Eye of the Beholder III: Some Few of David's Psalmes Metaphrased

This supposed exit from the forest was misleading.

       

Having explored the mausoleum in the last entry, there was nothing left for the party to do but enter the forest via the eastern exit from the graveyard. The forest was a long, linear map that had a couple of silly but harmless gimmicks. The first were these bramble patches that look like dead ends until you hover the cursor over the holes. There can be up to three holes--left, right, and center--per patch. Clicking on one of the holes takes you into the patch, which occupies a full square, but then out via the direction you clicked. Your facing direction doesn't change. 

The primary purposes of these brambles, used only in a couple of locations, is to surprise you with whatever enemies you find on the other side and make it impossible to backpedal while attacking them. Without the brambles, the extremely long corridors of the map would ensure that you could kill all enemies at range with no danger to the party.

I can go straight or left through these brambles, but not right.

       

The second gimmick is a cousin of the graveyard trees that didn't look sturdy. You can't fell them with an axe. Instead, you find an Everburning Torch early in the map, and waving at some of the trees causes them to retreat and leave an open square. The game gives you no indication about what trees this trick will work on, so you have to wave the torch at all of them. Fortunately, unlike the axe, the torch has no cooldown period.

   

Like all the maps so far, the forest had two types of enemies. Minotaurs hit hard but have no special attacks. Much worse are feyrs. I believe I'm fighting them for the first time in an RPG. They're giant blobs with tentacles that blink in and out of view, although it seems that they just go invisible rather than "phase," since I can still hit them even if I can't see them. "True Seeing" kept them visible permanently. The manual says they are "unknowingly brought to life by the strong emotions of a large group of people" and are commonly found in "large cities that have a good number of mages, priests, and other spellcasters." So their appearance in the middle of a deserted forest makes complete sense.

              

Marina levels up against some minotaurs.

             

Other than a pack of feyrs on the other side of some brambles, for which I needed "Bless," "Prayer," and "Haste" to survive, the enemies didn't give me too much trouble. While I'm on the subject of combat, I want to mention that "All Attack" is a little more subtle than I originally gave it credit for. What I failed to mention is that you can choose who participates in "All Attack" and thus more carefully manage the rest. Bundling your fighters in an "All Attack" while leaving spellcasters untethered is a great way to use the feature and maintain some level of tactics in combat.

      

An entire pack of feyrs.

       

Not far into the forest, we met Delmair Rallythorn, hero of the novelette. He immediately contradicted the story told in the manual by saying that a) he had killed the bandits who killed his father, when the story says that his mother, the lich, killed them; and b) he was looking for his father's undead-slaying sword, which in the story he already has. He also seems a lot more confident and rakish here than in Greenwood's tale. He offered to join the party. He's a lawful good, half-elf ranger of Level 11.

      

I don't think he was a half-elf in the story, either.

       

I put him in the second rank with the halberd +5 and moved Gaston, my ranger/cleric, to the rear. I equipped Gaston with a bow but took him out of the "All Attack" group so I could switch over to spells when necessary.

       

The long forest path.

       

Marina went to Level 12 while fighting some minotaurs and got a choice of "Disintegrate," "Flesh to Stone," "Stone to Flesh," and "True Seeing." I chose the latter because I'm not using all her existing offensive spells between rests. This particularly became true after we found a treasure hoard that included a Ring of Wizardry, giving her four additional Level 4 spells ("Hold Monster," "Ice Storm"). The same treasure pile had Gauntlets of Fire Giant Strength, which I gave to Starling, the paladin.

      

Not as good as a Level 3 Ring of Wizardry, but I'll take what I can get.

         

The map culminated in an 11 x 11 area full of those bramble patches, with occasional clearings in which feyrs roamed. As we found our way to the exit from this area, we were met by a ghostly man who called us "defilers of the forest." "Why," he asked, "should I not wither you away to nothingness as you have done to so many parts of my forest." I think he was overstating things, frankly, but we protested with our mission, and he ultimately relented. In quite a few screens, he related the history of Myth Drannor and its last defenders, including Captain Fflar. He told us he'd give us a test, and if we passed, he'd show us the way to the city.

    

The first option was more politic, but the second makes a good point.

        

We had to specify who would take the test, and I chose Marina, my mage. The test was to simply choose from four books to read: The Book of Adroit Deeds, the Book of Daring Deeds, the Book of Arcane Deeds, and the Book of Exalted Deeds. I figured right away that the trick was to choose a book that would align best with the person choosing it (e.g., "Arcane" to mages, "Adroit" to thieves, "Exalted" to clerics, and "Daring" to fighters), and after getting it right with Marina (Arcane), I verified this with a reload. The person you choose gets a huge experience point boost--Marina went immediately to Level 13.

        

To be fair, I don't think we've cut any trees since our first hour. On this map, we just scared them with a torch.

      

With a final admonishment not to cut down any more trees, the ghostly sage let us go, telling us the path would be open. True to his word, there were no other trees that I needed the Everburning Torch to move. Incidentally, if I had figured out the tomb of Fflar in the right order, he would have given me a Medallion of Friendship that I could have waved at the trees instead. The encounter with the ghostly sage doesn't change at all, though.

A portal offered an eastern exit from the forest. "Through the trees you behold the ruined city of Myth Drannor," the game enticed. Having done everything we could in the forest, we stepped forward.

         

The next map does not feature a river.

           

We found ourselves in the ruins of the city. There was a lot of open space, but the wall textures evoked an "indoor" feeling. I ended up exploring two areas, situated side-by-side, both 30 x 30. I originally thought they were one large area. There's a corridor where you transition between them, but there's only a short delay, not the cut screen that usually accompanies transitions between maps. When the new area didn't line up right with the old one, I figured out what had happened. There were also different enemies in the second area, and since every level in this game has only two types of monster, that was another sign.

      

The first of the two new areas.

And the second.

          

The first area offered battles with chimeras, which is one of those Dungeons & Dragons enemies that everyone knows about but games hardly ever use. They had melee attacks and fireballs, accompanied by cool animations, but they died quickly. The second enemy were "hags," also quite weak, and they didn't even seem to have any spell attacks. I guess they can poison, but it only happened to us once. The worst part about them was their sound, which sounds more like a chortle than a cackle.

       

The lion claws while the dragon breathes. I'm not sure what the goat's purpose is.

I guess "hags" sounds better than "harmless old ladies."

        

The two enemies on the second map were wyverns and trolls. Wyverns have a poison attack but die in a single "All Attack." Trolls are hardier and hit hard. 

        

The game's conception of a "wyvern."

       

The second map had a Lathander theme going, including multiple statues to the god, and owing to my exploration pattern, I mapped most of it before finishing the first area. In front of a temple to Lathander, I met one of the god's priests, a Father Jon. After we assured him our intentions in the area were pure, he related that he was looking to clear out the temple and he offered to join us. I took him, booting Isharn. I equipped Gaston with a polearm and moved him back to the second rank. I had grown sick of picking up his arrows anyway. Father Jon turned out to be not just a cleric, but a mage/cleric of Level 10 each. (He's half-elf and neutral good.) I'm going to get a lot of use out of an extra spellcaster.

       

Our new ally.

       

I found Father Jon so useful that I was torn when I encountered another NPC back in the first set of ruins. He was a lawful good "Saurial" male cleric named Rex whose people had been brought to this plane by the evil god Moander. This was done, I understand, in revenge for the Saurial Dragonbait's part in slaying Moander's avatar. (You may recall Dragonbait from Curse of the Azure Bonds.) Rex was seeking the Codex of the Planes, which might contain the knowledge necessary to return the Saurials to their home. Rex is such a unique NPC that I wanted to take him, but I felt I should keep Delmair given his prominence in the backstory, and Father Jon just balanced the party better.

        

An interesting NPC whom I didn't take.

         

There was some decent loot in both areas, including piles of mage and cleric spell scrolls, and a blessed holy symbol. I'm frankly not sure what it does that a regular holy symbol doesn't. A couple of piles of loot were behind magic fields that I had to cast "Dispel Magic" to dispel. One item was a Helm of Water Breathing. This plus a separate Scroll of Water Breathing suggests these are going to be necessities.

         

Items protected briefly by a magic shield. The party is taking damage from touching it.

       

There was only one "puzzle." I had to find a key in the first area to open a temple to Lathander in the second area. The temple had a niche flanked by two message boards reading "IT WANTS ICE." I had found a diamond in one of the treasure piles, and I put it in the slot. The party was teleported to a similar area in which the messages read "DO YOU FEAR FOR YOUR CHILD?" The only thing I had that had anything to do with fear was a Wand of Fear, and that turns out to be exactly what the niche wanted. It teleported us to a third area, where we could choose a reward from among Bracers of Protection, three Wands of Cone of Cold, and two Necklaces of Fireballs.

         

Even without the hint, I probably would have thought to put the diamond in here.

      

I found only one exit from the area. It led to an old Mages' Guild. I guess that's where I'm going next.

     

Miscellaneous notes:

  

• As we entered the forest, the game threw up its first copy protection screen. It uses a boilerplate look-up-the-word-in-the-manual approach. 

• Dungeon Master debuted in 1987. It's hard to believe that in the subsequent six years, no one came up with a better way to handle missile weapons and arrows than to force the player to pick them all up individually and put them back in the inventory.

         

Picking up individual arrows in time to shoot them again at this troll.

         

• Lock picks don't seem to pick locks in this game. They haven't worked on a single lock. The game doesn't even pretend to try. They've only worked on some "stuck" levers.

• You cannot fight from the inventory screen, which ought to be obvious because the buttons you would normally need to right-click in combat are not visible. But if you're used to using the SPACE bar for "All Attack," it's easy to forget that it won't work unless you close the inventory and return to party view.

• Spells are fun. Waiting for the animations to completely finish before anything else can happen is not fun.

        

By the end of this session, it was time for my party to have an intervention about inventory. In addition to the very good items I was wielding and wearing, my party was hoarding the following:

• An axe +3, an axe +2, a trident +3, two two-handed swords +3, two long swords +3, a short sword +2, a short sword +1, a mace +2, a black hammer +3, a green crystal hammer +2, three daggers +3, two daggers +2, three daggers +1, an axe, a mace +2, three clubs +1, a long bow, and a regular bow
• Plate mail +2 (2), leather armor +3, elven chain mail +2, chain mail, and robes
• Two shields +3
• A Cloak of Protection
• Bracers of Protection
• Captain Fflar's nameplate
• The Everburning Torch (this game has no lighting mechanic)
• The Rod of Restoration
• Potions of Giant Strength (2), Healing (4), Neutralize Poison
• Mage scrolls of "Fireball" and "Hold Person"
• Cleric scrolls of "Heal" (3), "Cause Critical Wounds," "Sol's Searing Orb," "Prayer" (2), "Aid," "Create Food and Water," "Slow Poison," "Neutralize Poison" (2), "Raise Dead" (5), and "Dispel Magic" 
• Wands of Wall of Force, Acid Storm, and Cone of Cold (3)
• Two extra cleric holy symbols
• An extra mage spellbook
• Two extra sets of thieves' tools
• Iron rations and an apple

   

I found a spot that I could remember later and ditched most of the excess weaponry, armor, and spellcasting symbols, ate the food, and made a vow to prioritize magical items until I was at least low on them. I also moved things around so that the inventory was better managed, with Starling carrying quest items, Marina in charge of mage items (excess spilling over to Father Jon), Gaston handling clerical items, and Bugsy storing the utility items. I always like this process, because it gives me a chance to envision the characters interacting ("here, you take this") in a way that makes them seem more like individuals than a blob. 

      

Moving on.

        

At the end of the last session, I called the game "adequate but unremarkable." That's largely how it felt during this session, too. It's a measure of how blah it generally feels that I got excited about new navigational conundrums like the brambles even though they added very little to the experience. I think it says something that I could barely get a normal-length entry out of three maps.

   

Time so far: 15 hours