Darkside of Xeen: Here Today to Introduce the Next Phase

Terrorizing people wherever he goes.

     

After that rambling entry on finding the right exploration pattern, while waiting for your responses, I started re-exploring the Clouds side, including clearing out the towns and doing a loop around the roads just to see if I could. I ended up re-purchasing most of the skills from Clouds and frankly many of the spells. I realize this goes against the experience many of you wanted to read for Darkside, but I guess the fundamental problem is that the two games seem like one game, and thus it seemed silly to take five huge leaps backwards.

    

At some point, I realized that if I didn't cut it out, I would probably end up just re-exploring Clouds again with a new party. So I reloaded with the party I ended Clouds with and decided to continue with them. They probably provide a greater challenge than training up a new party, since a) I have non-optimal classes; and b) I sold all their items at the end of the game, so they're starting Darkside with nothing.

     

The short-lived "new" party cleans out Nightshadow before I came to my senses.

    

I discovered one amusing thing along the way. In Clouds, I made liberal use of the +10 level fountain in Nightshadow. A lot of you thought that was overkill, opining that you had never used the fountain. This confused me a bit because I was barely winning some battles even with the bonus. However, I realized during this last session that I hardly ever had the bonus at all. My usual M.O., after getting the bonus, was to return to Vertigo and go to the temple to get the temple bonuses (eventually, I got "Day of Protection" and "Day of Sorcery," but I rarely cast them because I became paranoid about wasting gems). But because the +10 level fountain had increased my maximum hit points, I also usually paid the temple for "healing" (i.e., bringing my actual hit point total up to the new maximum). What I didn't realize was that getting healed at the temple, for whatever reason, removes fountain bonuses. Through the entirety of Clouds, I was using fountains to buff and then immediately undoing the buffing before entering battle. No wonder I didn't notice a significant difference.

      

Wiping out the goblins and gremlins in Castleview again.

     

I thus re-cleared Castleview with the old party and re-contacted Ellinger in his tower. I had missed a secret area in the tower the first time, which led to the clouds above it. This side of Xeen also has explorable areas and walkways above its towers. However, where these areas were isolated on the Clouds side, they're interconnected on the Darkside. A "skyroad" winds its way around the entire map and provides access to its towers from the top down. There was at least one suggestion from an NPC that I might have to use these pathways to reach towers for which I can't find a key. I explored for a little while but didn't linger.

      

The skies of the Darkside are more linear and connected.

       

Castleview is in A4 along with Castle Kalindra, which as per Ellinger's intelligence was "out of phase" with reality and thus inaccessible. A bottle in a nearby river held a message from Queen Kalindra: "Help! I am being held captive in Castle Blackfang!" Nearby, another bottle had a message from Xanthus the Sorcerer, inviting us to visit him 25 squares west of Castle Blackfang.

        

I thought the Dragon Pharaoh was the ruler of Darkside.

    

The area is full of fields and plains swarming with "electropedes," which weren't too hard. Almost immediately, I found an encounter that I would not have enjoyed if not for finishing Clouds: Falista the Unicorn had relocated to the meadows of the Darkside and restored my magic points every time I visited.

       

We should domesticate and harness the power of these creatures.

    

I got 500,000 experience points for saying PALINDROME to another Drawkcab Monk named Reger. A fountain raised my armor class by 10 temporarily; another gave +25 might and a third offered +100 luck. Luna the Druid asked me to recover three stolen golden statuettes that she needs to use her healing powers. The thieves in the Great Southern Tower probably stole them; I can get a key from the keeper of the fountain near Venom Pond.

   

Area B4 started with more meadows. In a hut, Nibbler the Monkeydog asked me to recover Mongo Melons for him. Fortunately, I'd already found a bunch in A4. In return, he suggested we visit the dungeon in the Sprite Forest, and he gave us a key.

         

For a small world, Xeen sure does have a lot of sentient creatures.

      

In Might and Magic III and Clouds of Xeen, I had complained that the small 16 x 16 maps didn't allow enough terrain space for the different points on the map to be memorable. I doubt anyone remembers the "Barbaric Mountains" or the "Land of the Giants" of the Clouds side because they only occupy a single small map. Perhaps aware of this, the creators did something a bit different on the Darkside. There are fewer distinct geographic zones, and thus these are larger, stretching across multiple areas. The "Sprite Forest" starts in B4 and extends to F4, although it is called the "Aging Forest" by the time it gets to the far east side. Four maps in a row were mostly dense thicket that prevented us from seeing into the next square (the need for the "Pathfinder" skill was perhaps more justified). 

      

The guardian of dungeons on this side.

     

Encounters held across multiple maps, too. Early in B4, the party tumbled unceremoniously into a "troll hole" and found themselves fighting trolls (grunts and chiefs) in the dark. There were about eight such holes. I tried to avoid falling down them by keeping "Day of Sorcery" (which includes "Levitate") active, but time passes so quickly outdoors and spells wear off. Usually, falling down yet another hole was my reminder to cast the spell again.

    

It's hard to imagine how these two things are connected.

    

Each troll hole was a small dungeon with dead adventurers. There were notes indicating that the trolls had stolen gold from the thieves' guild, and the suggestion was that many of the dead adventurers were thieves who had died trying to reclaim it. A few chests held gold and gems. The best part of the troll holes was a series of barrels labeled "troll juice" that poisoned the character drinking it but raised all attributes by 1. Eventually, in the last troll hole, we met Hobstadt the Troll King. We had options to surrender to him or fight. We killed him, of course.

           

Here's a troll in the light.

I like that the series is doing more of this, but come on.

    

For B4, C4, and D4, the primary enemy in the outdoor map were "medusa sprites." They sound like they have some kind of paralysis attack, but they died so easily that I never experienced it. A hut in the forest belonged to Sharla the Sprite, who wanted our help rescuing her sister from "the orcs." I had options to help, help in demand for a reward, or try to rob Sharla. Again, it's nice to see more role-playing choices in the series, even if I did the obvious thing (offer to help). She's supposedly located in the Temple of Bark, which is just a few steps from Sharla. It wasn't until later that I got the key from Nibbler, and I thus haven't visited yet.

   

Throughout the forests, all the way through E4, were a series of huts that offered "forbidden fruit." Sometimes, these caused some effect--unconsciousness, confusion, insanity--no matter what. Usually, though, they provided a permanent +10 boost to some statistic to whoever ate the fruit. There was no way to tell ahead of time what the statistic would be, so I just gave them all to my paladin.

      

This one didn't work out for us.

     

C4 had the South Tower, for which I didn't have a key on my first pass. A well offered +50 elemental resistance (temporary), and an altar offered +10 to all statistics (temporary). 

   

As we got into D4, the medusa sprites were replaced with dark wolves. They weren't very hard, either. But E4 and F4 confronted me with much more difficult enemies: mantis ants and giant killer cobras. These were the first enemies in the game so far clearly meant for higher-level parties. Both were hard to hit and took several rounds to kill in melee, particularly the cobras. Mantis ants caused poison, and the cobras' special attack magically aged the characters by 5 years. Fighting both of them let me to experiment more with spells. I really like "Shrapmetal," which does a fair amount of damage but uses no gems. If I'm willing to sacrifice some gems, both "Fireball" and "Lightning Bolt," which scale with the caster's level (as does the cost) do a fair amount of damage. However, my experience with them reinforced what most commenters have said: this is a game of physical attacks. It's rare to find a spell that outperforms a physical attack, and when you do find one, it's almost always a very high-level spell that wipes out half (or more) of your spell points. The only problem with physical attacks is hitting. The game does some steep scaling of THAC0 (or whatever this series calls it) by character level. 

     

The toughest enemies so far.

     

Character level, in fact, seems to matter more than anything else for combat success. As I mentioned, I started this session with no equipment. I slowly gathered some as the session progressed, but by the end I still didn't have a full set of armor pieces for every character, and only three of the four characters capable of wielding a bow had actually found one. None of it really seemed to make any difference. Fighting with their fists, my characters seemed to do nearly as much damage as they did with swords. When I had trouble hitting the killer cobras and mantis ants, a visit to the well of +50 accuracy barely helped. A visit to the well of +10 levels, on the other hand, helped a great deal. I'd love to work out the specific math, but it appears to me that levels provide a significant multiplier to the other statistics.

      

This is some bull@#&.

        

There fortunately weren't that many killer cobras and mantis ants. F4 brought a stupid and annoying "encounter" in which characters would get randomly brained by low-hanging branches and knocked out, no matter how high their hit points had been before. There was also a "Venom Pond" that poisoned us when we stepped in it. As promised, the nearby fountain keeper, Thaddeus, gave us a key to the Great Southern Tower. We had to promise to try to find the lost Jewel of Ages, which will restore the life-giving waters of the fountain.

     

I don't know what we expected.

    

On the far east side of the bottom row, we met Celia and Derek. We had saved Celia from zombies on the Clouds side. They had relocated here and they gave us a platinum sword. 

     

An encounter I wouldn't have gotten if I hadn't played the previous game.

    

Having finished the bottom row, we returned to the Great Southern Tower. There are three other great towers on the Darkside map. This one was inhabited by rogues, who fell before us by the score without even touching us. A logbook indicated that they had stolen Luna's statuettes and the Jewel of Ages and sold them to various people throughout the land. There were a number of trapped chests that required reloading (they wiped out my entire party), plus some kind of puzzle involving buttons that I'm not sure I solved. I did find two energy discs, though, which brought my total up to five.

    

The thieves on the other side looked more menacing.

      

The skyroad above the tower had a combat with an "air golem," which wasn't hard. But then a group of "sky bandits" ambushed us and demanded money. When we refused, they turned into dragons and wiped out the entire party in a single combat round. We'll have to return there later.

      

If you just appeared in this form, I'm sure more people would turn over their money.

     

With the energy discs in hand, I returned to Ellinger, who used them to restore the first floor of Castle Kalindra. We explored it, but there wasn't much. A number of locked cabinets had magic items; in a weird dynamic, the cabinets had combination locks, but the game told us what we "sensed" was the number, and in all cases, it was right.

      

How do we have any idea? Is this a check against thief skill?

       

There were a number of NPCs at tables and such. Kenneth the Butler thanked us for freeing them, as they were about to run out of food. Audrey the Cook said they survived on sun-dried lizard innards. Terry the Waiter said that Alamar stole the Cube of Power. Jones the Spy said that he heard Alamar claiming to have Prince Roland (from the Clouds side) in his basement. There were trainers for "Armsmaster" and "Danger Sense," but of course my party already had those. The throne was empty.

        

Of course. The queen is in another castle.

           

As we finished the first level of Castle Kalindra, we took stock of our open quests and noted the following. The ones with asterisks (*) we could do right now; the ones with pluses (+) are waiting for a higher level; the ones with at symbols (@) are waiting for an item; and the ones with question marks (?) probably have some kind of precursor, but I don't know what it is yet.

           

    @ CL A2 11,9: Southern sphinx; need key.

    @ CL B3 11,0: Tower for which I don't have the key.

    @ CL D1 10,15: Tower for which I don't have the key.    

    @ CL E1 14,12: Dragon Cave.

    + CL E1 15,2: Volcano Cave.

    + CL E3 3,4: Dungeon for which I don't have the key.

    @ DS A4 13,15. Return to Luna with the three golden statuettes.

    * DS B2: Recover griffin statue from Sandro in Necropolis.

    * DS C4: Explore the Temple of Bark and free the sprite.

    @ DS C4 1,7: Return after freeing sprite.

    * DS E1 1, 11: Location on treasure map found in Castleview.

    * DS E1: Visit Xanthus the Sorcerer.

    ? DS F1: Castle Blackfang. Free Queen Kalindra.

    * DS F2: Get dragon statuette from head witch of Lakeside.

    @ DS F3: Recover the Jewel of Ages from the Great Eastern Tower.

    @ DS F4 6,7: Return the Jewel of Ages to Thaddeus.

    ? Find energy discs and bring them to Ellinger to restore Castle Kalindra. 

    ? Get the pegasus statuette from the "head heretical cleric."

    

A few miscellaneous notes:

   

• The series seems to have abandoned the idea of "lairs" (monster headquarters that you could destroy for extra experience and items). Although the Clouds side had them, I haven't seen any here.

• I keep stashing excess money and gems in the bank. My gold total is over 2 million, and I have almost 40,000 gems. (These totals include the big haul I got below.) So far, training has escalated to about 4,500 gold per session, so no problems with money yet.

• There are no special elemental "corners" with reflectors on the Darkside. Whatever those are, only the Clouds side seems to have them.

• While I was playing Clouds, I made a joke that there are hardly any elves and dwarves to be found in the game world, let alone the other official races. I'm not sure you ever meet a single gnome or half-orc who isn't part of the party. This session made me realize how many other sentient creatures exist in the world. We've got talking monkeys, unicorns, leprechauns, minotaurs, fairies, dragons, and various humanoids pictured in cut scenes. It feels a little overcrowded, frankly. Where are the other "monkeydogs?" Is Nibbler the only one? If so, is he immortal? Where did he come from otherwise?

• This game seems to really love button puzzles. About four of the dungeons I've explored so far have numerous buttons. I just hit them and hope something happens, but I rarely get any confirmation that it does. For all I know, I've missed half a dozen secret areas.      

      

I finished off this session by going to the Temple of Bark, which is guarded by some kind of minotaur-like creature. There were orcs inhabiting the place, looking nothing like the orcs from the Clouds side, though I guess this is true of all the shared monsters. Neither the orcs nor their shamans were capable of doing any serious damage to us, although there were a number of spear traps that occasioned a lot of swearing and healing. I freed the sprite plus several other prisoners held in cages. There were two energy discs.

          

These orcs look more serious than the other side's.

     

The dungeon was full of attribute-boosting bonuses, including potions and barrels (which unfortunately also had a magical aging effect). A button and lever puzzle that culminated in drinking from a fountain gained us +19 to all attributes! My characters started this session with many attributes still in their 20s and ended with hardly anything below 60. There were also some fountains that provided a +50 boost (permanent) to all elemental resistances.

        

Even better: each of these potions could be used twice.

     

The more interesting part of the Temple of Bark was the lore, as provided by numerous books. As often when it comes to Might and Magic, a lot of it is silly and perhaps I'm reading too much into it. The Temple of Bark was dedicated to a primordial being called Bark or Barkman. His own history claims that he was the first living being on Xeen, sharing the world with Sky and Sun. (To add to the oddities: one of the prisoners I freed was named Sky.) Seeking other living things to speak with, he convinced Sky to rain on him and Sun to shine on him, and all the living beings of Xeen grew from spores that he dropped. Later, the Weed sought to corrupt other living beings.

         

The age-old saga of the battle between Bark and Weed.

      

It could be just a bunch of nonsense, but there's a line ("something was not 100% confidence") that suggests Bark may be another Ancient creation. Perhaps his origin myth preserves some truth about how the Ancients seeded Xeen with life. More interesting, a document about "morning ceremonies" tells the Disciples of Bark to:

     

Take ye then the Bark of the Tree, and sprinkle it with ash. The ash symbolizes the Yak, the Bark the Moo. March ye congregation in a circle about the Tree, directing the half of them to chant "Yak" and the other half "Moo." After three circuits of the Tree, command the worshippers to sit where they are and clasp hands, all the while continuing the holy "Yak" and "Moo" chant . . . then plant the Holy Bark of the Tree (with the ash sprinkled upon it) into the ground next to all the other Holy Bark implantations.

     

It's hard to know what to make of this. There was a Temple of Moo in Might and Magic III and a Temple of Yak on the Clouds side. Remove that silliness from the ritual, and basically you have instructions for taking cuttings from a tree and planting it in ash-rich soil to make another tree. Did the Ancients convince primitive beings to seed the world with trees by turning it into a ritual? Are the Temples of Moo and Yak examples of cults that lost their original purpose? As usual, it's tough to determine if there's deep stuff below the surface here, or if the authors are just screwing around.

        

Evidence, perhaps, for the latter.

         

Bark was encountered in the flesh on the lowest level of the dungeon, a sprawling area shaped a bit like a tree. There had been warnings not to feed the "branches" (the northern extremities) but rather to feed the "roots" (the southern ones). Feeding the roots enabled the fountains that caused the +50 resistances. But I fed the branches, too, which brought Bark out of his secret area in the center. He had 37,000 hit points. My first battle with him went poorly. My spell points had already been low, and my casters were unable to keep up with "Power Cure." We succumbed after about 15 rounds. I reloaded, "Lloyd's Beacon-ed" out of there, rested, buffed a bit, and returned. We killed him in about 20 rounds.

   

His death unlocked some treasure chests, which gave us 25,000 gems and 2 million gold pieces, the largest treasure haul in either side of Xeen so far. 

         

Prepare to be depressed, economy!

           

I ended with a quick visit back to the Clouds side to run the circuit of the four druids and thus cure our magical aging.

   

I probably won't continue to explore the Darkside map in rows; instead, I'll do it by quest. Either way, I've fretted enough about exploration patterns. Might and Magic games pack their areas with so much content that you really never feel bored even if you're over-leveled and exploring "artificially."  

      

Time so far: 10 hours (including 5 spent with previous party)