Citadel: Memoirs of an Invisible Man

Mocked for an especially stupid death.

       

Guest post by Quirkz: 

     

[Ed. We pick up after Quirkz's disastrous previous session in which he made almost no progress except for his hand-drawn maps.] 

     

On my next reload, I try a different path and immediately find a pile of treasure which includes four scrolls and a spellbook! For the last two hours, this repository has been only nine steps away from the room with the Tasmanian devils. That's what I get for following the right-hand path instead of the left-hand path, I guess. I sprint back to town to see what I can do with it. The book has "Haelan" in it—I thought this was a cleric-only spell, but I guess both classes do get it. I can only seem to memorize one copy. There's supposed to be a way to transfer scrolls into the spellbook—a concept familiar from Dungeons & Dragons—but I'm not seeing it in the interface. The scrolls are higher level, so maybe that's the issue? There is a "Levitate" scroll, plus some other promising spells, but for now I put them in the stash and figure I'll come back once I'm more experienced.

      
I learn to become more tactical in combat. There is an impulse to mob one enemy with all your characters, pick them off, and then move on to the next. This works great in the Gold Box games and many others, but the combat engine here is weird. I'm starting to realize that it almost always alternates one friendly attack with one enemy attack. If you have four heroes around one foe, they will each attack once in rotation while the enemy gets to attack four times. Once I pick up on this, I start strategically placing my fighter against the lead enemy and letting them go toe-to-toe, alternating attacks, while my healers stay back and provide support. Sometimes the enemies are all on one side, and I can work my way through the pack one at a time. Sometimes they try to maneuver around us, and I need two fighters making a front line. (Occasionally, combat begins with total chaos and everyone is in the thick of it from the start, but that's unavoidable.) The trick, of course, is that anyone who doesn't attack or cast a spell at least once gets no XP, so I also learn to move the others up, let them get in one swipe, and then back off, giving them a stake in the rewards.

     

I explore more of the fifth floor, mapping a long hallway and some side branches. In one large and suspiciously empty room, I accidentally stumble on my first illusory wall of the game. I guess that is a thing here. In a small room behind, there's a whole bunch of items, including two scrolls, several sheets of vellum (for creating scrolls from memorized spells, I think), and a nice shiny diamond ring. At first I think this is probably just for the resale value, but it's equippable. When my fighter wears it, there's a whooshing sound and his icon on the screen disappears and turns into a little starburst shape. I've just become invisible, and ancient memories resurface, suggesting this is an extremely valuable combat benefit.

      
I am pretty sure that I've got enough XP now for five of the characters to level up, but I'd like to finish mapping this long hallway. I find one locked door with monsters lurking behind it. I am content to leave that alone. Down at the end, I find a second locked door with more monsters. There is one empty square to the side, and for mapping thoroughness I step into it, expecting nothing. I'm surprised when there's a big white burst on the screen, a whooshing noise, and suddenly my surroundings have been changed. It's a fiendish teleport trap, at exactly the wrong time.

        

The teleport trap in action. There's a neat swirling animation that this freeze-frame only partly conveys.

         
I have no idea where I am. I can't save now, because I could be walking dead. Did I save when I found the ring? Maybe. I'm not sure how dire my circumstances are. I appear to be at the far end of a long, narrow room. As I walk in the only available direction, I see monsters lurking. Mummies. I try to pass but they attack me. When combat starts, there are two mummies on one side of the screen and four lesser critters near my party. Crud. The only other time I faced mummies, just two of them alone, they slaughtered my entire party.

      
But I didn't have the ring then. I rush my invisible fighter to engage one mummy. The second mummy charges and I have to put my other fighter in front of him. My other characters target the small creatures. The ring makes a huge difference, because that mummy either doesn't attack at all or never hits. The trash mobs clean up quickly, and I spend the rest of the time trying to keep the second mummy engaged with my healthiest character, healing until I run out of spells. The first mummy finally dies, and now my invisible fighter is free to take on the second mummy while the rest of my crew cower in the corner. This technique succeeds quickly. When combat ends, I find a key on the ground. A step away, there is a locked door at the end of the room. Stepping through, I'm right next to the teleport trap again. Phew! There are few feelings like the relief of being lost in a dungeon and then figuring out where you are.

     
From the mummies I also got a map book, an in-game editable scratch pad you can fill in yourself, but I would rather work from graph paper. Among other things, to get to the map you need to do a ton of clicking, and more to swap between levels, and more to edit anything. Mostly, though, because it pops up in a large window that covers everything else, it's just in the way. The graph paper is superior for other chronological reasons: it's an Ameritech-branded pad I picked up while on a job in 1998 and have been carrying with me since, so it's nearly as old as the game.

     

The in-game map book. Advanced, but inconvenient.

       
I save and rush home. Five of my characters are eligible for leveling up, but I only have enough money for two of them. I strategically choose my head fighter and my cleric; I really want the second level spell "Haelan Al," which cures light wounds on the whole party. [Ed. That was not a typo; the name of the spell in-game only has one l.] This will get some use in the dungeon but will also greatly speed up recovery at camp while in town, which is ridiculously fiddly—an average of 10–12 mouse clicks for every 2 HP restored. This should cut that effort by 80%.

      
Training also requires time. Both of my characters disappear from the party for three days. I have nothing better to do after healing, so I end up needing to pay good gold to pass the time in the hostel. My characters still don't show up, so I go looking for them. They're not in the tavern, either, so I spend a couple extra days resting, and only then do I find them in the tavern. (I later realize there's a bug or display issue; after leveling up I have to go to the tavern, leave, and then re-enter and they're available. It's annoying and weird.) The fighter has gone from 8 HP to 13, and the cleric from 7 to 12. Nice gains! 
         

Invisible me. And best of all, more torches!

       

Out of curiosity I give Meanie the diamond ring. I wouldn't consider selling it, but I want to know the appraised value. But in the shop when I try to click the "sell" button, the screen just flickers. Back at camp, Meanie's inventory is empty, several items just missing. This seems like a bug, so I quit and re-open, but it's in the same state. I'm not about to face the whole game without My Precious, so I have to roll back to my previous save.

     
That restores the ring, thank goodness, but when I re-level my characters, they only have 10 HP instead of 12 and 13. That's just unacceptable. I mean, I'm not inclined to start save-scumming just for a couple extra HP every time I level up, but in this case a bug stole them from me, and I feel like I'm owed. So I reload a couple of times, trying to get my proper stats back, and in the process nearly commit the same file management sin, tainting all but one of my recent save slots before I realize with horror what's about to happen. On my last try, I get an even better 13 and 13, and then make three extra saves, to be safe. Then I quit and make duplicate copies of all the important saves and move them to a separate folder, just in case. I'm not messing around now.

     
Now that I'm tougher, I go back to the fourth floor to clean up some loose ends. First, I get revenge on the trio with the minotaur. They're practically helpless against an invisible enemy. I think Caltrop takes 2 damage total, even though the fight runs 20 or more rounds. The sorceress, though, appears in the middle of the party and immediately poisons my thief. Jexica's health trickles down slowly over the course of a few minutes, both in and out of combat. It's not too hard to keep topped off with spells, but we're quick to grab the equipment and head home. The pile includes four pieces of armor, most of which go to the cleric to finally give him reasonable protection.

     
Poison can be cured at the temple. It takes both money and time. While being tended to, Jex's icon moves into the box on the right, with a timer displayed counting down the time until the penalty box opens. 

    

This is almost all our remaining gold.

       

I had picked up a throwing axe at some point, and when I go to sell it for cash I'm offered nearly 7,000 gold. That would be nice, but that price is far too good. I check the guidebook and the axe (which can also be a melee weapon) is listed as "magical," although the only real perk it offers is 3-10 damage, making it roughly a +2 weapon. I give it to Caltrop as my lead fighter.

      
I backtrack to that other locked gate with the lurking monsters on Level 4. The same key that let me out of the mummy room lets me into this one. There's a banner over the archway reading "Camera a Cwen" a phrase that I'm guessing is half Latin (camera=room/chamber) and half Welsh (cwen=queen) and thus likely the queen's chambers.
      

Skeletons to the left of me, mummies to the right. Here I am . . .

       

The fight isn't hard. In the reward pile, there's some money and a different kind of shield than I've seen. When I pull it into the thief's inventory, she also turns invisible. That is a very pleasant surprise. There are stairs down that I don't take yet and stairs up that I do. This leads to a small cross-shaped piece of Level 3, detached from the rest, with nothing in it. I spend a lot of time being suspicious and poking things, but I can't make anything happen.

  
I skip the queen's downstairs for now, feeling like I'm wandering too far from the central route, and backtrack to the unexplored parts of the fifth floor's central section. It's been generous to me so far, and it continues to pay off well. Near one locked door I find a display case marked "In Emergency Break Glass." A skull wand is inside. I shoot an arrow at the glass and gaffle the wand. 

       

A rare anachronism in the dungeon. Along with the elevator. And the Tasmanian devils.

        

Behind another secret door, I find a room with some shadowy figures lurking. When the fight loads, it's a batch of undead. One of them maybe looks like a wight, plus a couple of mummies and a couple of maybe-wraiths. We start out surrounded and it's a bit of a scramble to put my two invisible characters up against the scariest looking foes while the others try to hide, but it ends up being an easy fight. Wort, my cleric, straight-up kills a mummy in one hit. I guess rising to Level 2 did something for his combat ability.  The invisible characters take down the rest with almost no loss of health. It really is an extraordinary benefit.

       
After the fight, I find some gold, and then scattered around the room are so many bags I can barely fit them all in my inventory. I think I walk away with 950 GP total. This is a tremendous haul, enough to level up two more characters. I pick my other fighter, DV, and my wizard mostly because she needs HP, but I'm also hoping for new spells. DV goes from 8 to 15 HP, a great boost. Siobhan gets 3 more HP, moving up to 7. Not great, but better. She also gets one more spell slot, but I still can't figure out how to learn any new spells. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I leave it for now.
       

Four of them are now Level 2. Everyone but the shaman has enough experience to go to Level 3, but I don't have enough money.

       

On the fourth floor, I'd come across a square room with a skeleton in the middle. Directly between me and it was a circle on the ground, an obvious trap. I debated saving and stepping into it to see what would happen, but decided to play it safe and jump over it instead. The trap went off anyway, with everyone taking a few points of fire damage. Touching the skeleton revealed a book and a dagger. The book was a journal entry from the captain of the guard, talking about the tower being swarmed. It didn't seem to have anything valuable in it. Past the skeleton was a bardiche, which also looked normal.

    
Now, while cleaning up the inventory, I try to pawn both and am shocked to be offered 1,000 for the book and 500 for the bardiche. Confused, I spend 20 gold to properly identify the bardiche, only to have it confirmed it's totally unmagical, doing 1-8 damage just like the ones the shop sells for 15 GP. The description does say it's "blue steel" and has a fancy wood handle, where the base models are just iron. I don't know whether there's a hidden quality variable, or if this is just a nice way to give me some money, but I take it. Trouble arrives when I go to sell the book. I'd said no to the first pass and then tried a few more times, getting lowball offers in the 600s to 800s. While I'm waiting for 1,000 to come around again, the shopkeeper loses his temper and kicks me out for 10 days. I guess there are consequences to haggling after all!
       

But you were the one driving the hard bargain! You'd already offered me more gold the first time.

     

I still don't think time has any significance in the game, and I've discovered you can pass a day for free with the "carouse" button in the tavern. Much better than paying 2 GP per person at the hostel, if you don't need healing. But I feel guilty about unknowingly insulting the shopkeeper, so I reload to stay on his good side and sell the gear for reasonable amounts after two or three rounds of haggling. This is enough to let Mulk the shaman and Jexica the thief level to 2, and also Caltrop to 3. 

       

Seeing what condition my condition is in.

       

Caltrop gains a whopping 8 HP, jumping to 21 (and also takes 900 GP and 6 days to do it; I'm sensing an increasingly expensive pattern here). Jexica goes from 8 to 14. Very nice! Mulk only gets 3 HP, leaving him barely ahead of the wizard. I'm questioning whether he's going to thrive here. I also remember to check the before and after stats on a few characters, and leveling up does not provide any boost. The other four are ready to go up, but I don't have the funds.

      
The empty alcoves in the Level 3 queen's chambers are really bothering me. I'm sure I've missed something, so I consult the hint book, which is written as a narrative of other people attempting my quest. It suggests that messing with the rocks in one of the cluttered-up window alcoves (this is a sunken tower; the windows are now looking out onto rubble) should reveal a secret chamber with an orb. It's not always clear how to interact with things in this game. I have clicked on doors, and I triggered the one magic mouth pressing a button with the mouse. Other times you need to have something selected in inventory, and then a button becomes available there. It's frustratingly inconsistent.

     
I'm not seeing anything now, so I click around erratically on all three windows, with no results. I try shooting them with arrows. I try walking through them, and jumping at them. Nothing. I reread the hint book, taking closer note that it specifies pulling at one rock on the western alcove, toward the bottom. Visually I compare the alcoves and see no difference, but since it's in the hint book I start clicking on individual pebbles, one by one. Eventually one does trigger an animation and the sound of tumbling rocks, and inside the alcove is the promised orb, which is supposed to glow when activated.

      
It takes me a while to realize the hint book is very literal here. I have to equip the orb, view it, and then click and wave my mouse back and forth to mimic "rubbing" it before it lights up. You can't just hold it and don't get a button to use it. I don't know how anyone would ever figure that out. [Ed. I think Quirkz is underselling it here. This is absolutely enraging. No player should ever be required to consult a hintbook, and no player would ever come upon this solution organically.] It makes me glad I have the hint book—even though I'm trying to avoid checking it, and mostly only do so muddling along for a good while—because there's very little online for this game. But it also doesn't bode well for future riddles. The benefit of the orb is a perpetual light source, by the way. No need for all those torches.
        

I get light, but the evil wizard now gets to spy on me in exchange. Also note that the orb has both "Inspect" and "Examine" buttons. One gives you the usual description; the other gives you the window where you "rub" it.

           

About the alcoves, in the hint book one of the characters says, "Wow! We should be checking all of these things!" This I remember from 1995, because there is another, more important one of these out there, but I didn't recall the details for how to activate it until now. I run back through the dungeon checking every alcove I can find, but nothing shows up yet. It must be deeper. I will need to click every one from now on, though.

     
I start working on the northern section of Level 5, which has a large room labeled Templum Regalis. There's a fight with mummies, and in a back room there's a pentacle amulet that auto-equips when I pick it up, immediately announcing that my character is unwilling to take it off. Curses! Literally.

      
Through a door in the northeast, we're confronted by the figure of a man shouting, "Stay back lest ye meet your end!" I'm not sure whether this is a trick, so I approach, which initiates a fight with a lone man. He casts a "Confusion" spell on us immediately, and suddenly every time I try to move my characters, they run mostly in the opposite but sometimes random directions. I have a heck of a time getting one into combat range, but once I do it ends quickly. The hall stops in a suspiciously empty dead end, and at the back we find an illusionary wall, with entrances to two sides of a larger chamber. The walls are decorated with writing, telling the story of the man we slew, cleric Fra Elsof, a devoted servant of the queen. I check the hint book later and it seems that he might have joined our party if we had an empty slot.

    

Facing down the Fra.

          
As a test, much later on I'll load an early save and try walking in with only five characters, but we get the same warning. Approaching him still initiates combat. I figure I should at least try to withdraw—tricky, with confused characters running the wrong direction—but I get someone to the edge and run away. When the second combat ends, the Fra's icon is on the floor, looking like a lost party member. Aha! I can pick him up and have him join. He's a level 3 cleric with 18 HP and average stats. This might not be a bad way to improve the party. There is a minor inventory problem, though, because he is wearing a robe, a flail, and a necklace, and he refuses to take any of them off. This means you lose a couple of slots and can't ever improve his weapon.
      

Next time, we'll see some movement on the main plot.

    

****

   

Previous entry in this series

    

Next entry in this series 

 09/25/2026