The Search for Freedom: Repeated Injuries

Is this a warning or a hint?

       

Guest entry by commenter AlphabeticalAnonymous: 

 

Having already cleansed the streets and buildings of Smythetown of any evil presence (take that, heroes of Phlan), and with the city gates locked tight by evil magic, our party’s only course is to descend into the catacombs beneath the city where the evil wizard Macabath has holed up. What remains unexplained is why, having conquered this town, he would want to secret himself deep underground. Though I enjoyed the attention to detail in the opening text, the game world has so far mostly failed to capitalize on the initial setup. Then again, I’m only now entering the first of what promises to be 22 dungeon levels—perhaps there’s much more to come.

We descend and again find the catacombs to be as dark as a black steer’s tuchus on a moonless prairie night. Ruxpin readies a lantern and the screen barely lightens, almost imperceptibly. He can't hold two lanterns and a weapon, so he trades a lantern to Becket, who readies his as well. Trading items between characters is reasonably quick, with useful keyboard shortcuts. The game also offers a “Distribute” option, which the manual says will “unready all items, place them in a large pool in front of [the party], and organize them by item type.” I haven’t seen a need for that yet, but time will tell. At present, with two lanterns active (and maximum screen brightness, but then a 1990’s player could have done that too) we can just about see. However, all the screen brightness in the world won’t help us too much: we seem to be able to see only a single square ahead of us. 

We no longer have an active compass, but the automap continues to track our progress just fine. We could have Becket cast “Magic Compass” (which lasts three hours per level of the caster), but with the automap, we don’t see a need for it yet. Similarly, the mage spell “Locate” (which reveals our x/y coordinates in any town or dungeon) seems unnecessary with a fully working automap. Maybe we’ll reconsider these spells if spinners or redirectional teleporters show up. Also worth mentioning, because it seems unique among our spells so far, is the cleric’s “Safety,” which brings the party back to the nearest safe inn but at the cost to the caster of a permanent reduction of 20 magic points. My cleric only has 13 magic points, and even at higher levels it’s hard to imagine why I would choose "Safety" over a reload.
     

All first-level cleric spells. "Safety" sounds like a doozy.

      

Before long we stumble across some monsters and are offered the choice to try to sneak up on them, approach them, or flee. We choose to sneak but are told that the monsters see us. They turn out to be five rats and five bats, each with 2-4 HP and no armor. I wonder whether we were supposed to be grinding for experience and gold down here before mucking about fighting the sentries in their towers. When the battle is over, these fearsome foes have collectively managed to inflict a single point of damage on one character. No doubt about it, we were definitely supposed to be fighting this sort of enemy before the sentries. Nonetheless, I like that the game let us foolishly risk life and limb against the guards instead of railroading us immediately down into the catacombs. For our pains we earn 4 experience each and a total of 14 gold. 

Moving along, I am told that we spot an ambush—we can flee, or continue on and pretend that we don’t see them. Fleeing seems unwarranted given our recent victory, so we choose to "Act unsuspecting, then attack." The same as the last group, we find five bats and five rats. Our investments in armor prove their worth: the animals land several hits that all do zero damage. By coincidence or our own strategy, it is again Durkon, my other cleric, who loses our only hit point before we clear the enemies away for similar, rather paltry rewards. Leveling up (which requires us to gain 400 experience each) feels as far away as ever. 

         

First-level mage spells.

       

After further exploration and a few similar combats, in which we are ambushed by four goblins (who again pose little threat) we set off a “shower of spikes” that rains down upon the party. Some sort of hidden roll against dexterity or luck must follow: Ruxpin, Becket, and Kizke dodge; Tyrion is hit for 2 damage, and Durkon and Elphaba for 5. We move forward a square, and this time Ruxpin spots the trap. We can choose to disarm it or leave; the latter handily takes us back to the previous square (but leaves the trap square blank and unmarked on the automap). The clumsy Teddy accidentally sets off a ‘mantrap,’ which is undefined but I prefer to think was an ancient salt-sucking alien. Whatever its form, this trap knocks Ruxpin unconscious. He deserved it: disarming traps is the whole reason we have a thief in the party.

      

We retreat back the way we came, hoping to return to the town inn to rest. By backtracking, we learn something useful, when we find ourselves attacked by monsters on a previously-clear square. This at least clarifies that grinding should be a possibility by roaming around through the catacombs. The sentry guards had stayed cleared once defeated, so I wasn’t sure whether this was a ‘closed’ game in terms of total experience available. However, our newfound knowledge comes at some risk: we are confronted by a 16-HP ogre attended by two 5-HP troglodyte minions. The ogre hits hard but only gets one chance before we slay it; the others go down quickly as well. We once again don't earn much experience, but we do find that they were carrying a chest. Ruxpin isn’t awake to pick its lock, but I think smashing the lock has never yet failed to work. It contains 30 gold, a torch, and cloth armor.

      

Anyone can try to "Smash" or "Pick" the lock, but only a magic-user can cast the "Open" spell. I don't know why anyone would "Leave" it.

     

I started to prepare a detailed description of a combat interaction, but I feel (I hope) that it’s still too early for that. Simple melee brawls were more than sufficient throughout the first level of the catacombs; neither offensive nor defensive magic have been necessary for any of these foes, and it wasn't effective against the sentries, so I hope that opportunities for more complex interactions will eventually crop up. Otherwise, suffice to say that the combat graphics are sparse but adequate. Every character and enemy has a different appearance depending on which way it's facing. Occasionally, it's tough to determine whether an enemy is facing north or south; with the earlier sentries, I had to keep reminding myself that they were all right-handed, because otherwise I kept misinterpreting the art. Every character also seems to have a one-frame animation when they attack: the rat rears on its little hind legs, Tyrion swings his axe, Elphaba clutches her phial of Galadrial (or whatever it is). The combat terrain (always brick walls) seems to always represent the shape of the few tiles around the party when combat began. 

       
We find a number of messages as we explore the catacombs:

      

• An evil wizard can only truly be slain with a magic spell.
• If you map carefully, the locations of secret doors will become more obvious.
• Fight magic with magic.
• Kill him quickly.
• Use items to invoke their magic powers.
• When fierce warriors die, they go straight to hell.
• When Macabath is destroyed, his curse on the city will be lifted.
• Stairs are often well concealed.
• Blankets of Darkness and traps usually conceal something important.

      

As you see, most of these messages feel like hints to the party. And as usual, that raises the question of why these messages are there in the first place. So far, Macabath hasn’t done anything so dramatic as to use the walls of his dungeon to write his most secret weaknesses, but why would Macabath carve hints about how he could be “truly slain” into the walls of his home? Or does the carving predate him? Or did someone just whisper it to us from the shadows? Come to think of it, at least in the first level of the catacombs, we find zero evidence that they ever served any burial or related function. The only one we know buried down here is Macabath—buried alive, a la Werdna.

      

I thought this was fun: secret doors are represented by walls that can be walked through in combat.

      

We continue to fight lots of bats and rats, ogres and troglodytes, gremlins and goblins. The enemies always occur in the same combinations, though sometimes in smaller numbers than our initial encounters. The individual rewards of any one combat remain small, but their number means we slowly make progress in building up gold and (to a lesser extent) experience points. 
      
A few hours in, we thrash another group and find another chest as a reward. Durkon smashes it open, only to set off a "BOMB trap." This is bad news, as it does 10-18 damage to all party members. The bomb kills Ruxpin stone dead (he had been knocked out again), and leaves only two characters with a single HP each. Probably we shouldn't have left our primary trap-detector unconscious. Upon reading in the manual that resurrection of a dead character at the Temple costs 2000 gold (we have 231)—and permanently reduces endurance—I’m forced to reload. Intriguingly, such a serious trap isn’t there on the reload, likely because it had been spawned from a random combat encounter. Nonetheless, we haven’t learned our lesson yet: after defeating a band of gremlins and goblins, Durkon smashes open their chest to find a "Psychic Drain" trap. This causes him to lose 200 XP! Luckily, the game has some small amount of mercy and merely resets him back to his starting value of 300 XP. I already reloaded once, so I roll with this one. We find several other types of traps as well: we fall into a pit of spikes, choke on poison gas, and more. I eventually learn that the “Open” spell, which automatically disables any traps on a chest or door, is an adventurer’s best friend. [Ed. Funny how AA's experience parallels what I'm currently seeing in Yendorian Tales.]
       
We spend several game-days exploring the top floor of the catacombs. Encamping in those dark halls is a perfectly adequate way for characters to rest and recuperate, so long as one character stays awake to keep watch and warn of any approaching enemies. Honestly, with these enemies even setting no watch at all would still be fine: this would merely mean that the monsters get a free ambush, which is to say a first, free round of actions before our party can respond. At one point we find the descending stairs and decide to poke our heads down to see what we can find. Foolish! A one-way door leads out of the stairwell, then we find ourselves in a series of "magical darkness" squares in which our lanterns cast no light. This would be more of a problem if the automap didn’t continue to faithfully record our location, the nearby walls, and other useful notations. More worrying is the notation it shows on the stairs we just descended: they’re now on the wrong side of a one-way door, leaving us no way to reascend.
   

The first level of the first dungeon.

       

The enemies on the second level are the same as on the first. But at least a few things are more interesting. For one, we find the “corpse of rotting warrior,” who turns out to be still holding a silver two-handed sword. According to the manual, this is the second-best weapon in the game (after only Soulseeker itself), and we’ve found it after just a few hours of play. It takes two hands to wield and requires 16 strength, but it does 3D6+2 damage—far more than the 2D4 hammers most of the party is wielding. We also find a lot more traps, including another bomb trap that knocks out the entire party. We probably need to start casting “Trap Zap” as soon as we detect the presence of any traps. We reload, explore further, and eventually find the stairs back up—the stairway back up was accessible only a few squares away from where we originally supposed ourselves to be trapped on the second level. The party happily clambers back up and finishes exploring Catacombs Level 1. Only 21 dungeon levels left to explore.
        

Time played: 11 hours. 3 party deaths. 2 reloads.

     

[Ed. And with that, I have entries scheduled through the end of my vacation. Thanks again, AA, for making this possible!] 

   

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