement, nothing living in the environment except enemies, plot progression tied inextricably to geographic progression. Maybe it's the lack of any respawning that makes this one feel so extreme. Or maybe it's just become clear that it's time to move on; that Xeen is clearly the end of the line for its type of gameplay.

 

The ugly mermaid departs, leaving another abandoned hut on the landscape.

      

Man, I have got to snap out of it this week.

  

Time so far: 13 hours