Ambermoon: We Did the Math

 

We did the monster math.

       

At the end of the last session I was trapped with the dwarves on Kire's Moon, stranded without a Navigation Stone to get me or the dwarves back to Lyramion. The dwarves had fractured into those who clung to the old ways of stonework and mining, led by Kire in Dor Kiredon, and those mostly born on the moon, who tried to live in harmony with the flora and fauna, led by Kire's son Ketnar in Dor Grestin. Both leaders were worried about Kire's wife/Ketnar's mother, Dorina, who was missing and rumored to be living in a swamp to the south.  

      

Dorina's domain.

    

It took me a while, carefully navigating past the battles on the moon's surface, to find Dorina's hideaway. It was much more to the southwest of Dor Grestin than to the "south." The doors opened at the magic word (SCHNISM) that Kentar had given me, but instead of a pleasant "house," we found ourselves in a treacherous, multi-level dungeon full of monsters and traps. Is this how Dorina treats her son?

     

Jets of fire shooting from the floor just say "family" to me.

    

The monsters were mostly giant insects called "Gizzeks," occasionally accompanied by a "Gizzek Queen." For the ridiculously low experience points that they were worth (only about 3 for each Gizzek and maybe 80 for a queen) they were annoying as hell, resistant to damage and capable of massive physical attacks, sleep, fear, and lame. Queens were capable of mass-damage spells. I burned through a lot of my spell point potions and slept a lot so I could take them out quickly with mass damage spells of my own, growling each time I saw our experience "rewards." I have no idea why the creators made combat on the moon so unfruitful. 

     

A bunch of gizzeks and, in the back, their queen.

       

Meanwhile, the levels had jets of fire that blocked corridors and instantly killed me if I wandered into them. I had to find switches to turn them off, usually behind illusory walls. I got a lot of use out of my ranger's "Map View" on these levels. I had noted last time that none of the earth-based mage spells worked on the moon. Neither, it turns out, do "Word of Marking" and "Word of Recall"; if they did, we could just warp back to Lyramion. Other fun features of the levels included holes in the floor that dumped us back to the beginning of the levels and plants that tore us to pieces if we got too close. I found one room with eight switches that I was clearly supposed to turn on in some combination. I couldn't figure it out and couldn't find any hints, but fortunately I was able to get past the carnivorous plants with the adventurer's "Jump" spell. 

     

The plant intelligently targets the only person who can cast "Raise Dead."

     

We finally found Dorina in a "comfortable room" full of potted plants. She was surprised to see us and demanded to know what we were doing there. We gave her Kire's letter, which brought her to tears--apparently, he admitted that he had been wrong for the first time in over 100 years. She resolved to visit him in his city and packed her items.

        

The party plays marriage counselor.

       

The game returned us to Dor Kiredon automatically, where Kire and Dorina had a tender reunion. The overjoyed Kire gave us two keys, one to his treasure room and the other to the "test mine" that the dwarves had sunk into the dirt. He confided in me that they had found a mysterious metal door in the test mine but had been driven away by tornaks. Dorina, for her part, gave us a brooch that added 15 to spell points and 35 to luck. The treasure chamber mostly had adventuring equipment that we didn't need, but it also had 30 pieces of amber, a bunch of other gems, and a bunch of potions. I'm not sure what use the gems are, but I took them.

    

"Thou art wasting it!" -- Dupre and Shamino from two universes away.

      

With the key from Kire, we entered the mine in the northwest corner of town. A dwarf named Gadrin stood guard on the inside. He opened the gate reluctantly, warning us of the tornak beasts down below. 

         

Imagine living to 267 years and only achieving warrior Level 15.

     

A couple of ladders led to Level 2. The first one we took brought us almost immediately to a tornak queen guarding an egg. Tar "Dissolved" it in the first round of the ensuing combat. We grabbed the egg it was guarding. For the rest of the dungeon, tornaks avoided attacking us because we had the egg. This was good because there were a lot of them.

       

There were a number of places to pick-axe through the wall and several places in which the game told us we found amber but then did not, in fact, deliver any amber. I'm not sure what was up with that.

          

No, there doesn't.

       

On Level 3, we found the door that Kire was talking about. There was no way to open it, but we could cut through some nearby walls with the pick-axe. The damned thing broke after a couple of walls, so we had to go all the way back to the surface for another one, then return. (This is where I discovered that "Word of Marking" and "Recall" didn't work on the moon.) The caves brought us to a room with some man made walls and some kind of receptacle with an open "mouth." Given how much amber we were finding, or supposedly finding, I tried putting some in the receptacle, and it worked. A message said that we had powered something and that we heard a hissing noise in the distance.

     

"Antique," surely, but "antiquated?"

    

We returned to the door, which now seemed to be lit up, and tried using it. "Which number?" a pop-up box asked. I had no idea what it was talking about, so I started searching around some more. Another nearby wall yielded to the pick-axe and showed an image of four triangles of various colors. I sighed and went to bed. The next morning, Irene told me that the triangles were yellow, orange, orange, and red. This didn't do anything to help.

       

With my vision, almost any of these could be green, orange, yellow, or red.

       

I looped around the dungeon a couple more times, looking for anything that might help, but found nothing. I tried the door again and saw the numbers maxed at 99. Figuring that with a decent TV show on in the background, I could work my way through 99 numbers, I started at the top, working backwards. The door opened a few minutes later at 71. I'd be grateful if someone could tell me how I was supposed to get that. [Ed. I figured out the answer in the next session, which I haven't written up yet. There's a dungeon in the northwest part of the moon where you find the code key, essentially. More next time.]

      

Trying the possibilities.

      

As I passed beyond the door, the game noted that the air "has not been breathed by a living being for thousands of years." A hole dropped us to a small area in front of another door, this one also lacking power. Nearby walls gave way to the pick-axe, leading me to another amber device that powered the door--and a deadly electrical trap in front of it. Fortunately, I found a switch behind another wall that deactivated the trap. This door opened with no number code.

     

An uninviting entryway.

    

Unfortunately, a door beyond that does want a code. This one had an image of ("Irene!") a red triangle, an orange triangle, a red circle, and an orange circle, and even more unfortunately, the potential numbers went up to 9,999. I spent some time trying to work it out. Since the first three symbols came to 71, they can't represent separate digits. They can't involve multiples, because 71 is prime, so they must be additive.

      

A new puzzle.

     

There are a lot of ways to solve x + 2y + z = 71, but assuming the symbols represent a numerical system and not just a random puzzle, the most logical explanations, allowing for the most operations, would be:

 

• Yellow = 1, Orange = 10, Red = 50
• Yellow = 50, Orange = 10, Red = 1
• Yellow = 1, Orange = 5, Red = 60
• Yellow = 60, Orange = 5, Red = 1

The problem is that the new door has circles. What could it mean if the symbol changes? The most obvious explanation is a change in operation. Addition doesn't make sense because you wouldn't need separate symbols. Division will give you 1 no matter what the values of the colors and subtraction will give you 0, so those don't seem the likely answer. Multiplication would result in, depending on which of the bullets above is correct, an answer of 3600, 121, 4225, or 36.

   

I was sure it would be one of the four-digit numbers since the counter went up to 9999, but I still felt like a damned genius when it opened at 121. Still, there's no way the developers intended the player to reason this out this way.  

   

On the other side of the door--shades of Might and Magic!--I was attacked by three mechanical "guardians." The animation for them is cool: they start as just balls, but then project holograms (or something) of light around them that look like muscled humanoid figures. I prepared to be exterminated, but they were mostly just physical attackers. They hit hard and absorbed a lot of damage, but nothing we couldn't handle--except for the occasional critical hit that caused instant death. Thankfully, they started delivering a reasonable amount of experience again.

      

Another fantasy setting ventures into science fiction.

        

The levels, labeled "Antique Area," had several fights with guardians, force fields that had to be turned off with wall switches, walls that had to be hacked down, and elevators going up and down between the levels. We found a receptacle in one wall that held a book written in an ancient language; I couldn't figure out a way to interpret it.

       

I'm not sure this elevator meets safety standards.

        

As we reached Level 2 of the sub-dungeon, the game warned us that equipment was malfunctioning on the level, causing bursts of electricity to roam around freely and zap anyone they encountered. I must have reloaded a dozen times after failing to anticipate or dodge them. 

       

OSHA would probably have something to say about this, too.

     

There was a square corridor in which the lightning bolts moved around in counter-clockwise patterns, and I had to walk carefully to stay ahead of them and not run into them, flipping switches on the walls as we passed. There was a door with a three-symbol pattern next to it: yellow triangle, red, triangle, orange circle. Since 121 worked for the last door, orange must be 10 and red must be 1, which means yellow must be 50. Following the pattern of adding like symbols and multiplying them to unlike symbols, this door gave 50 +1 * 10 = 510. The door opened to the code. Inside were four wall receptacles, three with nothing and one with an "ancient object" that looked like a key.

   

The switches opened a door that led to an elevator, which in turn led to a room with a couple switches on the wall and a teleportation field. One of the switches activated it. I walked through and found myself in a room with six wandering parties of guardians and "guardian chiefs." Winning the successive combats took over an hour, helped by Tar's "Iceshower" and lots of healing and spell point potions. Everyone leveled up at least once.

      

A "guardian chief" gets right up in my face.

    

Once I got out of this area, I found myself in a large dungeon area with multiple teleporters, multiple switches, and multiple large parties of guardians and guardian chiefs trapped behind energy fields. This area is clearly going to involve some note-taking and mapping. I had hoped to finish the dungeon before I posted this, but it's already been a while since my last entry, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish this dungeon until later this week, so we'll have to get to the conclusion next time.

      

Switches, teleporters, energy fields, and strange machines dominate this dungeon.

      

The game is running the risk of doing what Serpent Isle did: introducing new, large areas with complex puzzles when it's long past time that it should have been wrapping up. One major difference, though, is that I enjoy the combat in Ambermoon, while in Serpent Isle it never got better than "farcical."

Time so far: 74 hours