Clouds of Xeen: Well-Trod Ground

The "entire Elf kingdom" would be what, exactly? You're the only elf I've met since the game began.

            

I began this session by working on some of the "to do" items in my backpath:

   

• Pulling the plug in the Cave of Illusions released a bunch of magical floating skulls called "Guardians." It made a few treasure chests real, but it made all the traps real, too. I used "Teleport" to avoid what traps I could, but ultimately I ended up making several trips in and out of the cave for healing and spell point replenishing.

• The Stone of a Thousand Terrors opened the way into the Tomb of a Thousand Terrors in B4. It was a dungeon full of undead and traps (bladed pendulums and chopping meat cleavers were popular) that all seemed capable of making my characters insane. However, it also had several King's Mega Credits and potions that permanently improved my statistics. Afterwards, the uncursing and healing cost almost 5,000 gold.

     

Note that everyone here is cursed and insane.

      

• I returned to the Witches' Tower to explore the clouds above. This time, I could read the plaque on the statue: "Golem, Terror, and Yak, it's told / Have credits for king to hold." Urrrr. Anyway, I've already cleared two of those, so that's not news. Another said, "The clerics of Yak you must outwit / Taxman then must have his bit." This tradition of putting the solution to the game on statues goes back to the first one, but it's always been a bit weird. Who is creating these statues? Where does he get his awful sense of scansion? Anyway, there were gems to pick up and harpies to kill. The clouds extended for a while. I had assumed that the cloud area was an extra "layer" on top of the lower world, but no matter how far I went, the map was titled "Witch Clouds," so I guess they're just tied to the specific towers.

         

Part of the witch cloud level.

      

• I noticed a cloud "island" off to the southwest of the Witch Clouds and teleported there. A statue dubbed us "Super Explorers" and gave us all 1 level. I probably should have saved that for later.

       

How a statue dubs anyone anything is unexplained.

    

• The scrolls in Castle Basenji, which I could now read, provided +10 boosts in resistances in exchange for doing horrible things to you, like confusion and depression.

       

This doesn't seem like a good trade.

       

• The dungeon of the Northern Sphinx had a bunch of hieroglyphics indicating that the sphinx's name was GOLUX. This password got me to the third floor, where there were thrones that conferred 500,000 experience points to each character; the "Starburst" and "Divine Intervention" spells; and piles of gems.

       

I sat down in a comfortable chair. Alert the chroniclers.

      

• On a return trip to Castle Burlock, I paid five more King's Mega Credits to build a keep on my land. Newcastle is now a wall with a moat inside and a keep inside the moat. The new keep offers a training facility, a store, a temple, a bedroom, barrels that fill my food inventory, and various notes that have the syllables BO, LO, RA, and RY. Unfortunately, there is no magic mirror, so I can't use the place as my main adventuring hub. 

      

Could a statue in our honor be maybe less grotesque?

    

• The king's engineers gave me the Golem Stone of Admittance, which they found while building the keep. The stone opened the way to the Golem Dungeon in B4. The place was full of wood, iron, stone, and diamond golems. The latter were the toughest creatures I've faced so far, capable of devastating a character with a single punch, and breaking our weapons besides. To defeat them, I had to load up on every fountain buff I've found so far, and even then I had to warp out to heal and restore spell points in the middle of the dungeon. The reward was about 10 King's Mega Credits, a chest with 3,000 gems, and a statue that dubbed us "Golem Masters" and gave us an experience level.

         

You'd think these guys would be worth a fortune once you killed them.

     

• The only thing left for our castle is a basement, and the king's engineer won't build us that until we get a permit. I don't know where we get that, but it's not anywhere in the castle as far as I can tell, so we finally hit the road and continued our exploration of the surface.

   

D2, where Castle Burlock is, finished up with more jousters and a redundant Well of (temporary) Might. In C2, we met the Autumn Druid, who wanted the Last Flower of Summer before he could give us the Last Fallen Leaf of Autumn. This is the third druid I've met who wanted something before he'd give us something else, and I still don't know why I'd want any of them. There were more jousters and ogres and a couple of barbarians in the northwest. In a tent, we met Carlawna the Cleric, who thanked us for recovering her scarab (I don't remember exactly where we did that) and taught us "Moon Ray." 

    

I think we meet him again.

    

A guy named Captain Nystar asked us to kill all the ogres in the area so that they'd stop tossing boulders at ships, ruining the shipping trade. This is again one of those areas where it's simply impossible to suspend disbelief and imagine this tiny lake in the middle of the game map supports a robust maritime trade business. Anyway, we did it and got 20,000 gold and 40,000 experience. Falagar the Wizard (isn't that the name of the guy who rescues the party at the beginning of Might and Magic VI?), brother of Carlawna, needs us to find his Crystals of Piezoelectricity.

    

In the center-north of C2 was the city of Asp, the only city we hadn't yet explored. It was swarming with snake men and guardian asps, both easy enough to defeat without running around getting buffed. It turns out that the snake men were hapless residents, turned into snakes by a machine in the northwest corner of the city. (Two of the residents who tell you about the problem are "Adam" and "Eve." Ho-ho-ho.) A couple pieces of doggerel told me that to destroy the machine, which can repel people who get near it, I would have to alternate colors of balls on the pedestals around the town well. I followed the instructions, destroyed the machine, and got experience for saving the town. The town otherwise had no services except a guild, where I finally got "Town Portal." The machine had been powered by Falagar's crystals, and he rewarded us with the "Megavolts" spell. 

      

These are some seriously scientifically-advanced snakes.

     

All Might and Magic games have an arena, but they differ whether the arena is discoverable through regular exploration. Sometimes it occupies a null space to which you have to travel via a portal or coach. In this case, you can wander right up to it in B2. Inside, you speak to the arena master, and you can fight 1-20 creatures of levels 1-20. When you win, the arena master warps you back to Vertigo. I fought a host of Level 2 creatures but put off any more arena battles until later.

      

I don't think I even got anything for winning.

        

Most of the rest of B2 was desert landscape, with associated creatures, continuing what we had already experienced in A1 and B1. But I at last found the Summer Druid, who gave us the Last Flower of Summer to take to the Autumn Druid and thus "bring summer to an end." I'm not sure why I want to do that, but I had no choice but to take the flower.

   

B3 transitioned unreasonably quickly to snow. We fought ninjas in this area and discovered the Wells of (temporary) Accuracy, Intellect, and Personality. The Well of Accuracy is close enough to the Cave of Illusions that I can probably use the latter as a waypoint for the mirrors, thus allowing me to save "Lloyd's Beacon" locations for more faraway places. More on that in a bit. As we moved east, we met "evil archers," capable of a lightning-based attack. A talking tree called Thickbark the Civilized rewarded us for previously destroying trolls. Halon the Efficient rewarded us for bringing him the lava rock we'd discovered ages ago. We found a tower for which we did not have a key.

         

The most normal-looking foe in the game.

     

C3, being in roughly the center of the map, was a mélange of themes from the maps around it. We faced ogres in the northwest, evil rangers in the southwest, killer sprite in the southeast, and the lake with its monsters in the northeast. Tito the Elf Priest rewarded us for recovering the Book of Elvenkind, and Danulf the Faery King for recovering the Wand of Faery Magic. (We're like Santa Claus this trip, just running around handing out things we'd already recovered.) C3 offered a shrine that increased magic resistance by +50 and a fountain that increased might, endurance, speed, and accuracy by +10. That sounds useful, but if I really need the buffs, I'm probably still going to have to run around to the individual +50 fountains.

   

D3 was the last outdoor map to explore. I took this one carefully because I knew I would encounter water dragons to the north. I started with the southern rows. I kept encountering killer sprites there, which can curse you, and I didn't want to have to pay for uncursing multiple times. 

      

I did this with glee.

   

Once the lakeshore came into view, before starting to take on the water dragons, I decided to try to work out the optimal maximum buffing path. As I've noted before, all your buffs vanish at 05:00 every morning no matter when you acquired them. Indoors, time passes at a rate of only 1 minute per action, so it's worth buffing almost anytime, but outdoors it passes at a rate of 10 minutes per action. (Curiously, the "cloud" parts of towers cost only 1 minute per action despite being ostensibly outdoors.) With optimal timing, you could explore just about half a game map before your buffs disappear.

  

Optimal involves using "Town Portal," "Lloyd's Beacon," (I have two characters capable of it, and each can set his own return point), the mirrors, and maybe even "Teleport" to minimize walking, especially outdoors. You want to be rested and at full health and at your first fountain at exactly 05:00. After looking at my notes and maps, I think this is the ideal situation for a "normal" buff:

    

• Cast one "Lloyd's Beacon" at the map point closest to where you're going to need the buffs; cast the other in front of any magic mirror.

• At 05:00, be in Nightshadow at the fountain that gives you +10 levels. That takes you to 05:06, because each character using is an action.

• Walk to Nightshadow's magic mirror and use it to get to Vertigo (05:16). Walk to Vertigo's fountain and get everyone's health to maximum (05:39). This is because the Fountain of Health gives you +250 health when you're at or below your maximum.

• Walk to Vertigo's temple and donate until you get their buffs (05:53), unless you want to spend the points on "Day of Protection" and "Day of Sorcery" on your own. Those cost a lot of magic and gems.

• Walk to Vertigo's magic mirror (06:16) and take it to Winterkill. Walk to the Fountain of Might and use it for all characters (06:26).

• Walk to Winterkill's exit (06:32). Outside, take one step west, face south, and cast "Teleport" twice for 9 squares each, then walk forward two squares (07:22). This puts you at the Waters of Great Magic. Use it on your spellcasting characters. For me, that's only three (07:52). 

• "Lloyd's Beacon" back to your magic mirror and use it to go to CASTLE BASENJI. Go one step north and one step west, then use the Fountain of Health on all characters (09:22).

• "Lloyd's Beacon" back to your magic mirror. Use it to go to CAVE OF ILLUSIONS. Walk three steps north and two steps west and use the Fountain of Accuracy for everyone (11:02). 

• Finally, cast "Lloyd's Beacon" to return to the original location (11:12). From there, you have about 18 hours of exploration time.

   

This method doesn't include any fountains that increase personality, endurance, speed, intelligence, or armor class, nor any shrines that increase resistances. That would take longer to figure out. I'm aware I can save more time with "Town Portal" (but that costs a lot in points and gems) and magic items that allow you to set additional "Lloyd's Beacon" spells. I also didn't maximize the use of "Teleport" or "Jump" here, but that level of micromanaging is tough to swallow. Of all of the things above, I think the +10 levels in Nightshadow is most important. You could do a lesser round that included that, the +50 might fountain in Winterkill, and maybe the Fountain of Health and be prepared enough for most situations. 

     

Shrines like this would be necessary for a maximal buff.

  

This method was enough to let me finish D4 and destroy the water dragons around Darzog's Tower, then make it into Darzog's Tower and set a "Lloyd's Beacon" in case I need to teleport out and do another round of buffing to complete the location.

    

The first level of Darzog's Tower was full of floating "carnage hands." A square near the entrance completely wiped out all our spell points, which was a problem when we reached the second floor and found an unavoidable square that teleported us back to the first floor. I had a "Horn of Jumping" that allowed us to avoid it. The entire floor was full of these teleportation squares, making it a kind of puzzle where we had to figure out the optimal way to "Jump" to get around. My horn soon ran out, and I had to use a Wand of Town Portals to get us back to Rivercity and restore our spell points. There were books that offered +20 permanent increases to attributes for one character, so that took the edge off the annoyance of the puzzle.

      

Floating heads, floating hands, floating feet . . . What's next? Floating . . . you know what? Never mind.

     

The third level brought me face-to-face with several "Darzog Clones" and then Darzog himself. The clones weren't hard, but Darzog was capable of turning us to stone. After dying to him once, I coupled my standard buffs with a visit to the Shrine of Magic Resistance, plus spent the spell points and gems on a proper "Day of Sorcery" and "Day of Protection." When we returned to Darzog's Tower, we saw him across a table, cast "Jump" to put us in his square, and killed him with a single blow. 

   

Darzog is tough if you let his anti-magic squares cancel your buffs.

    

The same level had a secret area. I guess you're supposed to access it from a rope ladder on Level 4, but I got there by teleporting. The secret area was Crodo's prison chamber. I freed him for 1 million experience points. He alluded to some other "adventurers" working on a sword in Newcastle's dungeon that would defeat Lord Xeen. Xeen's tower is apparently in the clouds above Darzog's Tower, and Xeen is planning to conquer the world with an army from the Darkside.

        

One million experience points sounds like a lot, but it's basically just one level.

      

I climbed up to the cloud level and explored it. It was the largest of the areas, full of combats with rocs and cloud golems, as well as statues and treasure. Many of the treasures were on far away platforms of clouds that I had to detect with "Wizard Eye" and access with "Teleport." I explored as much as I could, set a "Lloyd's Beacon" in front of Xeen's Tower, and returned to Newcastle to level up. Suss the ninja maxed her level at 20. The others are at 19.

       

A shield offering on an isolated cloud platform.

     

Before wrapping up, I decided to figure out the druid quests. It turns out that you just take items around the four druids, allowing the year to "renew," which cures your magical aging and gives you 150,000 experience points.

      

Well, isn't that cute.

    

It feels like I should be able to wrap this up next time. I'll probably try exploring the volcanic area to see if I can recover the Sixth Mirror before taking on Xeen. There's also one dungeon, one tower, and the southern sphinx for which I never found the keys.

   

Time so far: 32 hours