Darkside of Xeen: Die Young and Broke

My capacity for hate increased 200% this session.

    

This session opened all right. Eager to clean up a few things before I visited the Dragon Pharaoh, I started by buffing my intelligence and returning to the Dragon Caves, where I had the dumber members of my party try again with the various books of dragon lore. I had to swap around some intelligence-boosting items, but I otherwise got most of them. One book, however, required more than 250 intelligence and only one of my characters could get that high. Reasoning that I didn't really need the experience, I crossed the Dragon Caves off my list.

            

Lesson learned from this game: all the experience in the world is no good if you don't have MONEY.

               

Despite that reasoning, I also returned to Necropolis and finished reading the Books of the Dead for more experience points, then reversed the aging effects in the Fountain of Youth.

   

My third stop was to the Dungeon of Death on the Clouds side. I had previously solved the Level 1 crossword, but I didn't take my reward because my ninja was incapable of opening the door on Level 2. I tried again and she was still incapable, 25 levels later, but I was able to bash it down.

      

I do not blame them for screaming.

       

I thought I was going to my "reward," but instead I endured 3 levels of a dungeon that I think was designed solely to troll the player. Level 2 had awful creatures called screamers, with blood pouring from amputated arms. I had to bash all the doors. There were levers that seemed to do nothing and coffins that required a minimum strength to open, then didn't have anything in them even after we got them open, and sometimes killed the character besides.

   

By Level 3, I realized I would have to warp out and do a buffing round before I could continue. The level was full of skeletal liches capable of casting an "eradicate" spell, and they targeted my sorcerer exclusively. I had to reload about 15 times as I killed what seems like a hundred of them. (Throughout this session, I used "Jump" to get me closer to enemies and avoid their ranged attacks; "Teleport" hardly ever worked in these levels.) There were more dials here that did nothing. One room had a succession of altars. Destroying the Shrine of Minor Evil got us 1 million experience; the Shrine of Lesser Evil was worth 2 million; and the Shrine of Greater Evil 5 million. We then encountered the Shrine of Ultimate Evil, destroyed it, and the dungeon collapsed, killing all of us.

       

The game isn't even pretending to not just be messing with us.

           

Even by the end of the Shrine of Greater Evil, I was screaming at the game. "We need MONEY, you stupid game! MONEY!!!" So I was happy that the end of the level offered up some combats with vampire kings in their coffins, and their coffins at least had a bunch of high-end items we could sell.

   

I'm still not sure there wasn't something else I was supposed to solve with all the dials, but I couldn't figure it out. We went on to Level 4. Here, a message proclaimed, "Ring the four gongs and then pull the lever. Touch any treasure and you'll have to start over!" The level had piles of treasure in key intersections, and the warning didn't just mean we couldn't take it; it meant we couldn't walk on it. We had to figure out a path through the level using "Jump" spells to get over the treasure, find the four gongs, ring them, return to the lever at the beginning, and pull it. At that point, I was hoping we could take the treasure, but no luck.

        

I felt like these guys ought to have been harder.

      

The level was full of robotic enemies, including annihilators with mini-guns on each arm, but our buffed party carved through them.

   

On Level 4, we were immediately attacked by Lord Xeen! Fortunately, I still had the Xeen Slayer Sword and was able to kill him. We got another Scepter of Temporal Distortion in return. We kept moving and were attacked by another Lord Xeen, then another. The level was full of them, plus a bunch of devils and demons besides. The Xeens were capable of "eradicate," so although they died in one hit from the sword, we still had to reload a lot. We found four "Lord Xeen machines" that seemed to be spawning the creatures; we destroyed them for 5 million experience each ("We want MONEY, not experience! MONEY!!!")

          

Well, this is just absurd.

        

The textures were futuristic. There were four computers each surrounded by a different element, each of which said things like "fire core operational" and "water core operational." All of this suggested that the area was some kind of control room for the world. A bed and a desk in one room would seem to belong to some kind of maintenance person. Perhaps that's what the Lord Xeens were supposed to be, and they got corrupted by Alamar. One final room had a computer that asked us to enter a code. I had no idea what that would be, so I entered nothing. The computer called us "goobers" and gave us that award anyway.

    

Done with the Dungeon of Death and no richer, I went to the only place left on my list that didn't require a key I didn't have: the Great Pyramid. 

       

At this moment, I figured I was no more than an hour from winning the game. How foolish I was.

     

The Great Pyramid had four levels, and as befits a pyramid, they got smaller as we ascended. The first level was full of cloud dragons. In the northeast corner, there was a number puzzle. The only clues we got were that the numbers were in sequence and added up to 52. There were eight questions about them, so I assumed there were 8 numbers. Since 52/8 is 6.5, that indicates that the numbers were 3 through 10. Eight skulls asked questions about the numbers (e.g., "the smallest prime" or "the largest number"). Getting them all right let us pull a lever that brought us to a chamber where at last we found a monetary reward: 2.5 million gold. We warped right out and stuck it in the bank.

   

Level 2 had another number puzzle that was a huge waste of time. Three statues offered clues:

    

• Total the dates is all you do; then minus the number thirty-two.
• Now you take the answer, divide by three. Your mission is the pharaoh to free.
• Then subtract another forty-two. This final number can get you through.

    

At first, I thought "the dates" meant all the numbered days in Xeen's calendar year. A long time ago, I learned that the numbers 1-100 add up to 5050. But that's not what the clue was talking about. Instead, three years are hidden in the wall patterns of the area: 1993, 1776, and 1492. (For non-Americans, those last two years are important ones in North American history; 1993 is the date the game was published.)

  

I could have avoided all the math, though, given the prompt for the answer:

      

Making the answer "1701" would have been an homage. Preceding it with "Starfleet Registry Number NCC" in this setting is just confusing.

       

I don't even think you need to be a Star Trek fan to know that the Enterprise's serial number is NCC-1701. If I'd just gone to the stairs first, I could have gotten it immediately.

   

Level 3 just had a spiral with a bunch of teleporters that took us to the previous ring. We had to watch for those and cast "Jump" to avoid them. Finally, on Level 4, we met the Dragon Pharaoh. He congratulated us for making it this far and reiterated that Alamar's goal is to drive Xeen back to Terra, which will cause all of Xeen's life to perish in the cold of space. (I guess the sun we see really is the sun.) He said our only hope might lie in the second spaceship that landed at the same time that Alamar's did. We already found it amidst the lava. The Dragon Pharaoh used his Orb to cool the lava so we could enter the ship.

        

Leave off the "shooting star" talk. We're not children.

  

The ship was a counterpart to the one we'd already explored, from which Sheltem had escaped. Corak was in a stasis field in the captain's chair. His log was on a nearby computer, and it basically recounted the events of the first three Might and Magics from Corak's perspective. The new bits of intelligence I got from it were:

      

• CORAK is also an acronym, but I have no idea what for.

• XEEN stands for "Xylonite Experimental Expansion Nacelle."

• The CRON from the first two games had any number of VARNs attached. For some reason, I had this idea there were only four, but the one that Sheltem launched into the sun was VARN 6 ("a hundred thousand lives snuffed out in a matter of minutes"), and the mission of the CRON in general was to go around to different star systems, seeding them with VARNs.

• Four VARNs were offloaded onto Terra, apparently making the four main continents of that game.

• Corak instructed the party from Might and Magic III to beam down to Xeen. There is still no indication from his notes what happened to them after that.

     

To get Corak out of his stasis field, I had to enter a code into another computer. It was more Star Trek nonsense:

     

Not only nonsense, but not very gender-inclusive.

        

If you didn't already know the answer (WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE), you could figure it out with the cypher. I feel about these Star Trek allusions the way I feel about Tolkien references in other games. Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail are the four cornerstones of nerd-dom. There's absolutely no reference that you can make to them that isn't going to be trite, obvious, and done by 50 prior authors. And when you keep making them, not only does it get tiresome, it starts to raise questions about the canon of your setting. Are we supposed to get the idea that Might and Magic is set in the future of the Star Trek universe? Because that's what it's starting to seem like.

    

Corak said he couldn't stop Sheltem without leaving the ship, and if he left the ship, Sheltem would immediately sense him. The Dragon Pharaoh was delighted to hear of an agent capable of stopping Sheltem. He said that Corak could hide with a "soul box," which we could find in Olympus. He gave us a pass to the city and said his minions would treat us as the "Chosen Ones."

    

We cleared the area above the pyramid of cloud dragons and green dragons and then took a skyship to Olympus. The small city was full of NPCs, statues, and scrolls that explicitly gave the solutions to the game's various puzzles and riddles. The NPCs all had names of Greek gods, which combined with the Star Trek stuff makes me wonder why I've tried so hard to make any kind of sense out of the lore of this series.

     

I give up.

     

The soul box was in a secret area to the north of the city, but to get there I had to descend into the sewers and solve a four-syllable riddle. Each syllable was found on a parchment in a sewer grate, but if you're too dumb to figure it out, an NPC named Cyrano literally sells the answer in a room in the sewers: TRIBBLES. If you're not aware, this is yet another Star Trek reference.

     

I now officially hate this game.

       

Back to Corak we went. He somehow secreted himself in the soul box and told us to take him to Sheltem in Castle Alamar. Zeus--in the only useful piece of information in Olympus--had indicated that since the top is guarded by an undefeatable mega dragon, we should go in through the front gates.

        

Why is everything futuristic except the captain's chair?

      

There was no point in delaying any longer. I put every cent I had in the bank, worked odd jobs for a couple of years, and withdrew 10 million gold when I was done, leaving about 1 million in there just in case. That was enough to train everyone to Level 100 before I ran out of money. The fountain in Shangri-la, which I remembered at the last second, got us to 101.

    

While I was in Shangri-la, I figured I'd approach Castle Alamar from that direction. Unfortunately, the part of the Alamar dungeon you can reach from the city turns out to be a sectioned-off area. Aside from autobots and annihilators, there are a couple of statues. One of them proclaims Alamar's fairness based on the fact that he leaves clues for how to defeat him. "Alamar takes pleasure in the failure of his opponents, especially when they come close to success." Another statue had a long string of letters F, E, W, and A, indicating the four elements.

   

I decided then to attempt the mega dragon. (I appreciate the tips offered in the last entry; unfortunately, I had already beaten the thing by the time that entry posted.) With a full round of buffing, I was able to defeat him in 5 tries with three characters eradicated. I had to get them resurrected before I could continue into Castle Alamar. Maddeningly, the mega dragon offered no riches, just more experience.

     

Just two rounds from victory.

          

The top level was full of elemental squares that I couldn't figure out--the clue on the statue didn't seem to have anything to do with it--so I dropped down to the ground and entered the front door.  Carving through autobots and annihilators, we moved through the first level. There were four areas with stone heads saying that the elemental power fields were "operational." There were a number of statues honoring Alamar and his struggle against the Ancients. A number of bottles of "Xeen Power Juice" gave individual characters +5 levels.

      

We'd never beat Alamar if he had a better sense of time management.

       

Stairs went down into the basement, where at the end of a long circle of corridors, we pulled some levers. These didn't seem to have any effect in our immediate area, but they did seem to affect the area accessible from Shangri-la. We warped back to the city to investigate and found a new room. There, a skull denied us access for not having the proper ID, but on a pedestal, we found the key to "Dragon Tower."

   

I assumed this was one of the two towers I had never been able to access on the Clouds side, so we broke off exploration of Alamar (we would have had to return to the front entrance anyway) to check it out. It turned out to be the tower in the middle of a lake of lava in D1. It was aptly named--the several levels were full of fire, frost, and acid dragons and dragon kings, but at this point the only dangerous thing about dragons is sitting through their attack animations.

   

Some potions in the tower offered +50 endurance, permanent, but the better part was that between the treasure chests and piles of gold, we made about 4 million gold pieces. There were also books that gave us a ton of experience that we didn't need.

     

It's like it's mocking us.

     

Above the dragon tower was a huge "dragon clouds" area. The enemies were a bit tougher, mostly because of the introduction of a new type of dragon--the energy dragon. It sent us retreating for hit point restoration several times during our exploration. There were numerous crystals in the closes that gave individual characters anywhere from +2 to +5 character levels. In each corner, there were globes called things like "past of the dragon" and "future of the dragon," but looking at them just overwhelmed our minds and eradicated us.

        

Why not give us MONEY to pay for training for the levels we've already earned?

    

A statue asked us "the secret of the dragon." There were clues scattered throughout the area, each of which had a single syllable, but I didn't need all of them because of a clue that I had found earlier in the tower below: "I think the secret of the dragon has something to do with forever, or really, really big . . ." This had put INFINITY on my mind, and that indeed turned out to be the answer. The statue gave us a silver key card.

      

It would have killed you to throw in a little gold?

    

The card opened the way to a new area in the Castle Alamar basement (again, just the part accessible from Shangri-la), where we found the key to Darkstone Tower, the final tower I had not explored on the Clouds side.

   

Aside from a bunch of easy onyx golems, Darkstone Tower had a bunch of statues with what looks like gibberish unless you have history with Might and Magic's shtick of interleaved messages. Working out the interleaves produced the following four messages:

      

• NEW WORLD THANKS YOU FOR PLAYING MIGHT AND MAGIC
• SO ENDS THE SAGA OF CORAK AND SHELTEM! 
• 1994 BEGINS THE NEXT MIGHT AND MAGIC SAGA!
• TYPE "COMPUTER" ON LEVEL 4 OF THE DUNGEON OF DEATH. SEE YA SOON!

        

Go home, statue. You're drunk.

      

An easy math puzzle got us the gold keycard. There was a stairway up to a presumed "cloud" level, but it was blocked by an "invisible seal." There are a couple of ways to interpret that, one of which is a lot more fun than the other.

      

Couldn't we just aim for where the honking is coming from?

        

I went all the way back down to the fourth level of the Dungeon of Death to discover that, once again, I am a "SUPER goober!"

  

The gold keycard led the way to yet another area in the basement of Alamar's Castle. This area had a couple more +5 level juices, but more important a coffin from which we rescued Prince Roland, brother of King Burlock. He indicated that he is destined to marry Queen Kalindra on the "cloud world above Darkstone Tower," and that the key to the cloud world could be found in the Southern Sphinx, for which he gave us the amulet. And 5 million experience that I can't do anything with.

      

Having spent the rest of my money on training, my characters are all between Levels 132 and 135. I'm sure this is more than enough to win the game, and yet it annoys me that the game keeps throwing all this experience at us with no way to use it unless I want to simply pass time earning interest until my characters are 70 years old. Why spend half the game denying us proper leveling and then just throw all kinds of level bonuses at us via potions and crystals and whatnot? The game keeps it interesting with content, but wow is it an unholy mess when it comes to lore and RPG mechanics.

    

I guess we'll have to save the winning entry for next time. I never did finish exploring Castle Alamar, and I'm not entirely sure whether I could have defeated Sheltem before doing all this extra stuff on the Clouds side, or whether these diversions (and the Southern Sphinx) are necessary to that part of the game. I'm aware that there's a separate World of Xeen plot after the end of Darkside, and I suspect I may have completed some of it prematurely. We'll see soon. I'm ready for this one to be over.

    

Time so far: 39 hours