Pathways into Darkness: Dead in the Earth

 

I'm getting sick of enemies who can't be killed.

        

I began this session by replaying "I'd Rather Be Surfing." As I had surmised, the solution to getting through the locked chamber was to don the Red Cloak and let time speed up for everyone but me. Eventually, the locked door opened and brought me to the ladder to the next level.

    

"Warning: Earthquake Zone" was aptly named. It featured a lot more of those ghasts, capable of causing damaging earthquakes whenever they raise their hands. I would open doors and find eight of them on the other side. I learned to spray submachine gun fire in a way that would interrupt them in the middle of casting their little spell. 

   

My typical "strategy" on this level.

     

Fairly early in the level, I found the dead body of another Latin American soldier named Juan. He told me he was part of a team looking for an "enchanted bottle." The squad was ambushed by "green, humanoid slimes." They killed everyone but Juan, who they completely ignored, but Juan later died of poison he had contracted on an earlier level. I had met the slimes earlier, when I tried going in a different direction, and I found them absolutely unkillable. I tried every weapon and crystal. But Juan's dialogue was a hint to deliberately poison myself (with one of my Thick Brown Potions), get past the slimes, and then cure myself with a Clear Blue Potion. Poison causes a small loss of health every few seconds, and you can't rest again until you cure it. Oh, and the only way to tell that you're poisoned is that the health bar changes colors in a way that I can't see.

 

It's pretty insulting when even slimes won't bother with you.

    

Juan had some AK-47 ammo on him, so I spent the rest of the level using up the rest of my MP-41 ammo while I used the Cedar Box to create replicas of Juan's magazine. Despite all the MP-41 magazines I had created on the previous level, I burned through them quickly here, as I had to spray every room like Rambo the moment I opened the door. I also had to fire down dark corridors indiscriminately in case there were ghasts waiting to be activated.

      

Speaking of doors, several of them closed behind me on this level, blocking access to the save rune and the ladder upward. I hope there's another way up later because I otherwise don't know how I'm going to get out.

      

Eventually, I reached another save rune, right in front of a door. On the other side of the door was perhaps the most difficult sequence in the game. Between the rune and the exit were about a dozen ghasts and this giant fat guy who belched fireballs at me. In a few tries, I was able to kill the ghasts (and make it to the exit), but nothing I did would kill the giant guy. Along the way, I picked up a Lead Box and a Ruby Ring.

      

Getting through this section.

    

The next three levels—"Don't Get Poisoned," "Please Excuse Our Dust," and "But Wait, That's Not All!"—are a blur to me. They all featured the same elements:

   

• Venomous Skitters. These spider-like enemies shoot wads of poison at you, which of course can only be cured with Clear Blue Potions. There are a fair number of potions on the levels, but still.

    

Venomous skitters.

     

• Greater Nightmares. These floating fish things are like regular Nightmares except their electrical missiles actually turn to hit you when you try to dodge them. Even ducking behind walls isn't safe.

    

A Greater Nightmare in the background and his homing missile.

     

• A lot more ghasts. The problem with them on these levels is that there are often many directions to go at once. I would get hit with earthquake damage and have no idea what way it was coming from.

• Teleporters. Some of them go to other places on the same levels; others go to new levels. All of them erase the automap every time you use them.

• Only one save rune (that I could find, at least) per level.

    

The enemies were relentless. I'd move three feet, and suddenly I'd have wads of poison and electrical balls crisscrossing from multiple directions. I burned through ammunition fast. I had to rest a few times just to copy magazines. Eventually, I gave up trying to explore systematically and just charged through. When I found a teleporter to the next level, I accepted it gratefully. If there were important items to find, I missed them. If there were alternate paths or additional levels, I missed them.

    

The levels eventually dumped me on "Where Only Fools Dare Tread." It had the same elements as the previous three levels, but in a long, linear fashion that made the level a little easier to navigate. The chief problem was that there were two save runes, oddly close together, early in the level, and then none until almost the end. It took me five tries to get through it.

     

The antepenultimate level.

     

More soldiers from the Latin American squad appeared in one of the rooms. One of them was the leader, Javier. He explained the team's presence: The German team had camped in a local village on their way to the pyramid in the 1930s. A young boy stole their maps and, 40 years later, gave them to his grandson and his friends. Javier was that grandson. They had been seeking a magic bottle, but when they opened it, the entity that escaped slaughtered the party.

   

Javier had AK-47 ammunition on him, but oddly it was different from the ammunition I'd been using this entire time. I had been using something called "AK-47 SABOT" rounds, whereas Javier had "AK-47 HE" rounds and just regular AK-47 rounds. I'm not sure which is best. I kind of understand what a sabot is, and I think "HE" means "high explosive." Javier also had the gold key to the door many levels ago. I don't know how I'd get back there.

     

I don't know if I'll be using any of this.

       

After a save rune, the level ended with a teleporter maze. There were four rooms with four teleporters, each with an enemy or two in the middle of it. The final teleporter took me to the last level, "OK, Who Else Wants Some?," and boy did I memorize the path, because there's no save rune on the last level.

   

This last level ends my experience with Pathways into Darkness for now. It immediately starts you in a room of maybe a dozen headless, which haven't been much of a threat since the first level. In the middle of the level is a floating red demonic creature with no face and a blue stone on his chest. Maybe he's the thing that was in the bottle? Anyway, it doesn't seem possible to damage him, and he doesn't do any damage himself. He just floats there.

     

Killing the headless activates a teleporter, which takes me to another room, this time full of zombies. Again, not much of a threat. By now, however, the pattern has become clear. There will be a sequence of rooms, one for each enemy that I've faced in the game. I think there are 12 of them. You cannot rest in these rooms; if you try, enemies spawn immediately. None of the rooms have save runes, so if you can't complete the sequence, you have to start over.

     

Clearing the first room.

       

The third room is nearly impossible for me to pass. It's full of phantoms, which cannot be hit with physical weapons. Back when I was encountering them one at a time, I could kill them with blue or orange crystals, but in a room full of a dozen of them, the crystals don't recharge fast enough to avoid massive damage. Even the black crystal, which I found on some recent level, and which recharges almost instantly, isn't fast enough. It also breaks after just a few uses. The problem is, I later learned from the hint book, I was supposed to find a violet crystal in "The Labyrinth." The violet crystal affects multiple enemies in front of you and works great on the phantoms.

 

Through a lot of frustration (and, of course, having to fight the rooms full of headless and zombies multiple times), I learn that if I enter the room at near-full health, immediately use my bubbling red (time-slowing) and pale violet (damage reduction) potions, use all the charges in the black crystal, heal a couple of times with clear blue potions, and switch the orange crystal when the black crystal shatters, I can clean out the phantoms. But that only leads to the next problem: in the subsequent rooms full of ghouls, nightmares, oozes, and so forth, there's almost no way to avoid at least some damage, so you need a good stock of clear blue potions to get through the entire sequence. I have three, and I need at least two of them for the phantoms.

     

I wonder what this guy's story is.

      

The hint book makes it clear that you really need to arrive on this level with as many resources as possible. Fortunately, I still had all the crystals (except the one I didn't find) because I'd been under-prioritizing their use, but because I rushed the last few levels, I didn't find a lot of the clear blue or pale violet potions that I could have. It's frankly not clear to me that if I had spent more time on those levels, I would have ended up with a net potion gain.

  

Because of closed doors, I don't think there's any way to make my way up to previous levels. In fact, I don't think there's a teleporter on "Don't Get Poisoned" that goes back up to "Warning: Earthquake Zone." At least, I couldn't find one. My earliest save is from after that. Well, technically I suppose I could dig out my backup drive and restore the disk image from a week ago or so. I'd probably lose about 8 hours' progress. I'm more likely to just "take the L" as the kids say.

    

Any other suggestions? If not, I'll watch a video of the end and prepare a summary and rating.

   

Time so far: 23 hours