Warriors of the Eternal Sun: Temple of Doom

 

The early game fooled me into thinking that the dungeons would be small.

       

The dungeons got a lot bigger, more complicated, and better-staffed during this session, and I had a chance to fully explore the combat options in the 3-D interface, so let's jump right into an analysis of that.

 

Cheesing the Combat System

  

We've had a lot of discussion on this blog about "combat waltzing" and other tricks made possible in most Dungeon Master-derived games. The waltz in Dungeon Master specifically depends upon exploiting the timing of attacks and movements in the combat engine. Specifically, enemies move in predictable patterns and with exact timing, and they must be facing the characters to attack. They always enter a square adjacent to the characters, turn to face them, and attack, with an exploitable pause in between those actions. Even a clumsy player (like me) can react fast enough to attack when they enter the square and as they turn, but step aside before they get to attack themselves.

    

As long as they're facing that way, I can attack.

The effectiveness of the combat waltz is possible not just because of enemy movement but because the timing of the characters' movements and attacks don't seem to depend at all on the enemies'. That is, the game doesn't insist that enemies get to "finish their turns" before the characters can go. Moreover, characters are capable of much greater movement in any given time period than the enemies are capable of. Enforced cool-down periods between uses of weapons means that they often can't attack any more often than the enemy can, but that's irrelevant since the characters' much greater flexibility in movement can keep them safe during the cool-down. Characters are also not restricted from moving after an enemy has begun an attack.

         

The combat waltz works in other games, but often with a different flavor based on that game's variables. I had more trouble with the pattern in Eye of the Beholder because (if I remember correctly) enemies don't have a side-view. When they enter a square, they're already facing you. Their attacks are thus faster, but not impossible to dodge. [Ed. I did not remember correctly; enemies do have a side view. I'll have to fire up the game and remind myself why the "waltz" works a bit differently. I'll update when I do.] Beholder also has a timing issue by which if a spell is cast, you have to wait for all of its animation to finish before you can move. I think both Dungeon Master II and Eye of the Beholder II introduced some randomness to movement patterns that made waltzing enemy groups in a four-square area difficult, but you could still lead them around a central pillar or exploit twists and turns in a long hallway.

       

Note that I can attack while they're halfway into the square ahead of me.

       

Another common exploit with 3D engines is missile weapons, often used while backpedaling down long corridors or around loops. Again, games can try to foil this exploit by giving enemies missile weapons of their own or by simply having the enemies refuse to follow you. 

This brings us to Warriors, which offers some AI changes that force some modifications of the traditional exploits. I frankly don't know whether some of them represent more advanced AI or the opposite. One obvious example of the former is that enemies won't dumbly come directly at you while you're firing missile weapons at them. They'll step out of their way to avoid them, take parallel paths, turn and flee, and sometimes avoid entering long corridors that offer no avenue of escape. This setup paradoxically helps the player, though, because it generally keeps enemies from just charging for the characters. Instead, all the dithering they do to avoid missile weapons keeps them at bay, and you just have to wait until they occasionally wander into range. 

        

Killing a whole tribe of troglodytes from afar.

     

The traditional waltz, meanwhile, is difficult for a combination of reasons. Like Dungeon Master, enemies enter adjacent squares facing perpendicular to the player, then turn. However, they turn almost instantly and attack almost instantly after turning. The game does give you an exploit in that enemies take a half-step into a square before fully entering, and you can attack during this time. The bigger issue with the traditional four-square waltz is that enemies won't commit to an adjacent square if they're exactly one square diagonal. They just won't move at all. They wait for you to do it, then attack the moment you're next to them. They waltz you. This is either brilliant or the result of a simplistic pathfinding calculation producing two equal results and thus paralyzing the enemies in place.

But although you can't dance around the same four squares, you can still do a more complicated dance, mostly because enemies don't ruthlessly come in your direction like Jason Voorhees. If you get some distance from them, they tend to go home. Sometimes, they're curiously reluctant to come around certain corners, so if you just wait for them to poke their noses out, attack a few times, and then back off, you can eventually kill them with no damage to your characters.

          

For some reason, these owlbears didn't want to come down this hallway.

      

We've had some debates in the past about whether using the combat waltz is effectively cheating. I have always maintained that not only is it not cheating, it's not even an exploit. The authors of Dungeon Master clearly designed the engine to give players the opportunity to step out of the way of attacks; otherwise, there's not much purpose to a non-turn-based engine. The combat waltz is just stepping out of the way in a way that follows a pattern. If the authors didn't want players to do it, they should have made enemy movement less predictable (as they did in Dungeon Master II). Dungeon Master is a part-action RPG, and it's absurd to argue that in an action RPG, you shouldn't move your character in the best way to avoid damage.

       

The issue with these tactics in Warriors, like in Eye of the Beholder, is not that waltzing and backpedaling violates the spirit of the engine, but that the engine itself violates the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons gameplay. Combat in Dungeons & Dragons occurs in turns and rounds, with enemies and characters alike getting a defined set of actions during those periods. I grant that I'm not experienced in tabletop D&D, but I'd be surprised if there was a mechanic by which you could stand right next to an enemy and both attack and side-step during your round and the enemy only gets to turn during his.

   

The use of missile weapons is a little more justifiable. Even in real life, someone with a melee weapon is going to be at a disadvantage if he has to charge down a long hallway towards someone with a missile weapon. The problem here is that, I think, characters get an unrealistic number of attacks. The game doesn't have a "cool down" period like Dungeon Master. Once one character acts, the action passes to the next one, who can act immediately. I can sometimes fire a dozen shots in a couple of seconds.

        

Shooting trolls from a few squares away.

       

The consequence of all of this is that dungeon combat in Warriors is far too easy. In this session, I killed red dragons, giants, bears, and other high-level creatures without taking a hit. And once you know how to do that, what are you supposed to do? Stand there and get hit just to avoid breaking immersion? Again, this is an author problem, not a player problem.

 

The Beastman Caves      

    

The session began with a return to the beastman caves, clutching the staff (given to me by Marmillian) that will force passage through the blockade of vines. I poked my head into several of the other beastman caves before going to the one that had the obstruction, and I'm pretty confident at this point that named enemies don't respawn but all other enemies do. Treasures do not.

      

Parley? No?

     

Past the vines, which parted automatically when I approached, the dungeon was large and twisty. I estimate it at 30 x 30. I considered mapping it, since the automap disappears when you leave and return, but I decided that just following one of the walls would take less time than making a map. Little did I know that I'd have to traverse the place four times. 

        

Enemies were carrion crawlers, giant lizards that I'd never met in a D&D game before called tuatara (named after real reptiles native to New Zealand), crab spiders, and a huge pack of troglodytes, including a troglodyte chief and sub-chief. None of them were hard, though, because of the twisty nature of the cave network. I was able to take out almost everyone at range. I found a "Haste" spell during my explorations.

     

My mage updates her spell list.

     

Carrion crawlers caused a "stuck" status effect on my characters. I had to rest to get rid of it. What does "stuck" mean?

   

The final chamber of the caves was guarded by a phobosuchus, named after an extinct giant crocodile. He would have been tough if I'd had to fight him under normal rules. 

        

This game doesn't really have a strong sense of ecosystem.

       

In the final chamber, where I expected to find the exit, I instead found a wall with "a strange pattern of holes," which is the same thing I had found in the caverns in the northeast corner. I couldn't figure out any way to pass through for now, so I made the long journey back out of the caverns and into the wilderness. 

         

If only I had turned and faced to the right.

        

Behind the Waterfall

 

At this point, I thought that every way forward had been blocked, so I decided to start looking for other caverns. I knew there was one behind a waterfall somewhere, and I still hadn't searched for secret entrances along some of the cliff lines. I began with the waterfalls. There was no cavern behind the one at the north end of the map. I moved next to the north end of the central island, and I got lucky here.

   

The cavern was in two sections. The first was a dirt cavern with giant toads, flying vipers, tiger beetles, and owlbears. I found a couple potions of healing, a potion of cure poison, and a little gold. There was a gelatinous cube behind one wall, which terrified me for a couple of seconds until it died. I frantically checked all my equipment and found nothing missing.

   

A common D&D enemy but rare in CRPGs.

        

There was an exit door at the back end of the cavern that took me to a man-made dungeon of worked stone. It consisted of a long corridor with rooms off to the side. The rooms had combats with zombies, ghouls, trolls, and gargoyles, and they were much more difficult than most battles because enemies never go through doors. I had to fight all of them within the confines of their small rooms. My cleric's "Turn Undead" ability took care of the undead nicely. If the ghouls were capable of paralysis, then all my characters made their saving throws.

    

Turning undead.

      

The trolls were quite difficult, but their room was the largest of the batch, and I had some success running to the end, turning around, and shooting them. I couldn't defeat the gargoyles, even buffed with "Bless" and "Haste." I stubbornly blasted them with the last two charges in my Wand of Lightning, and the wand disappeared.

    

The stone dungeon disgorged us at the top of a mesa that we'd been unable to reach before. The exit was hidden by a bush, making me wonder how many other hidden caves dot the maps. I followed the mesa to the east and south, where my explorations culminated in a battle with a black dragon. He had only 21 hit points, and against any logic, we defeated him on the first try.

         

Just hanging out in the sunshine.

     

Finding nothing else on the mesa--although I confess I didn't check every bush--we returned the way we came. We stopped in town on the way back and found +1 slings and bows for sale but no new dialogue.

    

Red Dragon

    

The next and last new cave I discovered was a bit south of the beastman caves. It was on the north face of a cliff that, because of the perspective, I couldn't see. (Amy K. pointed out how silly those hidden entrances are, since surely the characters would be able to see them.) The cave's monsters were, on paper, the most difficult we've seen so far: a fire giant, hellhounds, saber tooths, and a red dragon. But the cave network was sprawled and twisted enough that we could defeat them with our tricks. I reloaded once because I stood there facing the dragon long enough to get a cool screenshot.

      

Voila.

       

The red dragon's treasure was fantastic: a +1 plate mail, a +1 bow, a +2 sword, a +2 shield, and enough gold, gems, and jewelry to add thousands of gold pieces to my total.

 

He probably worked hard to accumulate this stuff.

      

The Lizard Swamp

    

By this point, I had decided I must have missed something in the beastman caverns; otherwise, I'd have some kind of hint from Marmillian. I traced my route back through them, fighting all of the enemies a second time, went to the final room, and realized that if I'd just turned right from the wall with the pattern of holes, I would have found the exit door. 

      

The swamp map I eventually found.

           

The door took me to a new outdoor map, not nearly as large as the original, where fingers of land poked their way into a dense swamp. As I explored, I was attacked by "robber flies," lizardmen, and other creatures that make sense in a swamp setting.

 

I followed the rightmost path and eventually wandered into a lizardman village. "Potential allies for the duke!" I thought, just before the lizardman chief yelled, "Deathhh to the humanssss!" and a dozen or so of them attacked. Fortunately, they all started some distance away, and I was able to pick most of them off with my missile weapons before they made it to melee range. (None of them had any missile weapons.)

       

No alliance, then? Just checking.

     

After the battle, I wandered around the lizardman huts and found gold, a map of the area, and "peculiar artifacts." The chief was still alive when I approached his hut, and he said: "Curssse you . . . and your gold skinned brethren to the north . . . hisssssss . . . " It's 50-50 whether those "gold-skinned brethren" are the allies we seek or more people that we'll end up killing.

       

A little late for that.

    

There were only two other things in the swamp, neither of which made a lot of sense to me. The first was a pool of dark water, where I was told: "You see the reflection of your fallen comrades." What fallen comrades? From the goblin attack on the castle? The second was a large tree that made us feel "strangely rejuvenated" when we approached. I didn't note any effects of either encounter on our statistics.

   

I was kind of hoping there would be some kind of teleporter or other fast travel back to the castle, but alas we had to fight our way through the beastman caverns a fourth time.

     

Personae non Gratae

      

Back at the castle, people were pissed at us. "We should have sent a blind man for aid!" one groused. "More enemies! We need friends, not enemies!" another scolded. Even the healer tended our wounds grudgingly.

     

Sounds like my primary care physician.

          

The duke dressed us down thoroughly. Even though something seems to be affecting the moods of the castle denizens, I can't say that he's exactly wrong. While we were gone, he threw Marmillian in irons, then released him. "Both actions were without warning or explanation." Marmillian said he needed more clues to figure out what is driving people mad.

       

Lord British was always too polite to say this.

       

We hastened out of there before people started attacking us. The caravan costs are ridiculous, but we had the money, and I didn't feel like fighting random wilderness combats all the way to the northeast corner. I paid the 2,000 gold.

         

I do wish "fast travel" in many other games had a higher cost.

          

Azcan Nation

    

The pattern we'd observed on the wall in the beastman caves allowed us to pass through the similar wall in the Azcan caves. Beyond was another huge dungeon, something like 40 x 40. I fought a stone giant, cave bears, giant ants, a troll chief, and a giant worm called a caecilia. There were potions and scrolls in several locations, enough that my inventory was strained by the time I exited. I took a few potions when I didn't need them just to make some room.

       

You're breaking my heart.

    

One of the scrolls was a "Fireball," so I naturally scribed and memorized it, though I've barely been using spells because it's so much of a pain to swap out the weapons slots for spells temporarily.

   

The caves spat us out in a jungle, where we were almost immediately attacked by an "Azcan wokan." Is that a typo for "woman"? I'm not sure.

       

The jungle map, which I must have picked up in the pyramid. I arrived on the east side of the map, about 1/3 of the way from the top, between those strips of trees. The temple, as you can see, is just to the north. I made the mistake of going south.

      

I headed out looking for something, and man did it take a long time, especially with no area map to help. The jungle was a pain in the neck to navigate, with plenty of dead ends among the dense trees. Later, I discovered that if I'd adopted a counter-clockwise pattern of exploration, I would have found the next dungeon quickly. Instead, I did the opposite and circled the entire map before coming to the Azcan pyramid in the northeast. I found another pool along the way, though this one healed my party instead of showing me pictures of my dead friends.

    

The dozen or so Azcan warriors at the top of the temple gave us no opportunities to offer an alliance. 

       

"We come in . . . ah, screw it."

      

We entered the pyramid and found ourselves in a dungeon of yellow or orange or green or red stone. Little did we know we were about to explore the most hateful dungeon of any game in recent memory. It was four levels, each getting larger as we went down. The trouble wasn't the enemies. I'm not sure that the various Azcan warriors (of several levels), shamans, and wokans ever managed to even hit me. The problem is that the levels were full of traps--traps that the game offered me no way to detect, skirt, or avoid--traps that remained active even after we had set them off. Some corridors had traps literally every step. My thief managed to disarm maybe 1 in 10. I have no idea what the purpose was of having a thief if she wasn't capable of a better success ratio.

    

The party blunders through three traps before meeting two enemies.

      

Compounding the problem is the fact that the relatively compact, square levels (with no worm tunnels as in other dungeons) meant that until I cleared the levels completely, enemies were always "nearby," thus preventing rest. And of course, retreating to earlier levels simply restocked the traps and enemies there.  

    

The levels are also full of secret doors, some of them offering paths around traps, but you have to know that both are present before they're of any value. I thought about mapping but ultimately rejected it, and just used up all my healing potions and scrolls on the way. At a couple of points, I had to walk back and forth for dozens of steps and let my Ring of Regeneration do its job, swapping it around as  necessary.

       

On the fifth and largest level, we entered a very large room and were confronted by the Azcan high priest and maybe a dozen warriors. What should have been a hard battle was rendered easy by the fact that the chamber was at the end of a very long hallway. We just had to back up and pound our missile weapon buttons, and most of the enemies, including the chief, died without us even seeing them. A few, including two pairs of guards flanking the door, refused to budge from their positions, but that just made it easy to run past them, turn around, and pelt them with arrows and sling stones. 

        

I can imagine what gestures he's making.

       

When everyone was dead, we looted the chamber of the treasure we obviously came here for: four Rings of Fire Resistance. I'm pretty sure I know where these are going to be used. 

        

Allocating Rings of Fire Resistance.

      

The game offered no shortcut from here, either, so I sighed and made the long, careful trip back up the pyramid. When I got outside, I discovered that we had acquired a map of the area at some point (I didn't notice where), which makes it easier to get back to the caves. I'm still not looking forward to the trip back to the castle. For 2,000 gold, the caravan should go both ways.

     

End of the Adventure

     

As I close, my mage is Level 6 and everyone else is Level 7. I  noticed that the memorized spell list goes up to Level 6, requiring a character level of 11, so either there's a lot more to the game or you can grind far above what you need. 

Except for the pyramid, playing Warriors hasn't been an unpleasant experience, and although combat and dungeon exploration go a bit too fast, I'd rather a game err on that side than make it as slow and cumbersome as Ambermoon sometimes is. On the other hand, I just can't help but feel that combat in a Dungeons & Dragons game ought to be more tactical than this.

      

Time so far: 12 hours