Ambermoon: Waterworld

 

It seemed early in the game for such a foe.

        

This session with Ambermoon went better than my first, in no small part because commenter Fincki gave me some configuration options that made a significant difference with speed. I tried it all at once and thus don't know exactly what made the difference, but something did. Moving with the keyboard is still slow, but not as slow as before, and moving with the mouse is almost too fast.

    

I restarted in grandfather's house and took the time to explore it more thoroughly before continuing. I had missed a cabinet in his room with potions of healing and cure poison, a buckler, shoes, and a robe. On his bookshelf, I missed a Book of Arachnids, which turned out to be prophetic.

       

Gee, I wonder if I'll face one of these in the basement.

    

I explored the secret area through the fireplace before going to the regular basement. I found 25 rations in a barrel, a bunch of chests that had 1 gold piece each, and one chest that killed me immediately when I tried to open it. I reloaded and left that for later, when I have a party member with "Disarm Trap" abilities.

   

Down in the basement, I managed to kill the rock lizard and the giant spider without taking any damage. Perhaps the robe, which has a defense of 4 (as opposed to my clothing, which has a defense of 2) makes a difference. There was stuff on the floor that I couldn't pick up in both rooms, but I also found plenty of items that I could pick up. The game is a little inconsistent: sometimes treasure is found automatically when you get close to it; sometimes, you have to activate the "Look" action. Either way, the spider room had a lot more potions. Another room had 13 slingstones and a barrel full of torches.

     

I missed this cabinet on my first pass.

     

A larder full of rations put me at my weight limit, and I ended up dropping a bunch of rations and the slingstones to make some room. I found a short sword in what looked like a potted plant. 

   

Even with things moving faster, I don't really like the interface. Despite Thalion's bragging about its 3D engine, I would have preferred the tile-based movement of Amberstar. Movement with the numberpad is a bit too slow, but it's the only way to turn and strafe precisely. When you move with the mouse, the game kind of blends what you're doing based on the mouse position. For instance, on the right side of the screen, holding down the mouse when the cursor is all the way at the top mostly turns you to the right. Holding down the mouse when the cursor is at the middle-right mostly strafes you. Holding it down halfway in between turns and strafes you at the same time. Similarly, holding down the mouse halfway between top-center and top-right turns you right while simultaneously moving you forward. The problem is that it's hard to get "pure" versions of these actions with the mouse. For instance, if you've just entered a room and want to turn to the right, you're likely to have crossed most of the room by the time you turn. The numberpad, on the other hand, results in "pure" turning or strafing, but at the expense of speed. There's no good way to do it. [Ed. As commenters pointed out, using the right mouse button to turn, move, and strafe solves the problem. So there is a good way to do it, and this paragraph is largely moot.]

        

More items on the floor I can't pick up. They look like sacks of gold!

      

There are other aspects that make the interface cumbersome. For instance, the action icons in the lower right are all mapped to the numberpad, so you can theoretically play without the mouse in combat and when moving overland (or in a place with an oblique interface, like grandfather's house). The problem is that you frequently get messages that you have to acknowledge, and the only way to acknowledge messages seems to be with the mouse. 

   

Because of the chaos of movement, I'm constantly missing doors and other exits from rooms. This problem is partially redeemed by an excellent automap. It's large, complete, easy to read, and more detailed than probably any automap we've had to date. It annotates entrances and exits, doors, chests, special encounters, and, in towns, the different kinds of services. I'm grateful for it because I would have missed several rooms in the basement.

           

Like Amberstar, the game has a fantastic automap.

     

The basement had several locations where I had to cut through spider webs and was attacked by pairs of giant spiders. There was one web that refused to be cut, and I had to light a torch to get through it. (The Book of Arachnids had a hint about this.) On the other side was a combat with an enormous spider. It took me three reloads to win this one, even using potions liberally. He was guarding a chest that blinded me when I tried to open it. I rested for 8 hours but the blindness didn't wear off, so I reloaded and, like the chest in grandfather's secret area, saved it for later.

        

It was a well-described trap.

     

Eventually, I came to a magic mouth that, in rhyme, said he'd only let me through if I answered a clue. But he didn't give me a riddle. Confused, I left him and explored the rest of the basement before I remembered that grandfather had given me a password (WINE) in the previous session. I gave it to the mouth, and a passage opened up beyond.

      

Typing a keyword.

     

It ultimately led to a ladder down, which took me to a level titled "Old Cave - First Level." It was only a single room, though. I found Shandra's Amber in a pile of refuse.

   

In one corner, a message popped up telling me that the ceiling had collapsed, and I'd need a pickaxe to clear the corridor. 

      

Why would I want to?

     

I returned to grandfather's bedroom and told him about the cave-in. He said I would need "the armour" to be successful in my quest. I don't remember him mentioning armor before. He suggested I go to Spannenberg to get tools from Tolimar, the horse dealer. When I tried to give him Shandra's Amber, which he had asked for, he said I should keep it. "I never found what its purpose is but many of my friends feel it has a magic aura . . . Perhaps you must use the stone somewhere in order to make contact with Shandra."

   

A few minutes later, I was out the door and on the overland map, which like the interior map is in an oblique perspective and far closer to the ground than in Amberstar. This allowed the designers to get far more artistic with the terrain. I'm not sure any of it is interactive. After a while, I stopped bothering to try to pick up or look at interesting things.

   

Breathing in the fresh mountain air.

     

The outdoor map is titled "Lyramionic Isles," and sure enough, the map that came with the game indicates that the shooting stars turned what had been a single continent into a bunch of disconnected islands. Spannenberg is on an eastern island, along a road west of a small structure. I took that to be grandfather's house, and I was right.

       

So much debris landed on Lyramion that it caused the oceans to rise.

       

As I traveled west along the road, night fell just as I reached a bridge across a small inlet. I rested for the night and healed a bit, then kept going to the gates of Spannenberg.

       

Night closes in around me.

   

As I entered the city, a message popped up and said: "You will be able to return to this point later." I got this message several more times as I explored. This heralds another interface improvement. The map of Spannenberg is full of these "goto points." From the automap, you just have to click on them to automatically move to those points on the map, although it doesn't work if enemies are near. This is an excellent addition that removes much of the tedium from moving through cities that you've already explored.

     

A welcome addition to the interface.

       

An old man was standing in the entryway. He said, "It really is strange that people come to Spannenberg although the town is full of bandits." Sure enough, I got attacked repeatedly by bandits as I explored the town. They weren't very hard except that sometimes they attacked two at a time.

     

Except for a minor rearrangement of the interface, I don't think the turn-based combat system has changed much from Amberstar. It was never bad, just slow. The party occupies the bottom two rows of a 6 x 5 tactical grid. Enemies have the top three rows. Each round, each character can move, attack, cast a spell, use an item, or defend. Once you specify your actions, you hit the "OK" button and watch as your actions and the enemies' execute in some behind-the-scenes initiative order. When enemies attack, there's a corresponding animation in the forward view. The line-up-your-attacks-and-watch-them-execute system goes back to Wizardry (1981), but I wonder if there's some Phantasie (1985) DNA in the system, perhaps transmitted through Legend of Faerghail (1990).

       

 A bandit battle. The forward view, which occupies most of the screen, is pretty but completely unnecessary.

      

It's the attack animations that make combat take so long. There's no more "fast forward" option in the combat panel as there was in Amberstar; instead, you can enable "fast combat" permanently in the game options. This makes the animations faster and it moves quickly between combat messages without requiring you to click to acknowledge them. Another time-saver is that if you want to do the same thing as the last action, you just hit the "OK" button again. However, no interface innovation can ameliorate the fact that at early levels, both the character and her foes miss most of the time. It's not uncommon for half a dozen rounds to go by with no one doing any damage. 

        

At the end of this session, I was Level 4. Each level-up was accompanied by an increase in maximum health, maximum spell power, and an allotment of "spell learn points" and "training points." I did feel quite a bit stronger by the end.

         

Leveling up after a battle.

     

There are two types of NPCs in the game. The first type just gives you a few lines of text. The full NPC interaction interface does not open, and you therefore can't feed them keywords or give them items. The second type offers a full conversation with a separate set of action buttons. Chief among these is the "Talk" button, which allows you to choose from known keywords or type in your own. Just as in Amberstar, each keyword becomes a permanent part of your dialogue options even though most NPCs have nothing to say to most keywords. Ambermoon colors some of the keywords in yellow. At first, I thought it might be highlighting keywords specific to each NPC, but that theory was shot down when many NPCs responded to non-highlighted words. I think maybe the yellow ones are just the newer ones.

        

The first type of NPC.

      

Findings from Spannenberg:

   

• A nonsensical monologue from a "rough looking and agitated boy" on the street: "I have just left my friends. Let them continue to search for treasure in the desert by themselves. I hope that a ship will come past here soon, because this town is just full of my old associates. I would not like to come across them again."

• A tavern/inn called the Inn of the Limping Rogue. You can rent a room for 15 gold pieces.

       

The buildings in town generally use axonometric interfaces.

        

• One NPC in the inn tells me about a band of orcs raiding from the mountains to the west, making life difficult for farmers.

• Another NPC in the inn tells me that the park in town was built by a powerful magician.

• A named NPC, Aman, is a member of the Guild of Thieves. The guild is troubled by the bandit invasion, which they have nothing to do with, but they're taking a lot of the blame. The guild is in the cellar below the inn. Aman will give me the password if I bring him the brooch from the gardener in the graveyard. The gardener bought a book on necromancy recently, and has been raising the dead.

       

I suspect this guy is going to end up joining me.

       

• I find Tolimar in the stables. He'll give me the tools I need if I can return four golden horseshoes, recently stolen by bandits. (He identifies their leader as "Silverhand.") He'll sell me six horses for 100 gold. I have the money--each bandit battle gives me that much--but I don't buy them yet.

       

How much are peasant horses?

     

• A house is occupied by a married couple named Canth and Noralael. They recently had a wine goblet stolen, but they disagree on what stole it. Canth says that she saw some kind of green creature with wings, but Noralael insists they were just regular bandits.

       

I didn't think kobolds had wings.

      

• Wat the Fisher lives in a house with his young daughter, Sally. His wife died of swamp fever the previous year, and now Sally has it. He asks me to visit Father Anthony, the healer, and ask about an antidote.

    

Unfortunately, I ran out of time again before I finished Spannenberg, but I'm enjoying the exploration and the slow acquisition of wealth and power.

     

Time so far: 3 hours