The Search for Freedom: Undistinguished Destruction

Really, he looks just like his statues.

 

Guest Post by Alphabetical Anonymous       

Our Teddy-led crew of adventurers continues to descend to the depths of the Smythetown catacombs in order to defeat the evil wizard Macabath. He is the local representative of the undead lich Kamazol, who reigns in hell and hopes to return to conquer the world through a portal that will open during a triple-lunar conjunction expected to occur in 1000 days. Our party has slowly dithered about as they found their footing in this new region; it’s now time to step up their game and make some serious headway. I therefore vowed to keep pushing down until we found Macabath, slew him, and so moved on toward the main quest.
     
We just discovered a two-handed silver sword, which the manual reports to be the second-best weapon in the game. I give it to my fighter Tyrion, the only one of my party who can wield it due to his strength. With it he deals an average of 17.5 damage per blow, with a maximum of 25. Damage is doubled when any character successfully backstabs an enemy, so this gives Tyrion the chance to kill just about any monster in a single hit. I then give his +1 Longsword to my mage Elphaba; it feels unnatural to have a magic-user wielding this weapon, but (again) she’s the only other party member who can wield it. [Ed. Coincidentally, mages and clerics in Yendorian Tales can also wield any weapon or wear any armor, provided they have sufficient statistics.] Melee weapons have continued to be sufficiently effective that I haven’t done much exploration of ranged weapons or attack spells.

      

Tyrion's two-handed silver sword packs a serious punch.

      

In fact, I’m getting ahead of myself: the first order of business is to spend a bit of time grinding on Level 1 of the catacombs. We fight rats, bats, and other easy foes until all but Elphaba and Durkon can level up. We tromp back up the stairs to the Training Hall. “Do you want to train,” grunts a muscled man every time we enter; that’s consistent, but more disconcerting is when the game follows it by randomly selecting the exit sound effect that says “Goodbye...” in a falsetto. My favorite of these last lot is definitely the stern “Good luck on your quest,” which seems just waiting to be remixed with some hip-hop beats.

In any case, the trainer lets us pay 50-60 gold per character to level up. The game manual includes detailed tables to show what sorts of increases in hit points and magic points should be expected at every level; almost every character statistic is well-explained there. In addition to these automatic improvements, each character can choose two base statistics or skills to increase. The former means the usual strength, intelligence, dexterity, etc.; the latter allows an increase to "Pick Locks," "Spot Traps," "Disarm Traps," or "Critical Hits." I think that each of these also increases by a small amount with each increase in character level, and the amount I can increase these skills seems to be random for each character and at each training session. For example, my Teddy thief, Ruxpin, has the choice to increase Pick Locks by 8%, but Critical Hit chance by only 1%. My party has continued to be clobbered by traps, so I decide to take two increases to "Disarm Traps," bringing him up to 44%. I boost Tyrion’s strength by two so he earns an extra damage bonus. Cleric Becket increases strength (so he can eventually wield a weapon) and wisdom to increase his total magic points. Finally, my mage Kizke increases his dexterity (for extra to-hit and armor bonus) and intelligence (again, for more magic points). At least as important as all these increases is that essentially everyone’s total hip points have doubled. That first leveling-up is so often the sweetest.

     

Every Teddy who's been good is sure of a treat today.

    

Having reached character level 2, we descend again to the second level of the catacombs. The enemies are palpably easier now, and we win our battles without much trouble. In one particularly satisfying bout, Tyrion backstabs a Troglodyte to deal 40 damage. Now we’re talking! The biggest danger continues to be not monsters, but traps. After defeating some ogres, we find a locked chest and have Ruxpin try to pick it. This of course sets off a "Psychic Drain" trap, removing 200 experience points. Luckily he remains at Level 2. This is only karma, though, since I had suffered a previous full-party death after a similar, earlier experience. We stick with it and move on.
      
Though the catacombs are filled mostly with monsters, there are a small number of special squares that typically contain some short message or encounter. Mainly these take the form of cryptic messages, such as “Do not enter” (near the northwest corner), “Watch your step” in a twisty maze to the southwest, and “The third is older than the oldest dragon” at the center of the twisty-passage maze; also a separate pair of messages, first “Choose right over left” and later “but never more than twice.” We also find a “fine weapon” in a glass case, and are asked what we want to do. We’re out to save the world, so we break the glass and find a sturdy longsword +1; unfortunately, the only two characters strong enough to wield it already have equivalent or superior weapons. We’re told that "Surprisingly, no alarm is set off" which seems suspicious, but if there was any consequence I never saw it.    

      

A relatively rare role-playing choice.

      

We also encounter a higher density of squares with various negative effects. First are trap squares; these have a chance to be detected upon entering the square. If detected, a character can attempt to disarm the trap or the party can simply retreat to the preceding square. Ruxpin continues to spring traps right and left, either without detecting them or when attempting to disarm them. Some of these have a chance to be dodged, such as crossbow bolts or darts. Some affect only a single character, such as the "Psychic Drain" trap. Others affect everyone in the party, sometimes quite severely: falling into a pit of spikes, being choked by a gas cloud, or setting off a bomb trap. Through trial and error, I discover the immense power of the "Trap Zap" spell, which removes any traps in the three squares directly ahead of the party. Not only that, but the spell updates the automap to show the location of the zapped traps—even if a closed door is between us and the trap. In one case the spell even alerted me to the presence of a one-way door that I wouldn’t have been able to re-enter.

We had also already encountered magical darkness; this causes any magical "Light" spells to cease, and it temporarily blocks the effect of any lanterns or torches. The automap still fills in automatically though, so there’s not too much danger of getting lost. Then there are Magic Drain squares. These sound simple enough: every party member loses one magic point in the square. Not too bad. The trick is that the one-point loss is incurred by almost every action in the square: turning, looking at the automap, viewing a character’s inventory or statistics, etc. It’s still not any sort of deal-breaker, but one has to be alert. After more mis-steps than I care to enumerate, we discover that the “right before left” clue applies to a set of trapped one-way corridors on the eastern side of the level, and we descend to Level 3 of the catacombs.
     

I forgot that I meant to go and explore those black squares.

    

Down the stairs, I encounter the first new monster types in over ten hours of gameplay. As before, the same two types always appear together but in variable numbers. These include trolls and orcs, goblins and kapich (suggestions welcome on this one!), and crocodiles and gremlins. Many of these enemies hit significantly harder, have more hit points (up to 45 or so for trolls), and have up to three armor points apiece—but even fairly large packs still don’t tend to do much damage. In particular, Tyrion's two-handed silver sword starts to really prove its worth against larger enemies. The spoils of victory also increase, with up to 15–20 experience points per character, and 150 gold, per battle.
        
We also meet our first undead: zombies and skeletons, who are always found in the company of an evil mage. Poor Becket finally proves his worth: between him and Durkon, their first ten invocations of “Turn Undead” banish the undead, one by one, without fail. With each invocation, a scratchy voice calls out “Begone, creature of evil.” The evil mages are potentially dangerous: they can cast "Armor Enhance," “Magic Missile,” and even “Sleep.” But as with all monsters so far, the AI is relatively dim, so the battles aren’t as strategic as they might otherwise be. At first I worry that I need silver weapons to physically harm the undead (we received a hint about this), but it doesn’t seem to be a problem with skeletons or zombies. These enemies ultimately don’t pose much of a threat. That’s just as well, because there are lots of combats and I often find myself fleeing whenever given the chance, which usually succeeds. By this point some enemies drop chain mail when defeated. It offers the same armor bonus as leather +1, but requires more strength to wear. I’m not sure of the tradeoffs involved, but we stick with the leather. Eventually our inventories all filled (each item takes up the same space; only arrows stack) and we just start dropping torches, cloth armors, daggers, and knives behind us. I could be wrong, but it starts to feel that after the initial 5–10 hours the economy has started to break.   

           

Turning undead rarely fails to satisfy.

      

The third floor is also chock-a-block with traps and message squares. We trip a gas trap, which knocks us all pretty low; shortly thereafter we stumble unexpectedly into a BOMB trap, which knocks out everyone but Becket and Tyrion. We spend a quarter-day healing and resting to recover magic points. So far the 1000-day time limit doesn’t seem too oppressive; I hope that I won’t later find that I’ve been resting too liberally. Also near the stairs, we learn that "The final must be found, to reach the Other Side" and that "There is more than one way to skin a cat." Then we are told that "A magic mouth on the door demands 'Speak the words in sequence to enter.'" Alas, Tolkien leads me astray because THE WORDS IN SEQUENCE and variants thereof fail to open the door. We keep exploring and find several additional messages: "The second is wide as a river," "The first is not closed," and "There is always a safest route." 

    

You'll have to use your imagination; graphical special encounters are rare.

     

We also discover what seems to be the roughly one unique encounter per level. We enter a new square and are suddenly told: "A scantily-clad woman is bound and gagged in this corner of the room. She looks up and sees that you are not Kamazol's evil minions, come to do what dastardly deeds they might desire. She motions for you to free her. Do it? (Y/N)." We think about it, eventually deciding that in a game written by a teenage boy such an encounter can only have a positive end. So:
        

You untie the woman and remove the gag. She smiles, and begins to open her mouth, as if to thank you. It is then that you catch a glimpse of her wicked fangs. You have fallen into the trap of the Pennagalan, a vampiress. You have but moments to react before she is upon you.

       

Playing in 1994, I would have thought this was just a strange, made-up name and moved on. In 2025, I learn that this is a type of Malay undead—a witch who meditates in vinegar and learns to float her head off of the body, trailing the organs behind. Wow, what a Halloween costume that would make! In any case, we immediately start combat. With 68 HP and 2 Armor Points, she’s the single toughest enemy we’ve faced to date. But she’s alone, and though Magic Missiles seems to do only 2 damage per casting, Tyrion critically hits her and we defeat her. 

      

The killing blow. I'm not sure why Tyrion "hits 2 times."

       

After exploring the rest of the floor, we’re forced to confront the magic-mouth doorway again. I don’t do a good job of consulting my notes, because I forget that we had heard on the second floor that "The third is older than the oldest dragon" and I don’t even recognize that "The final must be found, to reach the Other Side" is part of the clue. Without realizing that the answer is four words, we’re doomed: Open wide, open sesame, open sky; none of these work. Thankfully, a quick text search suggests that the main program file contains all dialogue as plain text; that could be handy to know, for later! It shows me that the answer is (OPEN WIDE ANCIENT PORTAL), and we are told that "You may pass. Enter at your own risk." 

   

We enter, but it isn’t particularly more risky than other regions we’ve already explored. It’s yet another large room filled with traps, darkness, and magic-loss squares. Liberal casting of "Trap Zap" lets us make easy and relatively safe heady, now that I understand how it works. We pick a final lock to find that we have gone through a one-way door, and are told that "There is no turning back now." 
    

The magic  mouth is a special square just  about in the center.

     

A few steps beyond, and through another one-way door, we see the screen at the top of this posting: "You have reached the living quarters of the evil Macabath himself. Foul potions line the walls of the room, and body parts sit in vials, no doubt for future experimentation . . ." Macabath then surprises me by propositioning us: "Welcome, brave ones. I am impressed that you have outwitted all my traps and puzzles." He takes a step back. "How would you like to join me? With your strength and wisdom, and my magic, we could rule Smythetown forever!" I was excited and hoped for a real role-playing choice here. But alas, with no chance for user input the game forces words into our mouths: "Never, vile wizard. Your curse on this city shall be removed, by your death." We then find ourselves in combat with six orcs (~10 HP and 3 armor), six kapich, (~15 HP and 2 armor), and Macabath himself (100 HP and 3 armor). We whittle away most of the little green minions, surround Macabath, and start up some solid backstabs . . . and then crash back to DOS, with "Sound Card Error #210."  

     

The full battle map that I stitched together.

       

Irritating, but luckily we had of course saved right outside of Macabath’s quarters. This time, enemies start in somewhat different locations; there are only 10 minions instead of 12; and best of all there are no crashes. The trick is not to get mobbed by the little green guys, who can otherwise prevent access to Macabath while he casts spell after spell. In this case, the combat is surprisingly straightforward. We make short work of them all, and Tyrion again delivers the killing blow: a backstab with a two-handed silver sword that does 68 damage. But amusingly, the battle isn't over until we mop up one last orc, who was hopelessly stuck marching up and down in the easternmost corridor. We receive 145 experience each and 1206 gold pieces.
     
We are told:

       

Congratulations on defeating the evil wizard Macabath. Now the curse on Smythetown has been lifted, and you may leave the city to begin your true quest (once you register of course). If you haven't registered yet, you must do so now in order to leave the city.

         

We can’t backtrack, so we step forward: "You feel a sudden, jerky motion and before you can comprehend what has happened, it is over. You find yourself back at the entrance to the catacombs." That was handy!
       
Life it good. It has taken our party 21 days of game-time to defeat three levels of dungeon. The manual says that the game has 22 dungeon levels, so if we can keep this pace up, clearing them all before the 1000-day deadline should be no trouble. Everyone has enough experience to level up; we have over 4000 gold and nothing to spend it on; and the citizens even pulled down Macabath’s ridiculous statue in the town square. Although I’m excited to head out and explore the world, I recall that we learned in the catacombs that "An evil Wizard can only truly be slain with a magic spell." Have we forgotten something? 

     

A world that responds to our actions is always welcome.

     

Time played: 22 hours. 5 party deaths. 2 reloads, 2 crashes. 

    

****

   

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Next entry in this series 

Yendorian Tales: Keep to the Right

Where I've been lately.

           

Irene and I just returned from a western vacation (thank you, Patreon supporters!). We flew into Denver and drove around to Wind Cave National Park, Custer State Park in South Dakota, Mount Rushmore, Badlands National Park, Devil's Tower, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Colorado Springs, ending back in Denver for a visit to some museums. During the trip, I had to laugh a few times, because in both driving and walking (e.g., inside museums), I found myself adopting the same "rightmost" exploration pattern that I use in games.

   

As usual when I do that, I'm reminded that leftmost would make more sense. When you encounter a narrative spread across multiple displays in a museum, for instance, it almost always goes left-to-right. On the other hand, the rightmost path better corresponds with both vehicle and foot traffic. A leftmost approach to a national park, for instance, would have you constantly taking left turns across traffic. In any event, the rightmost method is hard-coded in me from years of experience, so I don't think I'll abandon it even in the face of logical alternatives. I just wish I had a better approach to the whole "island" thing. 

   

As an aside, one of the places we visited was the American Numismatic Association's Money Museum in Colorado Springs. I used to be into coin collecting as a kid, and the visit prompted me to dig my old collection out from the closet and start taking an inventory of what I have. I don't think any of the coins are very valuable, but on the other hand, I've had them for about 50 years, and some of them came from my father, who might have had them for 50 years before that. Anyway, if any of my readers are really into coins and wouldn't mind assessing my list when I'm finished, I would appreciate it.

          

My explorations for most of this session.

        

Let's get back into Yendorian Tales. The land of Yendor is in trouble. Monsters have been invading the mines, threatening the production of Nuore, the reagent necessary to fuel all magic. The great wizard Zamora was struck down by a shadowy figure during a public address; the orb that was supposed to banish all evil was stolen. Our only clues to restoring order are to be found in Zamora's journal, which only members of the Society of Wizards can translate. The first one, the Hermit, told us to seek out the Diplomat. We began this session attempting to do just that.

   

There are 13 cities in the land, and at the beginning of this session, I had only explored five of them. Since I had no specific leads on the Diplomat, I decided to just go in order of the various cities and caves, working my way counter-clockwise around the world., starting with the mines between Helsignor and Mantov. The mines don't have names, so I just numbered them on my map or used other descriptors.

         

A lot of the last seven hours was just this.

        

Here are the highlights:

   

Mine 3

       

Standard mine; two entrances; lots of unprocessed Nuore, silver, platinum. Enemies were of the easy, early-game type, like centipedes, wasps, rats, and a few goblins—which was good because insects and vermin are more likely to carry processed Nuore but less likely to require me to consume it. There were also a few battles with rare but difficult lava beasts, which I mostly fled. In hidden chests, I found a Scroll of Gravity and a Key of Duomin, neither of which I really understood until the end (see below). 

     

I don't know why I took so few screenshots during this section. Here's one of my clerics having reached Level 7.

         

Mine 4

     

Another standard mine, this one with rogues, goblins, and hobgoblins. There were three entrances, one quite far from the others. Ores were Nuore, gold, and platinum. It had a large treasure chamber with 11 chests, including lots of processed Nuore, long bows +2, and battle axes +2. In a buried chest, I found Healing Ointment, which I didn't think anything of at the time.

       

My inventory's starting to get a bit crazy. This is one of several pages.

        

By this point, I had enough experience to go up another level, so I returned to the starting cities to sell my ore and excess goods and level up. Some notes here:

 

• By this time, I was fleeing from most battles just because I didn't want to take the time to fight them. I only bothered to stand my ground if the number of enemies was small.

• After about my ninth time getting arrested for accidentally riding my horse into a building, I decided to give up on horses.

• My positive praise for the economy was a bit premature. After I sold my accumulated items and ore, I had hundreds of thousands of gold pieces. I still had hundreds of thousands after I paid for training to Level 7 and bought the stamina and strength upgrades in Mantov. Even still, the game has plenty of "money sinks" in terms of paying for weapon enchantments, processed Nuore, and potions, so I'm not quite ready to say the economy is "broken."

      

How was I carrying all of these things?

     

After leveling and straightening out my finances, I moved on to:

   

Port Hope 

      

On the southwest peninsula. It had a mining shop, healer, inn, map store (with it, I have all but four), and a guy who will enhance +3 and +4 weapons and armor. The governor gave me a quest to find the amulet belonging to his grandfather, Anatolay, who founded the town that bears his name. 

   

I was in the habit of feeding JOURNAL and DIPLOMAT to everyone I met, not expecting to encounter a new lead for a couple of towns, maybe. To my surprise, the second person I spoke with turned out to be the Diplomat: Paundor, the governor's advisor. He told me to seek out a man named Ian who makes unique weapons. "He should have what you need." I don't see how that helps me translate the journal, but okay.

        

Meeting with Paundor.

        

My notes said that Ian was in the tavern in Mantov. He was the one who made me buy a round for the house last time. I returned to Mantov and spoke to him. He said that he had recently sold an "unusual item" to someone in Moloch: a grapnel arrow. "[It] could be used to retrieve an item well out of your reach," he said.

   

Moloch is on the far eastern coast, and I decided to get there organically rather than head directly there, starting with exploring the two mines northwest of Port Hope, then continuing with the two mines west of Mantov.

     

Cave 1 

       

The two entrances northwest of Port Hope turned out to go to the same cave. I didn't call it a "mine" because it had no tracks and it was hard to get anything out of the walls. If I did get anything, it was invariably lead. Enemies were the same rats, bats, insects, and other vermin I was able to defeat at Level 1, which confused me—until the game started mixing some vampires into the battles. These guys hit hard, though they don't have the magic abilities that I was expecting from Dungeons & Dragons. There was another large treasure room with so much more processed Nuore that I was no longer worried about running out. A lot of Ancient Scrolls, too, which I can sell in the Athaneum for a lot of gold.

 

You guys were barely a threat six levels ago.

          

Mine 5

      

So close to Mantov that you can see it from the city. It has three entrances. Two are on either side of the city. I couldn't tell where the third one was, because it was inaccessible from the ground. I don't know whether it's one of the entrances marked on the map or not.

     

One of the mine's buried chests had a map piece showing an island in what I had thought was not part of the game world (the part covered by text in the map above). Ore was iron, nickel, Nuore, gold, and platinum. In addition to magicians, rogues, wizards, gnolls, hobgoblins, and mine trolls, we met a new enemy here: devils. More below.

      

A treasure chamber! No enemies, just a lot of chests.

      

I think that it was in this one that I found the Key of Port Hope. I had previously found a Key of Duomin and the Key of Devon, but I didn't recognize them as cities, as I hadn't been to them. I just figured they were quest items that would come into play later. I noticed that they show up in the (U)se menu, though, and I gave one a try. It turns out that they teleport you to the associated cities!

   

This made me start experimenting with some of the other items I had been accumulating and not using. Some findings:

   

• Scroll of Gravity: Casts a major mass-damage spell in combat, injuring all enemies.
• Healing Ointment: Fully heals one character.
• Dispelling Gem: Does a ton of damage to undead.
• Scroll of Holy Rain: Also does a ton of damage to undead.

       

The Scroll of Holy Rain helps out against some skeletons and mummies.

         

These items can only be cast once per rest, but since there's no real downside to resting (except having to wait about 30 seconds), that's not much of a disadvantage. 

 

     

Mine 6 

 

The relatively easy battles with goblins, hobgoblins, and gnolls didn't prepare me for the fixed battles in caves, which feature demons, devils, and gargoyles—sometimes a dozen or more. (I don't know whether it's a joke or just an homage to Ultima that demons and gargoyles are basically indistinguishable.) On the positive side, these enemies don't have the magic or ranged abilities that you might expect from experience with previous games. On the negative side, they are almost impossible to hit, they're immune to a lot of spells, and they hit so hard that they swipe away a third of a character's hit points. They also have a ton of hit points themselves. I found that I couldn't win battles with more than a few at a time, and even then it was only carefully monitoring and healing my characters round by round.

      

Ah, right. Sometimes they have one or two Princes of Evil with them, too.

       

My first thought in trying to defeat them was to hit them with as many mass-damage spells as I could, including the wizard's "Ice Storm" and the clerics' "Severe Wounds." But since the demons et al. take so little damage from these spells (they "save" or whatever this game's equivalent is), I was just depleting my spell points fast. Eventually, though, I found a strategy that worked most of the time:

    

• Rest before battle. 

• Go into the battle with "Shield Mist" on (you can cast defensive spells before combat, something I didn't realize until this session).

• Immediately soften them with the Scroll of Gravity. 

• Round after round, cast low-level mass damage spells like the clerics' "Minor Wound" and the wizard's "Flying Rocks." Since these spells don't use many magic points, I can cast dozens of them, and the enemies take about as much damage since they were always resisting the higher-level spells.   

           

Casting "Minor Wound" on a bunch of demons. The damage isn't much, but it adds up.

          

This strategy softened them up enough that my fighters could do the rest, at least if the size of the enemy party was manageable. Still, the strategy would be more effective with higher-level  mass-damage spells, which is only possible with plenty of Nuore and purple potions (which restore mana), so you again see why I'm reluctant to call the economy "broken" just yet.

     

I found the Key of Stachus and a couple of Healing Stones that don't seem to have any use. Maybe they're quest items. If they are, the interesting thing about them is that I found them in random battles. It would be nice if I could find keys to any one of the starting cities. Maybe I missed them in the first few mines, before I really knew what I was doing.

    

Stachus 

   

This town in the center of the continent offered wizard training, a weapon shop, a mine store, an inn, and a barracks for miners. My question about the Healing Stone was answered almost immediately when a miner named Louis told me that some monsters had stolen it from the town (leaving aside the fact that I found three of them). I finally met a man named Murray who gave me the quest, which I immediately turned in for 4,500 gold pieces and enough experience points to reach Level 8.

      

This kind of thing never happens when I'm in town.

      

A guy named Artemus, working for the archivist at the Athaneum, offered me 10,000 gold pieces for the city keys I'd found. I didn't sell them. They seem too useful.

    

I started seeing giants in the wilderness when I left the city. I avoided them.

 

Maybe later.

         

Mine 7

   

A small but standard Nuore/iron/silver mine, though the ore came in paltry amounts. Enemies were sparse; there was one fixed battle with undead; I didn't find anything interesting. I entered southeast of Stachus, but a second exit brought me within spitting distance of Moloch.

       

Moloch    

     

Moloch styles itself as a "Holy Town of Moloch," which I find amusing given that in Paradise Lost, Moloch is a child-eating demon. I think he's also a villain in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Also ironic is that the dead won't stay dead in Moloch's graveyard. A warrior named Vance, charged with keeping them under control, was fighting a losing battle until we showed up. We fought four difficult battles with skeletons, zombies, ghosts, and vampires, hard enough that I had to rest a couple of times in between to recharge my spell points and items.

     

Using the Dispelling Gem on the ghosts.

           

Once we defeated the undead, a cleric offered us a choice between a gold reward and a holy reward. I chose the latter, and we got 25 added to our maximum hit points. That's an increase of between 25% and 40%, depending on the character. Nice. 

     

Although having an NPC refer to "hit points" literally breaks the illusion a bit.

            

The town has a large concentration of clerics, including a healer and a cleric trainer (wouldn't it make more sense if the Healing Stone had been here?). Almost immediately, I found the Grapnel Arrow in a guild shop. The potion shop  sold both processed Nuore and purple potions, so I can see returning here a lot. Hopefully, I'll find its key somewhere.

      

In a chapel, Terence, who used to be a cartographer, cleared up the map issue: there is an island in the southeast quadrant, but it is surrounded by mist. He suggested that I ask Alexander about the mist. My notes say that he owns the weapon and armor shops in Saccate.

       

I remember that guy!

       

A guy named Bysette, wandering around the town well, responded to JOURNAL, but he wanted to know who sent me. Since I didn't have a name, he wouldn't offer anything yet.

     

Finishing Up

 

I attacked a random NPC in Moloch so I'd get arrested when I left the city and get transported to Mantov. There, I got my fighters trained and sold my excess armor. 

  

I walked to Saccate, where Alexander told me that the island in the mists "has long been used as a prison for the most feared criminal in the history of Yendor," but he wouldn't tell me anything more about him. He said that the mist surrounding the island seems to be the same mist now encroaching on the main island of Yendor.

   

I walked to Thieves' Guild, got my thief leveled up, and then used the Key of Port Hope to warp there. I returned to Paundor, prompted him with ARROW, and got this in reply: "Explore deep into the Northern Caves and return to me the Great Red Gem that is guarded by the black winged beasts."

        

So is it just an arrow with a hook? That's not exactly a groundbreaking invention.

              

The "Northern Caves" could be the ones just north of Port Hope. One of them had a lot of bats, so that would fit—except that I already explored those caves, and didn't find a Great Red Gem. On the other hand, my method of "exploration" has been to just follow the right wall (except when I can obviously see something that I wouldn't reach by doing that), so it's possible I missed parts of all of the caverns and mines I've explored.

   

Other possibilities are that the Northern Caves are the ones I already explored north of Saccate, or that they're the ones in the far northeast part of the map. I guess I'll try Cave 1 again before I go elsewhere. 

      

There were some moments when I wasn't enjoying the game, mostly due to all the walking and combat, but it came around again with some of the spell and travel shortcuts that we discussed. I have four more towns and 10 more cave entrances to explore on the main continent, and after that, I imagine it will move a lot more quickly.

       

Time so far: 21 hours 

    

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

 

BRIEFs: Black Crystal (1982), Creepers (1982), Chitei Tanken (1982)

A game of its era.

      

Black Crystal

United Kingdom

Carnell Software (developer and original publisher); Mastervision (later publisher)

Released 1982 for ZX-81 and ZX Spectrum, 1985 for Commodore 64

Rejected For: Insufficient character development

     

For years, I've laughed at videos that show enraged computer users pounding at the monitors of their computers, as if (a) the monitor holds the CPU, and (b) beating at the CPU's casing would somehow fix whatever problem they're having with Microsoft Excel. Now I get it. If I had purchased Black Crystal back in 1982, not only would my television and ZX Spectrum keyboard have been in pieces by the end of the day, but I would have probably also smashed my Super Simon for good measure.

   

Black Crystal is a teach-you-how-to-play-and-punish-you-for-getting-it-wrong game that occupies a weird space between adventure game and RPG. It progresses through several phases as the player tries to find seven magical rings. Each phase offers a slight change to the interface, but there is no phase in which it isn't infuriating. In over 16 years of blogging, I can't believe that no commenter has ever mentioned it. I only tried to play it for a couple of hours, and I may have nightmares about it for the rest of my life.

     

These don't seem mutually exclusive.

      

The Tolkienesque backstory starts with the origins of the universe and brings us to the near-present, when an evil wizard named Tobias learned a spell that created the titular black crystal. For centuries, it has cast a pall over the Earth. Now a wizard named Gora has learned how to destroy the crystal, but it involves finding the seven rings that were splintered off the One Ring created by the creator god. The player can choose to play as a warrior, an elf, or a wizard. This choice affects the number of physical and spiritual points that he has, and thus how many actions he can perform in each category before becoming exhausted.

    

The game starts in the Kingdom of Beroth, a 30 x 15 map. Somewhere among its 450 squares, two of the magic rings are concealed. The player has to find them both (which involves no more than walking in the right square), then make his way to the Castle of Shadows to begin the next phase.

     

This is where I either need to lunge forward with my own sword or raise my shield above my head.

        

Text is insufficient to describe what happens next, so I highly encourage you to watch YouTuber SpongGames attempt to play the ZX81 version. Basically, as you enter each square—or pause too long in a square that you're already in—there's a chance that you'll be attacked by an enemy. These include balrogs, trolls, centaurs, wraiths, and forest dragons. After identifying your foe, the game tells you what the foe is doing. Examples:

   

• "It jabs its sword forward."
• "It moves forward to attack." 
• "It raises its sword above its head."

    

In response to what the enemy does, the player can:

   

• Thrust his sword upward.
• Thrust his sword forward.
• Thrust his sword downward.
• Hold his shield angled upward.
• Hold his shield angled forward.
• Cast "Lightning."
• Cast "Power Drain."
• Cast "Swerve."

   

There is a generally "right" response to each enemy action. For instance, if a centaur raises his sword above his head, you can kill him with a quick thrust of the sword forward. If the centaur starts to bring his sword down, though, it's time to counter with a "shield up." Generally, when enemies move forward, the correct response is to thrust forward, except for balrogs, flying lizards, forest dragons, and bats, for whom you want to thrust upward. If the enemy attacks forward, you respond with shield forward. Undead are susceptible to "Power Drain." Almost everyone is susceptible to "Lightning."

      

I did not act fast enough.

      

So far, I realize this doesn't sound so hard. Just identify the right counter and use it. The problems are:

  

• You only get one shot. There are no "lives." If you choose the wrong action, the enemy will kill you and you start over at the original square (although you keep any rings you found).

• You sometimes only have a split second to make the decision. The game is maddeningly inconsistent about this.

• The actions are mapped to weird keys. For instance, the three sword keys are Q, R, and U. The three spells are Z, B, and P. Even moving is weird. The cluster looks like this:

   

                   1  7  2

                   5      8

                   3  6  4

       

• If you don't move immediately after killing an enemy, you'll get attacked by another one, which is a problem because you only get so many physical or spiritual attacks before you get exhausted. Moving without incident incrementally restores those points.

   

But this most of all:

   

• The keyboard is horribly nonreactive. You can't just tap the key. You have to hold it down long enough for the computer to read that the key has been pressed, but not so long that you trigger the next enemy action before you're ready. If you're moving across the landscape, it's virtually impossible to move in a systematic manner in which you don't move too far or get attacked because the machine read no input at all and thinks you're just dallying. 

    

The last issue has to do with the ZX Spectrum having no keyboard buffer and the game not making it clear when it's expecting an input. It's not an emulator issue. The manual even warns about it.

   

I lasted long enough to find two rings in the Kingdom of Beroth, which allowed me entry to the Castle of Shadows. There, I had to find the secret door into the upper-left chamber, find a monolith that gave me the "Invisibility" spell, and find a stairway upwards. This is all while undead enemies are attacking; they mostly only respond to spells, but fortunately spiritual power regenerates with every step. There are other events, like chandeliers falling and spears firing out of holes in the wall, which demand the use of a shield or "Swerve." Even using save states to take the edge of incorrect choices (which stopped me from starting over at the beginning every time), after an hour, I was so sick of the keyboard issue that I decided not to go on.

        

What kind of sociopath puts spikes in a chandelier?!

      

From the manual instructions, the next three maps would be the Shaggoth's Lair, the Temple of the Fire Demon, and the Tower of Beroth. Shaggoth's Lair apparently has a text adventure interface where the player types commands like MOVE NORTH and GET LAMP. The other two maps use the interface discussed here. After that are at least eight more maps: Sea of Sand, Underground Swamp, Gold Mine, Bridge over Abyss, Temple Maze, Room of Pits, Lords of Chaos, and The Black Crystal. Each of these has additional instructions; for instance, in the gold mine, you use keys 5-8 to dig. In Temple Maze, you apparently fire lightning bolts with the "Z" key. For the Lords of Chaos level, the manual says: "This is a strategy game. You make your move and the Lords of Chaos make theirs." You have to drop the Fire Ring on the ground and lead the Lords of Chaos onto the ring to banish them, but "if they see the ring, they will throw it across the room."

      

Meeting a skeleton on Level 2 of the Castle of Shadows.

 

 

If you're interested in what these levels look like, I direct you to a series of videos created 16 years ago by YouTube user Allmightybobful. He hate-played every level of the game (the C64 version) with comments like:

      

• "As we prepare to enter the Castle of Shadows . . . we take a moment to wonder why a game like this is allowed to exist." 

• "If you needed proof that a gaming company changed its mission statement to 'we hate gamers,' look no further." 

• "Fear and loathing turn into unbridled rage at Mastertronic as I sink deeper into despair." 

      

I'll spare myself, since despite its listing on GameBase64, it's not an RPG. Its statistics are more of an inventory of physical and magical power and not inherent attributes that improve.  

       

The six programs are completely separate, incidentally. You have to pass your progress from each program to the next by entering a numeric code.

        

Although I don't find this terminology anywhere within the game's documentation, there are plenty of web sites that call it the first of the "third continent" series, the second of which was Volcanic Dungeon (1982) from the same year. I reviewed it a few years ago and played it to the end despite concluding that it wasn't really an RPG, either. It was a lot easier and more enjoyable than Black Crystal, and it had the same deterministic approach to combat, although based on equipment rather than actions. The third game in the series is supposedly The Wrath of Magra (1984), which I recently added to my list after someone added it to Wikipedia. I'll play it eventually. 

    

*****

       

I don't know what options you're setting with the 0-3 keys.

       

Creepers

United States

Silicon Valley Systems (developer and publisher)

Released 1982 for Atari 800

Rejected For: Insufficient character development

     

Creepers is a proto-RPG in which you control a party of eight characters at once: Sir Denish the Knight, Squire Cott, Dell the Scholar, Gala the Huntress, Dike the Thief, Zigg the Wizard, a merchant, and a prince. They travel together in a square formation through dungeon corridors, seeking the Golden Chalice. They encounter monsters, traps, and trapped chests. Although the characters travel in a blob, the player selects one of them to be "active" at any given time and can rotate that character's position in the overall party configuration.

   

The shtick is that each character has a set of skills that must be called into play in certain circumstances. For instance, Zigg can launch a fireball in any cardinal direction (out of a limited pool of them) and Gala can do the same with arrows. If enemies get into melee range, Sir Denish and Squire Cott can attack with a sword and martial arts, respectively. Dike is there to disarm traps, and Dell can teleport the party to safety. If any of these characters dies, the player loses access to their skills. It reminds me a bit of Oldorf's Revenge (1980), although the interface is completely different.

      

The wizard shoots a fireball at a centipede.

        

The commands are a bit of a nightmare, and I wasn't able to find a manual that documented them all. For some reason, my party members just started dying for no reason while I was experimenting. (I think they die if you just sit still too long.) Although each character has offensive and defensive attributes, they don't change during the game. MobyGames thus classifies it as an adventure game, but AtariMania thinks it's an RPG. 

   

Silicon Valley Systems was based in Belmont, California. They issued about half a dozen titles for Atari and Apple computers between 1982 and 1983, none of them RPGs. Perhaps the most intriguing is the all-text Final Exam (1982), in which you play a character desperately trying to study for a final exam, but facing obstacles such as, in MobyGames's summary, "a kegger next door . . . a homicidal ex-girlfriend, [and] your roommate's drug score." Why not just create a game in which you show up for class in your underwear while you're at it?

    

****

    

A contender appears.

        

Chitei Tanken

"Underground Exploration" (literal translation); "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (thematic)

Japan

Koei Micom System (developer and publisher) 

Released 1982 for PC-88

Rejected For: Insufficient character development

   

There have been a number of contenders put forward over the years for the first RPG from a Japanese developer. All of them were released in 1982. The only one I've covered that is unquestionably an RPG is The Dragon & Princess, and I think it remains the best candidate, but a few years ago, someone re-discovered Chitei Tanken, released in March of 1982, and it began appearing in databases with "first Japanese RPG" attached.

   

As longtime readers know, I don't obligate myself to play games written in languages that I can't type into a translator. I made that rule when typing was how you had to do it. Nowadays, of course, there are several ways to translate directly from a computer screen. I haven't changed my rule because I find a strong correlation between "can't type it with a western keyboard" and "automatic translation software does a miserable job." On the other hand, many of these early Japanese games often have very little text in Japanese in the first place. I feel like I ought to play a landmark game like "first RPG" if I possibly can.

       

A list of potential characters.

          

Fortunately, I watched this excellent video by YouTuber Retro Gaming Japan, which not only fully describes the game but wrestles with the question about what an "RPG" really is. The narrator supplies evidence that author (and Koei co-founder) Yōichi Erikawa has said in interviews that he believes he wrote the first Japanese RPG. The narrator himself is torn on the issue and finally decides that it is an RPG, but only slightly. His ruling is based in part on my own definitions (he quotes my blog)—but as they were four or five years ago, before I decided that character development was so important that it always had to be present, and not just one of three potential criteria. So while pre-COVID Chet might have agreed with him, current Chet says that while Chitei Tanken has RPG elements, its lack of character progression disqualifies it as a full RPG. 

    

Chitei Tanken has the player take a party of between three and six characters into a multi-level dungeon with the nebulous goal of gathering as much treasure as possible. You can apparently "win" by opening the last chest on the final level. The player creates the primary character and then selects the rest of the party from a list of 10 characters with fixed names but variable attributes: strength, health, daily wage and provisions (how much you have to pay him every day), and a dollar value at which the player can "buy out" the contract and replace the character. The main character also has attributes of intelligence and courage. Strength, health, courage, and intelligence all have maximums of 1,000; if any of them reach 0, the character dies. These attributes cannot be improved, but they can be "healed."

     

The combat screen.

       

I believe the manual for the game has been lost, but thematically it isn't a fantasy game. It seems to draw inspiration from the Jules Verne novel Journey to the Center of the Earth and/or the 1959 film adaptation, which was translated as Chitei Tanken despite the book having been traditionally translated as Chitei Ryokō. Characters are assumed to have rifles; the main character can use a portable computer; terrain includes swamps and deserts; enemies include Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra. The player can sell gold (which he must mine) and buy food and medicines at "native" villages on each floor. The interface is almost purely text, and the narrator of the video describes it much more as a logistic/survival simulator in which the player has to carefully manage time (every action takes some number of hours and sometimes health), terrain, equipment, food, and money.

     

I'll conclude with the video narrator's view: "This game might have been influenced by board games or simulation games. Any similarities to proper role-playing games might be a coincidence, and it might be that it was only called a role-playing game retrospectively."

     

He goes on: "Alternatively, one might consider this game to be some kind of proto-RPG; that is to say, an early adaptation or example of this genre that does not yet quite fulfill all requirements of RPGs." I think he nailed it there. Not only that: this description works for pretty much every RPG in this BRIEF.