Citadel: Try Ignorance

   

Delicious in Dungeon probably has an excellent recipe for "Door Lobster Steamed in Dragon Venom."

     

On to the ninth floor. That grate is also unlocked. I hadn't been down this far to investigate. Lower levels all take the key. I know there are 12 levels, and the elevator spans them all.

      
All of the doors are weird here. The handles appear to be alive and skitter away from your hand when you try to click them. Even if you pin it in the corner it won't open, but sometimes clicking the handle seems to initiate fights with wandering ettins. (According to the cluebook, the doors should open if you click them properly, but I tried more than 40 times and never got it to work. Now that I know it's possible, I've gone back and tested and gotten it to work, but boy is this unintuitive. I am retroactively all the more ticked about how the next few levels went.)

            

The two characteristics of the floor seem to be "pits everywhere" and "organized like a hedge maze." You have to constantly dodge and often calculate your approach to a location from several moves away. Nooks and crannies abound. Jumping will get you pretty far, but "Levitas" is going to be essential. Half of the doors have pits directly in front of them. I also have to be careful, because a fall down a pit right now means a reload until I can find stairs. 

      

Bronze dragons on the left, mind flayer up top. Foes seem tougher in general.

               

Fights are more challenging still. Attacks frequently miss, and it takes a dozen or more hits to kill most things. In one fight with a couple of ghosts, they render two of my team members unconscious. There's supposed to be an "Awake" cleric spell at Level 6, but I don't know the runes yet, so I have the temple cure the condition. It's only 100 gold and a day of rest, which is surprisingly cheap.

     
I've earned another 10,000 XP on this floor but zero treasure. For variety, I try Level 10, but it's much the same, just harder. There are bigger packs of ghosts, and more unconsciousness. One fight with a swarm of reavers nearly kills me because they can cast a spell that forces you to drop equipment. I was constantly either disarmed or unarmored, and Caltrop even lost his invisibility. I do find an "Awake" scroll, which I guess means the spell is cross-class. Siobhan scribes it in her spellbook, but it's 6th level so it takes ALL her spell slots. This is only going to be usable in camp, for now.

    
A few fights run so long I resort to throwing axes because they're the only thing that hits. Occasionally, one makes a breaking sound when I throw it, but I still have it and it still works, so I'm not sure what's up with that.

       
In exasperation I turn to a freakin' "Wish." Well, two. I'm 15 hours in, on the ninth level of a dungeon, and two of my characters are still third level! Meanie sells one scroll for 12,500, a 25% overage from the 10K appraisal. The other goes for standard price. It takes 17,100 gold to level everyone one level, putting the fighter, wizard, and cleric at 7, the shaman at 5, and the ninja and knight at 4. Everyone could train again, but I need another 20,650. I'm trying not to abuse this, but this is aggravatingly unbalanced, and I'm starting to remember why I resorted to a "Wish" blitz back in college.

     
One level doesn't make much of a difference, either. Back on 9, mantrees wipe the party a couple of times. I can't stay ahead of them and can't seem to knock them out fast enough. But there's a secret door hiding a helm of invisibility in the southeast quarter, and it's too good to pass up. On a third try, I sneak past them.

      
On the far north side of the floor, I find a regular door and stairs down to 10. I still don't know what's going on with the enchanted doors or how to get past them, but it seems plausible that the solution is located back here. Problem is, I don't get far before I have a couple of fights with large packs of ghosts and half the party ends up unconscious. The only way I can beat them is standing out of melee range and throwing axes at them. I have to retreat before I can fully explore.

      
To recap: early in the game I could only last a couple of fights before I had to retreat for healing. Then the second I started surviving fights, I had to retreat every couple of combats because my inventory was full of gold. Now I've moved into a third phase in which I still have to retreat every couple of fights, not because of health or inventory, but because of status effects and full-party wipes. I think I hate this phase worst of all.

      
I realize I'm not having fun right now. There was a point where things were exciting, but I don't feel like I'm making any real progress anymore (except the map, but even that is more painstaking than satisfying; I find myself wanting to just rush through corners and put an X on the graph paper saying "been there, done that" without futzing with the details). The equipment isn't making much difference; combat spells haven't saved me from a single bad fight; and come to think of it, I'm not sure they've killed one monster yet. I'm skirting by on gimmicks and cheats.

     
I think what I need is a break. I'll give it a few days and see if the itch comes back. [Ed. But it's too early to break the entry, so just imagine a day or two passing for Quirkz.]

     
Starting fresh, I look back at my notes for unfinished tasks. I go back to the room with Death to try again. 40+ rounds pass with no hits from my three best fighters. I back off and throw the axe twice and it dies. Something is really off with the to-hit calculations. I get a golden pharaoh mask as a reward. It sells for 4k gold, and I level up Siobhan, getting one step closer to the "Risan" spell. At Level 8, she only has 22 HP. And yes, she has the XP to go to 9 but not the gold.
    

Grim reaper? But I 'ardly even know 'er!

      

In the northwest side of the floor, there's a square with a golden flute sitting on the ground. Stepping into the square teleports away my first four characters, leaving only the cleric and wizard, my two weakest fighters, though at least Siobhan has the light. I can swap parties, but I find the other four trapped in a 1 x 2 room with no exits. There is a crystal wand on the floor along with a dancing sword—a copy of the one the shop had for 20K.

        
Given the shape of the room, there are only so many places my crew might be stuck. I swap back to the other two and run all over Level 10. After some searching, I have a decent guess. There's one enormous chamber to the west, with a 3 x 4 block in the middle which would perfectly contain a hollow section. A plaque on the wall of it reads: "Weep not for those gone missing, for they find a great treasure. Sing their praise, instead, with the music of the wind." That certainly seems like the flute I found. I try playing it, more or less at random. Sometimes the pop-up window closes after a few notes; sometimes I can play dozens. Nothing seems to be working. During my tour of the floor, I also found a set of silver pipes. That, too, could be a way to make wind music, but it doesn't seem playable. The flute seems more likely but there's no indication what to play, or what I might be doing wrong.

     
Since I can't figure it out and don't want to explore with only a wizard and cleric, I have to reload. But I did notice that I ran all over both 9 and 10 with my two weakest characters for half an hour trying to figure this out, and I only encountered a few monsters, all of which I successfully ran away from. Either I've thinned out the crowd or I was very lucky, but the levels feel a lot more survivable today than they did yesterday. I think I can settle down and map.

      
Also, many doors on 10 have the same enchanted handles. I need to figure that out sooner rather than later. I spend a bit of time brainstorming, but all the damage spells (fire, freeze) only work in combat. I can't use or interact with most other items while exploring. Playing flute doesn't do anything, nor does arrows. 
       

This clue seems clear enough. I will not be happy when the riddle is solved.

        

I re-acquire the silver pipes, which sell for 7,200. Fights are back to small and easy. There's a morning star that improves Wort's flail (a starting weapon) from 2-7 to 2-8. Wowee.

    
The other characters be damned, I need to fly. Siobhan levels to 9. Clicking the "carouse" button 24 times in a row to make the time pass in the tavern has got to be the dumbest aspect of this game. Because of the spell slot size, she can indeed now memorize exactly one "Risan" and no other spells. I also check and find she is already eligible for Level 10.

     
Floor 6, here I come! I dash down the stairs and as I burst through the last door . . . the game hangs. Total system crash. They really don't want me to do this, do they?

      
On a retry, I get 2,000 easy XP, 1,500 gold, a golden flute (an apparent twin to the one on the tenth floor), the dagger Sting, and some gauntlets that don't appear enchanted but sell for 3,400. Sting only does 1-4 damage; while it would have been useful six hours ago, now it's only worth selling for 4,600 gold.
      

How come there's never a temple of receiving, eh?

     
The other half of this quadrant is a large temple of/for Lady Synd herself. A plaque reads in part: "You must give of yourself to find true knowledge." At the back of the temple is an altar. On earlier passes, I hadn't messed with it while already feeling trapped, but I also hadn't noticed the message. This sounds a little like it might be a gold-to-XP sink, which obviously this game does not need at all, but I try putting 100 gold on the altar to see what happens. A freaking secret passage opens up in the back, connecting this temple to the rest of the floor. You mean I could have done this part at any time after all? Audible shouting was produced.

      
I level up four of my characters: DV the Knight to 5, Mulk the shaman to 6, Wort the cleric to 8, and even though it's unbalanced, I send Siobhan the wizard to 10. I do the latter because I only had the spell slot for one "Risan," and I want her to be able to hold more spells. Except after leveling, she still doesn't have any more spell space. Not cool, Citadel, not cool.

     
Out of curiosity, I check Siobhan. For the first time in the last 13 game-hours, one of my characters does not have enough XP to go to the next level She needs 35,000 more (that's out of 176,000, so she's most of the way there, but still).

    
With "Risan," I grab the wand from the pit on 8 and apply it to Synd. I can't tell if I've got one or two more doses of crystal left, but I've been assuming it's four total.

     
Back on 10th floor I find a section with three visibly trapped squares. Even after trying to shoot them (the tip from the hint guide), I can't trip them, so I just soak it up. We get high-level scrolls of "Morale" (boost party damage), "Dopplegang" (clone party member), and "No Potionis" (cure poison). It sounds like good stuff, but I will never use any of these. I should have sold them instead of scribing them into my spellbook.

     
That's all I can reach on this level until I figure out the enchanted doors. Trying Level 11, I exit the elevator into a solid wall—or, rather, the illusion of a solid wall. I step in and face doors on three sides. I open a door and look into what I think is a 1 x 2 room with three doors at the end, but when the door closes behind me I realize the display is a little weird and I'm in a room with doors on all four sides. I've also turned some uncounted number of times while sorting out the room, and am already lost.  I go with it and just move at random for a while. Most of this level appears to be just a series of doors like this, one after another. Sometimes you can only go in three directions instead of four. Occasionally I hit a long hallway. Once I find stairs up to the tenth floor, right by that gold flute I'm not touching for now. Another time I find stairs down to a small section of the twelfth floor that is totally empty.

     
I don't find anyone to fight at all. But every now and then there's a circle on the floor. Sometimes these do nothing and sometimes these explode as a fire trap, doing ~5 damage to the party. I can take a few hits before healing, so it's not life-threatening. At one point I find a diamond-shaped area where everything is shown in inverted coloring. Coincidentally, I try to heal here and discover it's a no-magic zone. There's a smaller section in the middle walled off, with identical doors on all four sides that I don't have a key for. 
     

Theory: anti-magic fields are generated by blacklights.

   

We wander for a bit, hoping to stumble into anything useful. The sound of opening and closing doors becomes maddening. Eventually I luck back into the starting square and can elevator myself home. I'm going to need to try again with a very meticulous mapping session.

     
But first, since I've already been to Level 12, why not see if I can just end this? We take the elevator to the bottom of the dungeon. A short hallway takes me to stairs that lead back up to a large room on Level 11 that I didn't see before. I find another golden apple and a scroll of "Fyr Striken," a 9th-level fire storm spell. There's a fight with a large pack that includes two reavers (who unequip items) and two deaths. I only make progress by throwing axes, but that does the job pretty well. A plaque gives me cleric recipes for what turn out to be "No Potionis" (cure poison; a thing I've seen once) and "Gifan Shift" (cure blindness; a thing I never experience in game).

    
The apple funds training for Caltrop and Wort, getting the fighter and cleric to 9. Maybe because I'm using more low-level spells for the cleric, I have close to 20 useful spells memorized, where I can only memorize one large and maybe two small spells for the wizard.

     
I have a theory one of these new spells, either "Anti-Magic" or "Terror," should take out the mantrees that killed me so many times on Floor 9. Neither spell helps at all, but I'm able to keep on top of them by spamming "Haelan Al," and the fighters make quick work of them. At least I can stop worrying about stumbling across that group now.

      
This is also the last time raw damage poses a threat to me in the game. When foes hit, it's only for 1 or 2 at a time, and even if a fight drags on for ages, a simple "Haelan Al" or two will keep everybody completely healthy. No other foe will cast any significantly-damaging magic. The only thing that will cause an interruption is a status effect, mostly unconsciousness, rarely a level drain or the reaver's force-unequip spell. I won't know this until it's over, and I'll stay on edge until then, but in retrospect, it's pretty disappointing. Combat has become almost entirely trivial, except for when it's extremely dangerous and I have to switch to the "one weird trick" of throwing axes to take out the most lethal enemies.
     

The game gives me these two recipes twice and all other spells once, but it never gives me the recipes for the Level 6 spells "Dispellere" and "Awake," which are listed in the hint book. I assume this is an error or bug.

      

As I start hopscotching over endless floor pits back to the elevator, I realize these obstacles are also the answer to one of my problems. Floor 9 is riddled with pits, more than 50, scattered everywhere. Conveniently, "everywhere" covers a lot of ground. There are lots of places on Floor 10 I can't reach because of enchanted doors, but the pits from 9 provide me access to most of them. I drop into five different fairly large rooms from above. Most have one or two fights. One seems to possess an unlimited number of spiders. Since Siobhan can only memorize one "Risan" at a time, I have to drop into the pit, clear it, then re-memorize the spell. I'm not usually attacked, though occasionally a wandering monster finds me.

     
There's one plaque with some cleric spell recipes, but I realize it's a duplicate of the one I saw before, for "Gifan Shift" and "No Potionis." I'm not sure whether this is a bug or intentional, but while I've found recipes for spells leveled 4 and 5, and then  7 and 8 twice, I still haven't found hints for spell Levels 6, 9, or 10.

     
I find an enchanted bastard sword for Mulk, his first magical weapon, and also pick up a dragon shield that ends up being cursed. After uncursing, it's worth 5,600 gold, so not a bad prize. I can afford to train Jexica, DV, Wort, and Caltrop after this outing.

     
On 9, about a quarter of the floor was unmapped and I was about to gripe there aren't any pits on 8 to get me down there, but of course I can reverse the technique I've been using and go up from 10 for a few spots. I've gone from "most of this isn't reachable" to "most of this is solved" with two new tricks, so that's actually pretty clever. (Note from afterward: Again, it's not actually clever. It's a poor interface that I'm failing to figure out, but cleverly working around. The manual hints at treasures in the rooms I missed, plus another copy of the elevator key.)

      
When I'm done, I've been able to reach several more rooms, and still have six doors with unaccounted space behind them that I can't find a way to crack. That means there's probably another way to beat these doors, but when I try the Level 9 spell "Blast Portal," it does nothing.

     
That said, the last three hours have felt generally unimportant overall, more like sweeping up crumbs than making progress. The only possibly interesting find is a slate. It doesn't appraise for much, isn't usable, and I don't have any idea what to do with it, but it's something new. Otherwise, I've filled in squares on the map, but the added gear is trivial. The gold for leveling up was nice, but the XP earned outpaced it. I don't feel any closer to finding the villain or beating him, and don't think I've found any important new clues or quest items in ages.
     

[Ed. We will end things on that bleak note, but since the next entry is the last one, clearly the situation turns around.]

    

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10/06/2026