Dungeon Master II: One Floor Up, Two Floors Down

I don't know what this guy's problem was, but he took forever to kill.

        

When I wrapped up last time, I had just opened the door to Skullkeep. I had remarked last time that Dungeon Master's famous puzzles had been largely lacking from this sequel, so I was happy to see a pressure plate at the end of the first hallway. On the wall behind it was some kind of eye. I stepped on the plate to inspect the eye and, while I was inspecting it, a fireball roared down the hallway from my left and killed the entire party.

       

Well, we know why they call it Skullkeep.

      

I reloaded, tried again, and this time stepped backwards quickly after stepping on the plate. The fireball shot harmlessly by. I stepped on the plate again, and this time it didn't trigger a fireball. I guess that was a one-time thing. The eye also remained closed.

   

In an alcove to the right were three buttons. To my left were a series of three portcullises. Each button opened one of the portcullises after a short delay, but stepping on the pressure plate in front of the eye (or maybe stepping off the pressure plate in front of the buttons; I was never sure which) caused the portcullises to close again. I spent a lot of time trying to weigh the plates down before I realized that the puzzle had a simpler solution: just run quickly through the gates as they opened.

   

On the other side, I found stairs up, a "Minion Map," and the key necessary to open the main entrance of Skullkeep (so I can return to town). There was also a small room nearly surrounded by pits, with a sword called Tempest in the center square. I found that picking up the sword caused a pit to open next to the only entrance, thus blocking the way out of the room. A ladder led to the cave beneath the pits, but there was nothing there except some poisonous worms. Tempest casts some kind of lightning bolt spell, but it ran out after two charges.

         

These guys don't hit hard, but they poison.

       

Still, I wanted to keep the sword. Some experimentation showed me that the pit closed the moment I dropped the sword anywhere in the room. I found that if I threw it at the square with the pit, it closed while the sword was in the air, thus providing a safe place for the sword to land. I could then walk across the square and pick up the sword from the other side.

  

I took the stairs to the next level. A bell on a rope summoned a little Jawa-like creature to open the gate to his room by pushing a button on his side of the gate. The room had three or four Jawas plus some uber-Jawa holding a magical staff. They didn't attack until I picked up any of the items in the room. A quick scan showed no way out except a closed door, suggesting I would need those items to progress. I was thus forced to fight.

        

The first level (at least the part I mapped) wasn't huge, but they fit a lot into it.

      

The regular Jawas weren't too hard, but the SuperJawa took me forever. His staff was capable of a terrifying "Fireball" spell that could kill the party outright, so I had to avoid him. There are protection spells to help mitigate the damage, but not so much that I could stand still and swing away. I tried swinging and dodging, offensive spells, and even summoned allies, but I couldn't seem to defeat him. He kept running over to a huge cauldron in the center of the room, waving his arms, and getting zapped, and it soon became clear that the cauldron was somehow healing him. The only way I could defeat him was to load every character's hands with FUL bombs and unleash them in quick succession, overriding his health before he could restore it. That finally worked.

      

The SuperJawa kills me with fireballs.

     

The staff the Jawa leader was carrying was called a Numenstaff. It casts a couple of spells, including what turns out to be a quick succession of three "Fireballs." The alcoves around the room had what seemed like ingredients: a spirit cap mushroom, a mana blossom, a plain staff, a sword made of "meteor metal," a gold coin, and a red gem. A scroll gave the "recipe" for a Snake Staff: one mana blossom and one staff. I put both these items in the cauldron and indeed got a staff capable of a few spells. I discovered that items put in the cauldron can be retrieved if they don't do anything, so I just tossed stuff in there until some combination of the meteor metal sword, the gold coin, the red gem, and the spirit cap created a sword called "Blue Steel." 

     

This was a pretty cool sword.

    

At this point, I had more weapons than I needed, so I took a more careful look at them. In attack power, they seem to go in order from weakest to strongest: Tempest, Vorpal Blade, Excsymyr, Fury, and Blue Steel. Tempest has that lightning attack, but that only helps if I can find a way to recharge it. The Vorpal Blade is worth keeping regardless of its raw power for the ability to hit ethereal foes.

   

Something I did opened the door to the further reaches of the level. I came to a long corridor where fireballs kept roasting the party. They seemed to have something to do with a bunch of mechanical eyes lining the corridors and perhaps reporting on my progress. I thought "Invisibility" might get me past them, but that didn't work. During my experiments with the SuperJawa, I found that ZO BRO ROS created some kind of shimmering mist that repels spells. It doesn't follow the party but remains in the square where it was cast. I used it to deflect the fireballs and make it to the end of the corridor, although I had to reload a few times.

      

My spell protects me from the fireballs.

     

A later section of the dungeon reminded me that there are still illusory walls that you have to walk into. I reloaded an earlier save to check for such illusory walls in the earlier part of the level, and I found several within the fireball corridor, each bringing me around to a square behind one with a mechanical eye. In these squares, I was able to open a panel and remove the eye from the wall socket, thus causing the fireballs not to launch in the first place--in most places, anyway. I couldn't find a way behind the final eye, so the "spell shield" was necessary for that one even if I could have avoided the others. 

       

Disabling a mechanical eye.

     

In the chambers beyond the fireball corridor, I started finding cogs and gear contraptions that needed cogs to open doors. More important, I found one of those teleporters to take me back to town.

I spent a while doing the rounds of the shops, taking a closer look at the inventories, and spending some of the riches I'd amassed on armor. I also bought two cogs and the vacuum fuse in that little village to the east, figuring I'd soon need them. 

          

Buying a piece of armor. My funds are starting to run out.

      

Back in the level, there was a long corridor in which multiple cogs had to be fitted into gears to open doors. If I moved too slow, pits opened and dumped the party into the basement, where we had to fight ghosts. 

     

The area beyond the gear doors gave me a headache. There are so many things crammed in one room. There is a ladder going down to some caves that I needed to hit a switch to lower. There's a boiler with a sign next to it telling me to "turn on water valves two levels up" before using it. There are a couple of weird machines that look almost like computers, with a sign reading, "Furnace on level below must be stoked and burning." There are two portal-looking things, but I can't seem to go through them. Nor can I throw things through them.

     

I don't know what these are all about.

    

There were a couple of probes to fight in this area. One of them blasted me pretty hard, but he wouldn't leave his square, so it was easy to pop over, attack, and dodge away. Probes keep popping up to attack me wherever I go these days, even in towns--sometimes even in shops.

      

The only door out of this area wouldn't open. Nearby, I found a square YA key, and in an alcove, I found a square receptacle that took it. The door opened, but only to a short corridor where another door required the same key. I returned to grab it, but a pit was now blocking my access to it. There was a button on an adjacent wall, and I figured it would close the pit, but instead it caused the YA key to pop out of its receptacle and fall into the pit.

       

I guess I'd better go after it.

      

I took the ladder down to the caverns below, which were swarming with constantly-respawning bats. They do a trivial amount of damage, so I mostly ignored them. There were rocks called "pyros" all over the floor. They were heavy, so I annotated them but left them where they were. There were also a bunch of large boulders and holes to stuff them in, which I did, but I'm not sure it served any purpose.

      

Large boulders and small bats marked this section of the game.

       

I was surprised to find an exit from this area that led me back outside, at a location where there hadn't been an opening before. I was further surprised to find that the map I'd made of the caverns was completely backwards. Some stairway must have spun me around at some point. The game usually maintains consistency in facing direction when you move up and down.

      

The caverns link up with the "outside" part of the ground level.

     

A one-way ladder and pit led down to the underground beneath the main level, where it wasn't long before I met some kind of giant cave man. He was capable of casting a "poison field" spell and he liked to shove my party back a square whenever he was adjacent to us. It took me about 20 minutes of running around casting spells and shooting arrows at him--also dealing with the probes that kept popping up in the meantime--before I was able to kill him and loot a key from his body.

   

The key led to a small area in which these stone cyclops kept spawning. Once they got out of the room, they ran picking up all the pyros. The room had a button that activated a teleporter back to the previous (main) level. I still have more to explore on the sub-level though, and although I haven't yet found any ladders, a plethora of pits attests to yet another level below this.

   

Maybe I should have picked up those pyros myself.

     

I've continued shifting people around and swapping weapons in and out to keep leveling relatively even. Everyone is mostly Level 8 ("Expert") in everything, but a couple have crept to Level 9 ("Master") in the two magic classes. I've finally mastered movement, which will undoubtedly screw me up in the next game, but I have the hardest time remembering the runes for the spells that I cast most often. Having to constantly refer to my notes is a pain. 

   

Overall, it was a good session. I liked the return of puzzles, and the game has done a better job making them somewhat thematic rather than just purely mechanical. I look forward to what awaits me as I continue to search for that square key.

        

Time so far: 22 hours