Arena: First Seed

Alduin the World-Eater?

         

As this session began, I had recovered four pieces of the eight-piece of Staff of Chaos. I had the quest for the fifth. But owing to an exploit by which you can get more than one artifact quest if you temporarily divest yourself of existing artifacts by leaving them for repair, I had a lead on a second artifact: the Oghma Infinium, which of course will play a big role in Skyrim.

   

I decided to go for the artifact. It turned out to be a good choice. Like all quests in the game, it was two parts: I first had to explore the Catacombs of Skulvor, in Skyrim, to find a map to the Oghma Infinium, then explore a dungeon in Summurset to find the artifact itself. Each dungeon was four levels. 

        

I haven't mentioned the journal much. It definitely helps you keep track of the location of the next quest.

        

Nonetheless, it only took me about half an hour. Random dungeons always generate stairs in the same locations, and the object of the quest is always on the fourth level. Thus, once you enter the dungeon, you can just zoom from staircase to staircase, using "Passwall" if you want to make it even faster. I don't think I used "Passwall" here, but random dungeons are open enough that it's easy to find your way even if you have to run around a few walls.

   

Here's one thing that didn't help: the "Remove Floor" spell. I had hoped it would allow me to just drop to the next level. Unfortunately, it just removes the literal floor tile, usually revealing water underneath. I suppose it might be useful to stop an enemy reaching you, but it doesn't help with navigating the dungeons more quickly.

      

"Remove Floor" performs quite literally.

       

The artifact was definitely worth the trip. "All who read the Infinium," the game said, "are filled with the energy of the artifact which can be manipulated to raise one's abilities to near demi-god proportions. Once used, legend has it, the Infinium will disappear from its wielder." Sure enough, when I found it, the game let me allocate 50 points to my attributes, as if I'd just leveled up 10 times. 

        

Worth the trip.

      

With that quest accomplished, I recovered my repaired Necromancer's Amulet and then turned to the next piece of the Staff of Chaos. The Mages' Guild had asked me to recover a magical diamond from the Temple of the Mad God (an early appearance of Sheogorath?), which was in Summurset. The Temple was two large levels with a "catacomb" theme. There were numerous rooms with gravestones and markers. Enemies included ghosts, snow wolves, and for the first time, monks.

   

I got a bit annoyed with how quickly the monks destroyed me, particularly after just infusing myself with 50 new attribute points. The difference was essentially unnoticeable. A monk could still kill me in three or four kicks. The game still isn't hard because the generous economy means I'm traveling around with 100 or more healing potions at any given time, but I do keep making the same mistake. An enemy will knock my health meter down to, say, one-third. I figure I can take one more hit before I need to swallow a potion. And then it turns out I was wrong; I couldn't take one more hit. Soon, Jagar Tharn is mocking me again.

        

A monk kicks me in the face.

       

While I'm on annoyances, here's another couple. First, I defeated a lot of enemies this round by spamming "Firestorm" from my Longsword of Firestorm. I also had to frequently use Potions of Healing. To use any magic item, you have to click the "Use Item" button on the interface. But if the game is in the middle of its own thing, like playing a monster animation or sound clip, it won't register your click until it's finished. It then registers your click based on where your mouse is at the time. So if you click on the "Use Item" button, then move the mouse a bit to the right, by the time the game gets around to addressing your click, it thinks you're trying to camp. I can't tell you how many times the "you can't camp" screen has come up while I'm trying to use an item.

   

Like so.

      

Second, here I am, hours into the game at Level 16, and the game still really isn't playable as a pure mage. Any offensive spell I cast takes at least 20% of my mana bar, probably more. Five offensive spells barely gets you through one battle (though that may change when I get "Paralysis"). Meanwhile, the "Restore Magic" potion that you can buy at the Mages Guild only restores about 10%. You need a metric ton of them. Good thing the economy is so generous. 

  

Level 2 of the Temple of the Mad God had a "prison" theme, with lots of barred cells and chains hanging from the ceiling. I met a new enemy for the first time: the iron golem. It took forever (and a lot of healing potions) to kill, and once it died, it remained standing upright, its body pitted with holes where I presumably hacked away its armor.

    

This guy is intimidating. In a later game, he'd be a centurion of some type.

        

The diamond was behind a door with an easy riddle ("What flares up / and does a lot of good / and when it dies / is just a piece of wood?"). Before long, I was back at the Mages Guild in Lillandril, getting the location to the Crystal Tower.

   

The Crystal Tower had an interesting description: "This bastion of sorcery seemingly transcends normal human conceptions, existing in many planes other than this." It sounds a bit like Stephen King's Dark Tower.

     

I really enjoy these dungeon title cards.

        

The four levels of the tower were reasonably large, but they also had a lot of wide hallways and big rooms, which had the effect of making them seem smaller. There were a lot of trolls in the hallways, plus other enemies that I'd already faced, including snow wolves, hellhounds, ice golems, and wraiths.

     

There was a high density of trolls in this dungeon.

        

Level 3 had an interesting theme, with about two dozen small cells with a single enemy in each, labeled at the cell door with the type of enemy and information about it. Examples:

   

• "Snow wolf. Warning, specimen has a breath attack."
• "Ice golem. Warning, this specimen has a damage aura."
• "Medusa. Warning, gaze attack. Do not stare." (Despite the warning, she never paralyzed me.)

        

Arena gets the award for the most non-sexualized nudity of any game so far.

       

One ominous cell had my name on the cell door. "It seems someone has been expecting you." I didn't enter. 

 

There was an iron golem in a treasure room, and a new enemy near the stairs to Level 4: a fire daemon. He killed me a couple of times before I defeated him with "Resist Fire" and various magical attacks. I had to fight him on the way back out, too, as levels respawn.

     

The most difficult enemy in the game so far.

       

To get to the staff piece, I had to find a couple of diamond keys, then answer another riddle:

        

The "within a fountain crystal clear" part threw me off.

        

This one took me a few minutes (EGG). 

   

As usual, Ria Silmane congratulated me and said that the next piece was in the Crypt of Hearts. She didn't know where it was, but "only three provinces remain." Jagar Tharn didn't appear until several days later, when I was wandering into a city. This time, he sent a fire daemon and an ice troll after me.

         

I'm starting to like this guy.

        

I tried Black Marsh first, visiting the city of Gideon. As noted in my first entry, Argonians here are just humans with gray skin and Romanesque names. They directed me to High Rock, which I could have sworn already had a piece, but I guess that's just where I emerged from the prison.

         

There's a big gulf between these folks and the Argonians of later games.

         

In Daggerfall, I was told to try in Camlorn. NPCs there directed me to the Brotherhood of Seth. The priest there said that one of their members, Barnabas of Tethis, had recently gone mad, "raving that the Emperor had been captured!" Seeking pieces of the Staff of Chaos on his own, he went to the Mines of Khuras and probably died there, taking a valuable map with him. If I return the map, the priest will tell me the location of the Crypt of Hearts. 

   

While I was in Daggerfall, I visited the king, who gave me a quest to go to the Black Wastes "to the west" and find a representative of the Dark Brotherhood in the Mages Guild. He would give me a writ that I needed to bring back to the king within a month or so. "The UnderKing will try to stop you," he warned. 

       

The UnderKing tried to stop me.

       

Sure enough, every time I tried to rest at an inn during this quest, enemies appeared to attack me. Tough enemies, including two iron golems at once. I eventually completed the quest and got 7,500 gold pieces and 8,000 experience points from the king. While I was in Black Wastes—which is, incidentally, to the east of Daggerfall—I did a quick fetch quest that got me 800 experience points and a few hundred gold pieces. In comparison, one of those iron golems is worth 29,170 by himself. A fire daemon is worth 42,425.

        

Question: Do any of the random quests ever send you to a random dungeon? Or is it only artifact and main quest stages that involve dungeons? 

      

Arriving in the Mines of Khuras.

      

The Mines of Khuras were two enormous levels, clearly designed by an insane person. It took me about five hours. The levels had a volcanic theme, with numerous lava pools and fire-oriented monsters like hellhounds and fire daemons. (Other enemies included homonculuses, zombies, and a new one: stone golems.) I had to jump across a lot of lava pools, and half the time the jumping would fail, and I'd plunge into the pool.

     

Part of the absurdly large first level.

      

I almost always approach dungeon levels by finding an outer wall, then following it counter-clockwise until I've mapped the edges. Then, I fill in the middle by slowly nibbling away at its edges. If I find a stairway during this process, I generally take it, although sometimes I have to return to the earlier level to find a key or something.

     

A new enemy makes an appearance.

     

These levels seemed designed specifically to screw someone using my exploration pattern. The stairway to Level 2 was deep in the middle of the first level. It was practically the last thing I found. The body of Barnabas of Tethis, on Level 2, was also towards the center, and behind a secret door besides. 

          

Poor guy. Maybe Ria Silmane should have helped him.

       

Several hours and two character levels later, I was back in Camlorn. The priest of the Brotherhood of Seth took the map and marked the location of the Crypt of Hearts.

   

Instead of heading directly there, I left the city and started exploring the wilderness. I hadn't done much of that since the game began. The developers put a lot of effort into the process of procedurally-generating territory around each city, assembling each map out of a series of pre-defined "blocks," but you could easily play the game without ever experiencing it. No fixed or even random quest ever asks you to do anything except fast-travel directly to the destination. As we've discussed, you can't even reach destinations by trying to walk there the "slow" way. The game keeps generating new wilderness blocks but the character's world location remains fixed at the last fast-travel point.

       

Enjoying a bit of the wilderness.

               

I made my way through mist-covered forests and across rivers before finding an island with a dungeon in the middle. Until now, I didn't realize that random dungeons could appear on the wilderness map. I entered and found a small, single-level dungeon with a "crypt" theme. It had some treasure in every room and just a few ghouls and skeletons. It struck me as hand-crafted rather than randomly-generated. I wonder how many more of these small dungeon "templates" the authors designed.

       

This small dungeon felt hand-crafted, though I'm sure its appearance in the world was randomized.

       

While outside, I verified the recollection that the sun in Arena rises in the west and sets in the east. I think that if the creators wanted to make the world seem more "alien," they should have left the sun alone and had people live in, say, giant crustacean shells or something. 

           

In retrospect, I guess this screenshot doesn't mean anything if you don't know that it's 06:00 in the morning.

          

With that little side-adventure out of the way, I fast-traveled to the Crypt of Hearts. Like all other locations with a piece of the staff, it had an evocative title card:

      

What is that beast?

         

And a welcome message as I entered:

         

Manacles in the entry hall. How welcoming.

         

It also had the relief on the entry wall that you see at the top of this entry. The dungeon was four levels, the first easily as large as the two Mines of Khuras levels, perhaps even larger. But my exploration pattern served me well. I arrived in the northeast corner and found the stairs to Level 2 in the middle of the northern wall, about five minutes after I arrived. I missed 90% of the rest of the level. 

    

On Level 2, the same pattern brought me to the stairs after exploring only about a third of the level. Same with Level 3 to Level 4. I began to worry that I would eventually need a set of keys, one from each level or something, but fortunately this dungeon didn't require any such thing.

    

A couple of homonculuses attack in a hallway.

       

Level 4 broke the pattern. The staff piece was in the center of the dungeon, so I had to work my way around the entire perimeter and then move inward. Still, it didn't take very long. The door to the central room had, as usual, a riddle:

   

There is a thing, which nothing is,

Yet it has a name.

It's sometimes tall

And sometimes short

It tumbles when we fall

It joins our sport,

And plays at every game.

   

Not only had I heard this one before (SHADOW), but I was also pretty sure I'd heard it in this exact format. I couldn't find it in a search of the blog's text, though.

        

That analogy doesn't really make sense.

         

Two fire daemons flanked the inner doorway and killed me the moment I entered. I had to reload and do a bunch of the level again. No matter how often that happens, I still save less often than I should. I don't know what's wrong with me sometimes. 

   

Enemies in the dungeon were harder than most—homonculuses, stone golems, hellhounds, iron golems, wraiths—with multiple enemies sometimes attacking at once. I ended up chugging a lot of "Restore Magic" potions and keeping "Mana Theft" (which works unreliably) and "Shrug Off Spell" going almost all the time. 

     

Every time I killed a stone golem in this area, another appeared on a different platform and started firing spells at me.

      

I used "Passwall" to facilitate my exit from the dungeon. As usual, Ria Silmane appeared the next time I rested to tell me that the seventh piece would be found in the Murkwood, "the dark forest that ever moves," I guess a fusion of Tolkien's Mirkwood and Fangorn Forests. She pointed out that the only two provinces left were Morrowind and Black Marsh, although if I were Tharn, I'd fool the hero by disrupting the pattern and putting at least two pieces of the staff in a single province.

      

Maybe Tharn should stop sending exactly two guys to attack me every time I find a piece.

          

Before I go, let's talk about equipment. I haven't had a real "upgrade" in a long time. Battle mages can only wear leather armor—cuirass, helm, left and right pauldrons, boots, gauntlets, and greaves—and leather armor never seems to have enchantments attached to it. For other classes, I've never seen anything other than chain and plate, but because I can't wear those items, I haven't been identifying them. I think additional materials might be revealed with identification.

   

For weapons, I've seen regular (iron), steel, elven, dwarven, mithril, adamantium, and ebony varieties of just about every weapon, which includes one-handed (e.g., daggers, maces, longswords), two-handed (e.g., war axes, claymores, dai-katanas), and missile (e.g., short bow, long bow). If there are levels above ebony, I haven't found any. Certain monsters can only be hit by certain weapon levels.

     

A wraith guards a couple piles of treasure. I think they might be immune to iron and steel weapons.

            

I've been carrying an ebony longsword for as long as I can remember. One of the game's quirks is that items aren't leveled; you can find some of the best equipment in the first dungeon.

    

Weapons can be enchanted with attribute-buffing charms (e.g., Dwarven Mace of Speed, Steel Dagger of Luck), resistances, and spells that cast when the item is used (e.g., "Paralyzation," "Lightning"). I've seen these enchantments on most levels of weapons, but never so far on ebony. Enchantments can only be used if the item is equipped. I have an extremely useful  Steel Longsword of Paralyzation and an equally useful Longsword of Firestorm, but some enemies are immune to their metals (not their spell effects), so I have to go into the inventory and switch weapons to finish them off if the spells don't do it. Again, it would have been great to have weapon hotkeys.

       

It's nice that he's paralyzed, but now I have to switch to my other sword.

       

(On the subject of enchantments, I should emphasize that all items in the game have to be purchased or found with the enchantments already applied. Arena doesn't offer any way of enchanting items yourself.) 

      

There's no dual-wielding in the game. If you have a one-handed weapon, you can put a shield in the other hand. My guy has been limited to bucklers and round shields; other characters can carry tower shields and kite shields. Shields seemed like such an afterthought to me that I haven't been identifying them, and I didn't learn until this session that they can also be made out of different metals and enchanted.

      

Some of my current equipment.

            

In addition to weapons, armor, and shields, a character can wear or wield one set of bracers, one crystal, one mark, one ring, one amulet, one belt, one bracelet, and one torc. Bracers, belts, torcs, and amulets only seem to have attribute-boosting enchantments while the other items only have spellcasting enchantments. Bracers, belts, torcs, and amulets also come in different metal types (e.g., elven, dwarven, mithril, ebony), and here again I've never seen an item that was both made of ebony and enchanted. I've mostly been sticking with the ebony stuff because it lowers armor class a lot, and I apparently need that badly. I feel like a character of my level shouldn't still be threatened by skeletons, but here we are.

   

At this point in the game, the only items that I regularly change out are crystals, marks, and rings, discarding or selling them as their charges run out. In general, selling magical items is how I make most of my money. 

    

Magic items for sale. Note that there's just an Ebony Belt and a Belt of Luck, no Ebony Belt of Luck. I don't know whether that exists.

      

Characters can carry potions of various types (e.g., healing, restore magic power, free action, invisibility, strength, resist fire, resist cold), and since these items a) don't need to be equipped, b) stack, and c) don't weigh anything, they're a real money sink. I don't know whether there's a limit on the number of potions of a single type, but if so, it's more than a few hundred. As long as you can afford them, potions can compensate for almost anything. This means that they break the game a little, although I think a player who over-relied on them would soon run out of both potions and money.

      

This must be a powerful amulet, but it won't be more powerful than the Necromancer's Amulet. I can sell it without any angst.

        

Finally, as we've seen, the game offers artifact items of various types. My Necromancer's Amulet gives me -9 armor class to all body parts, meaning I sell every other amulet I find. I don't know what all the others do (I'll look it up for the final entry), but I've heard rumors about Auriel's Bow, Chrysamere (a sword), the Ebony Blade, the Ring of Khajiit, the Ring of Phynaster, Skeleton's Key, and of course the Oghma Infinium, which is a bit different since it disappears after you find it. Players of later Elder Scrolls games will recognize many of these names, along with many places (cities in each province, Dagoth-Ur, Labyrinthian), people (e.g., the UnderKing, Mannimarco), and organizations (e.g., the Dark Brotherhood). Oh, plenty of things will later be retconnned of course, but it's still amazing to me how many seeds they planted so early in the series, without any idea of how they would pay off.

    

Time so far: 32 hours 

Game 574: The Oracle's Cave (1981) and Information about MUD Day

 

The game had no title screen, so here's the cassette cover.

         

The Oracle's Cave

United Kingdom

Doric Computer Services (developer and publisher)

Released in 1981 for the ZX-81; remade in 1983 for the ZX Spectrum, 1984 for the Commodore 64 

Date Started: 19 April 2026

Date Ended: 19 April 2026

Total Hours: 2

Difficulty: Very Easy-Easy (1.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)   

     

This is one of those early games that isn't technically an RPG under my definitions, but at the same time, I'm not sure what I'd call it. My general policy is that if the game ends while I'm still trying to figure it out, it's not worth worrying about. That's what happened here.

 

The setup:  "You are an adventurer trapped at the entrance to the Oracle's Cave complex." To win, you have to gain at least 40 units of treasure, defeat your chosen monster, recover the treasure that he guards, and finally, defeat the Oracle himself. The four potential monsters are a giant, a spider, a dragon, and a knight. Every new game (which randomizes the dungeon layout) includes all of these enemies, and they're all guarding their respective treasures, so the only thing that changes is which one the player must kill.

    

The four quest options.

        

The player (represented by a "0") starts in a top-row room in a dungeon that fits on a single screen and has a maximum of 8 x 4 rooms. The player starts with 12 energy, which depletes as he moves and engages in combat. He starts with a combat skill of 18, which goes up and down with energy but can be increased with weapons and other means. Finally, the player starts with 0 wounds. If he reaches 6 wounds, he dies.

   

Each round starts with either (M)ovement, (U)sing an item, or (R)est to restore either energy or wounds. Movement can be (U)p, (D)own, (L)eft, (R)ight, or (S)ecret door. The latter option only works in some rooms, but it's the only way to reach rooms that are disconnected from the rest of the map.

     

I've met most of my goals, but if I want to defeat the oracle (southeast corner), I'll need to find a secret door to that area of the map.

      

If the character moved, and the movement brought him to a room with an enemy, he fights one or more rounds of combat. Energy and strength determine damage done to the foe and the damage the player takes. It's possible to run out of energy in the middle of battle and to have no recourse but to flee. If the player wins, he gains the treasure and items the enemy was guarding.

   

If the character doesn't meet an enemy or doesn't move, then his initial selection is followed by a random event, which might include:

   

• Finding a magic item.
• Finding a weapon. 
• A friendly wizard comes along and boosts strength.
• The player gets an offer to automatically move to one of the boss rooms.
• A passing dwarf offers a sip of a potion that restores energy or wounds.
• An annoying gnome chases the character and causes him to lose energy. 

     

Magic items to be found include ointment (heals wounds), balms (heals wounds), potions (restores energy), ropes (create paths for movement when they're otherwise blocked), food (restores energy), and magic invisibility rings (automatically win the next battle). You can only carry three at once. Of these items, the rings are the most useful. They work even on the boss enemies and the oracle, so there's little reason not to hang out in a safe room, repeatedly resting, until you have a couple of them.

     

Having defeated the spectre, I pick up a sword, my first weapon. The "RFM" means that I have a rope, food, and magic ring—or maybe that The Oracle's Cave is upset about my Star Trail entries.

      

Weapons are daggers, axes, and swords, which increase combat skill by 1, 2, and 3, respectively. You can carry two weapons, so the maximum bonus (6) is from holding two swords. 

 

That's about it. It only takes the defeat of a few regular enemies to amass at least 40 treasure points. You then head to the room of your chosen foe, defeat him, and gain the treasure he guards. Finally, you head for the oracle's room (marked with an asterisk), defeat him, and exit to win the game. The only "winning screen" you get is a message that "Player 0" has escaped.

     

I defeat the oracle with a magic ring.

      

A few other notes:

   

• The game supports two players who alternate rounds and compete to win. In a single player-game, the second player (the "9") just sits there, doing nothing. 

• For some reason, the program doesn't work if you try to RUN it. Instead, you have to type GOTO 1 after it loads. I'd love for a ZX-81 expert to explain this difference.

• Any errant keypress sends you unapologetically to the system prompt. 

• You can't back out of a selection. If you choose (M)ove and then decide you don't want to move, tough. The game won't accept any input except a movement direction.

• A couple of times, the game inexplicably froze on me.

   

It earns an 8 on the GIMLET with a string of 1s in everything except "Game World" and "NPCs" (0s).

       

The only winning message you receive.

     

The game was created by a Chris Dorrell of Leicester-based Doric Computer Services, later Dorcas Software. His only other game is The Runes of Zendos (1984), a Valhalla-style adventure game.

    

A couple of years later, Dorrell remade The Oracle's Cave for the ZX Spectrum. The interface is the same, but the screen has been redesigned to minimize the map and to show a side view of the adventurer wandering through caves. The battles have some cute animations with the character running up and engaging the enemy in what TV Tropes calls a "Big Ball of Violence."

      

The title screen of the remake.

       

The boss monsters have been re-designated as mummy, centaur, fiery dragon, and black knight. Other than that, the game is as much (or as little) an RPG as its predecessor. It's possible The Oracle's Cave influenced the later Volcanic Dungeon (1982), which also kept track of inventory as a string of letters.

    

Facing the Black Knight in the remake.

      

And with that, I have again finished 1981. Until someone discovers even more. 

     

****

 

Mark your calendars: 16 May 2026 is MUD Day!

On Saturday, 16 May 2026 from 18:00-22:00 UTC (14:00-18:00 EDT in the U.S.), maybe longer depending on how things go, I will be playing the original Multi-User Dungeon (1978), as hosted on British Legends. (I will subsequently post an entry about it.) You will find me in the game as "Chester" or maybe some obvious variant. Please, no one be a jackass and confuse things by creating similar names or pretending to be me.

      

The modern iteration of a 50-year-old game.

         

MUD was created by  two students at the University of Essex on a DEC PDP-10, inspired by Zork (1977). Starting in 1983, players from around the world could access the game remotely. It was licensed by CompuServe in 1987 and renamed British Legends. It lasted until 1999. In 2000, Viktor Toth registered the domain british-legends.com and rewrote the game from its pre-CompuServe source code.

      

While MUD is not the first CRPG or even the first multiplayer CRPG, it is notable for going a slightly different direction than the multiplayer games that preceded it, predominantly the PLATO-based dungeon crawlers like Moria (1975) and Oubliette (1978). It mixed CRPG-style attributes and experience with the interface of a text adventure and spawned a subgenre of games that players enjoy to this day.

     

Here's all you have to do to join the game from a Windows 10/11 computer:

   

1. Go to the "Turn Windows Features On or Off" control panel.

2. Check the box next to "Telnet." 

3. Type Windows-R, then "CMD," then  ENTER.

 

(You can replace these steps with a dedicated terminal emulator like PTerm or PUTTY.)

 

4. At the prompt, type:

TELNET british-legends.com 27750

 

5. Enter a user name.

 

The game will then ask you for an email address. Once you type it in, it will send you a password. Then just repeat Steps 4-5, enter the password, and Jack's a doughnut, you're in the game!

           

Logging in to MUD.

         

Of course, you'll want to read some information about how to play the game first. The site has a "How to Play" page, a more elaborate "More Advice" page, and a "FAQ."

 

I've been in touch with Viktor Toth, the owner of the site, and he doesn't anticipate any problems. He warns that if there are more than 36 players, the server will create a second instance of the game, so you may end up in a world in which I'm not participating. 

       

A long and ultimately tragic battle with a zombie.

        

Since MUD is a multiplayer game, let's make this a multi-author entry! Record your notes and thoughts about your experience with the game, take screenshots, and either send everything to me within 48 hours of our playing session, or post your experiences to the comments after my entry is published.

   

And let's try to recreate the original experience. Take notes, make maps, avoid spoilers. Provide hints (but not outright spoilers) to other players. Hang out in the tearoom in chat. Yell! And of course kill each other (and me) to harvest our treasure and points.

   

Let me know if you have any questions; otherwise, I look forward to seeing you there! 

 

Star Trail: Won!

       

I won Star Trail in a long, frustrating final session in which I had to peek at spoilers a couple of times. I do not entirely blame the game for it being so long and frustrating. If there's one thing that Star Trail has hammered home over and over, it's that the player must Be Prepared. Granted, I didn't know at the end of the last session that I was about to embark on a six-hour, three-level dungeon adventure, but the moment the wall closed behind me, I should have recognized the possibility.

   

I had prepared a little bit by ensuring that I had plenty of rations and what I thought was a reasonable number of herbs and potions. But knowing what I know now, I should have left Ingramosch's house and done the following:

     

• Stashed a bunch of my exploration gear at the warehouse. That's clearly what it's for. There's no need to carry all the outdoor gear into the dungeon.

• Bought a lot more arrows for my one missile character, Toliman. He only had about a dozen left when this session started.

• Figured out Lyra's weapon situation. I had been putting her combat points into "polearms," but she hasn't carried any kind of polearm for most of the game. She had a quarterstaff at one point, but I think it immediately broke. I had her equipped with a cudgel at this point, for which she had a skill of -3.

• Bought an extra weapon or two, particularly for Gnomon, as his favored weapon (the axe) is hard to find.

• Spent the 500 ducats I was carrying for no reason on even more potions. If I was worried about space, I could have traded regular healing potions for their "strong" variety.

• Doubled or tripled-up on waterskins.

        

This felt like enough.

       

Instead, I foolishly pressed forward, trusting that the Dungeon Would Provide. Dumb.

      

What the game called the "Vault Beneath Tjolmar" began with a puzzle. After the battle in Ingramosch's foyer, I had recovered a document that read "2L, 4R, 4L." This seemed to refer to the walls of the small room, which were covered with foliage decorations that could be manipulated. Manipulating the second wall to the left of the entrance resulted in a grating sound somewhere. I then tried the fourth wall to the right of that and got nothing, which reset the whole puzzle. It turned out that all three of the directions were based on the entrance, not each other. Once I worked that out, I got the three walls in the right sequence, and the way forward opened.

   

Only one step into the new area, the wall crashed shut behind me. That should have been my cue to reload.

     

"I'm sure it will be fine." — some idiot who has played far fewer than 573 RPGs.

           

The Vault was a large level in which I had to find multiple keys to advance through the corridors. Movement was strange in this dungeon. Even though I had continuous movement turned off, the game kept moving the party in half-steps. Some encounters:

   

• A "tree" of thorns and spines concealing a key. While trying to reach in and get the key, both Gnomon and Toliman were pricked and poisoned by the thorns. Fortunately, Lyra was able to cure them.

     

I should have put more into dexterity.

       

• An elevated area in which we were trapped by a door crashing behind us. There were some death's head murals that allowed us to manipulate some kind of mechanism, but nothing I did got the door open. I had to look this one up. The solution involved splitting the party and sending one person to lift the grate while someone else manipulated the mechanism. Even though several puzzles have required it, I never really came to grips with party-splitting as a puzzle-solving mechanism.

• A chest offered writing utensils, a brass mirror, a lute, a net, and an Elixir of Wisdom. I tried to imagine an encounter that this was possibly setting us up for. Nothing really came along.

• A chest at the end of a hallway was guarded by a chained troll. The troll stood up and broke his chains as we approached. The resulting battle was pretty easy. We just cast "Lightning" to blind the troll, then hacked him to death. 

    

This spell is almost unfair.

      

• A couple of other chests offered blue rings, green rings, and a red amulet. I never really found out what they did. They didn't seem to affect our statistics.

• There was a room in which several pillars had the face of Hesinde on them. Running into one of them led to an encounter in which Hesinde asked if we would sacrifice four points of astral energy permanently. We said no. Oddly, Mahasim leveled immediately after that. If he hadn't, I wouldn't have noticed that we got about 1,000 experience points just for saying no to the question. The thing is, this was repeatable. We could have stood there, bumping into the pillar, saying no, until we hit the game's maximum level. I resisted the temptation and moved on.

     

The game makes it clear what I'll lose, but not what I'll gain.

      

• A block of ice next to a water basin. There was a key in the basin and a warrior woman encased in the block of ice. Lilli had the "Melt Solid" spell at Level -2 (I had never put any points into it), but she cast it until it worked. Out of the ice came a Level 5 fighter named Helen. We welcomed her into our party. She stayed for a while but ran off when we went down to Level 3. 

      

Him may not have a name, but apparently Him at least has a sex.

        

• There were shields hanging on a lot of the walls. If we walked up to any of them, the game asked: "How about hitting it a really hard blow just to see what'll happen?" If we said yes, most of the shields rang out like gongs, but nothing happened. One of them made only a soft thud, and we had the chance to investigate it further, but the game kept saying we didn't find anything worth noting.

      

What was the point of this?

      

• We met ghouls in a hallway. Mahasim failed some attribute check and fled the party in a panic. We had to find him after killing the ghouls. 

• A flame key opened a chest with a "Dragon Slayer" sword. It was a two-handed sword, which in this game's classification system is a "two-handed weapon" and not a sword, so none of my characters were proficient with it.

• Multiple secret doors, including one that led to a large black statue with a small black statuette (a replica of the larger one) in a compartment. I never found out what it did, if anything.

     

What are the downsides?

       

• A stairway going down was a fake. Instead, it scattered the party across the previous dungeon level. I had to reunite them and find the real staircase, which was behind a secret door. 

            

There were numerous battles with cultists, warriors, and cave spiders. In combat, early in the level, the battle started with only a single cultist. I nailed him with "Lightning" in the first round and then put the battle into computer mode to finish him off. To my surprise, three of my characters ended up dead. I reloaded and tried again, this time in manual mode, and it turned out that additional enemies joined after the first round. I can't remember that happening elsewhere in the game. Anyway, Xamidimura hit Level 6 after that battle, so at last, in this final dungeon, my characters reached the levels they would have had if I'd just imported a party from Blades.

       

One of the more difficult battles during this session.

       

At the end of the level, I went down to the next one, and the name of the dungeon changed to the Temple of the One Without Name. I continued having the same sorts of encounters, plus undead (skeletons and zombies). A well early in this level was the first and last water I found in the dungeon. 

       

The skulls are a nice touch.

      

It wasn't long before I reached a stretch of corridor in which I got the same message multiple times:

        

Not only does the game insult me for failing to avoid an unavoidable trap, but it also insinuates that we're drunk.

      

With most traps, you have a chance of detecting and disarming. Not this one. I tried every possible spell to boost detection or to protect the party, but nothing worked. A few of these messages could kill several of my characters, so I ended up having to sleep for practically a week in the middle of the corridor in order to get through. Oh, and triggering these traps didn't disable them. They were happy to keep shooting if I had to go back through the same stretch of corridor, or indeed even if I stood in the same square too long. 

   

On the other side of these traps was the way down to the third level, but it was protected by a door that wanted a four-part key to open. These four parts—amulet pieces—were each carried by skeleton warriors in a maze in the southwest corner. The kicker was, the pieces disappeared from my inventory and reappeared with the resurrected skeleton warriors if I let too much time pass. By the time I had initially recovered all four pieces, I checked my inventory and only had two. By the time I re-recovered those two, another one had disappeared. Finally, I got all four at once and was able to head downward.

     

The battles themselves were pretty easy.

      

At the bottom of the stairs, in a scripted event we could do nothing about, some hooded jackass managed to lift the Salamander Stone from Lilii Borea's backpack. He gloated that we "should have brought the Salamander Stone to Lowangen" (which we absolutely were in the process of doing when it was stolen the first time). He further explained that "it would be against [his temple's] interests for Elves and Dwarves to ally." His master, he concluded, wanted the stone for himself. He then disappeared. I guess maybe it was supposed to be Sudran Alatzer, the "wealthy businessman" who gave us the alternate quest to find the Salamander Stone after Elsurion Starlight asked us to find it for the Elves.

      

Of course. Whatever. Sure.

       

We had no choice but to keep moving. At the bottom of the stairs, we found a message on the wall that read: "Close in—I can hear your pounding hearts." Nearby was a large battle with cultists and druids. On their bodies, we recovered a piece of paper that said CULT. Finally, we hit a secret door with a combination lock, looking for four digits.

      

I think this is a direct quote from Hannibal Lecter.

      

I almost figured it out. I guessed correctly that the piece of paper and the message on the wall must mean something. I noted that the letters in CULT were also in the message. But I rejected the idea that the answer could have anything to do with the position of the letters, since the first three letters in CULT are right at the beginning of the message, "C" and "U" appear multiple times, and then the "T" is somewhere between positions 31 and 42 depending on whether spaces and punctuation are to be counted. If the combination were five digits, positioning might work. I thought it might be the number of each letter and tried 2311 but didn't get it.

      

I don't know what Toliman is so happy about.

         

I had to look it up. Apparently, it was the positions, only just in the relevant word and not in the message as a whole. What I didn't appreciate is that while "C" and "U" appear more than once, they always appear at the same position in their words. I thus wanted 1325. But wait! The hint I looked up said that 1725, 2325, and 2725 were also acceptable, I can't figure out the logic behind these. There aren't even seven letters in the first word. [Ed. Right after I published this, I figured it out. The alternate numbers are if you count from the beginning of the line rather than the word.]

  

More battles with undead, cultists, druids, and sorcerers followed in the subsequent sections of hallway. One of them cast "Iron Rust" on Gnomon and destroyed his axe. Lyra's cudgel also broke, but I think that one was wear-and-tear. I had no weapons to replace Gnomon's axe with; he was better by far with "Unarmed" than with two-handed weapons, so I didn't give him the Dragon Slayer sword. I kept hoping I'd find a replacement axe to no avail.

         

"Don't 'Fulminictus' me, bro!"

      

We reached an area with demonic visages on the pillars. Four of them had two-letters: AR, OR, ND, and KA. A fifth wanted the "name of the lord of these walls," which  the very title of the dungeon had been telling me was nothing at all. But I guessed correctly that the demon was looking for some combination of those syllables. I guessed something like KANDORAR the first time and had to fight two fire spirits. After that, I saved and reloaded if I got it wrong. It took a few more guesses before I got it right with ARKANDOR.

        

This would have been a better riddle if the answer had been a blank.

       

The way opened to the final area, in which I had to navigate a series of teleporters. The only major encounter in this area, other than the teleporters and battles, came when we found a magic helmet and a 500-year-old dragon claw. Lilii Borea started to freak out for some reason and threatened to leave the party. We had some odd role-playing choices.

     

None of these sound very nice.

        

It was right about this time that I started to get messages that my characters were dying of thirst. I had found no water after the fountain mentioned earlier, and each character had only brought one waterskin. I rested too often between battles and after that disastrous trap corridor. The worst part was, there was no way I could go back at this point. Resting would have killed the entire party, and I didn't think at the time that I could make it back through that "Good show!" corridor without resting. Later, I realized I probably could have made it with potions, but for now, I just kept moving forward, hoping I'd find water somewhere.

   

There were more battles with cultists, druids, and some kind of demon called a "heshthot." Finally, I reached a large chamber. In the middle, I was taken to what turned out to be the last battle. Once I realized what was happening, I reloaded and prepared a bit by chugging healing potions (why don't they do anything for thirst?) and magic restoration potions. I thought I had a lot of the latter, but they weren't enough to restore more than about half of my magic points. That had ramifications for the final battle.

         

That should be worth one more spell.

      

This final area depicted a cavern with stalagmites jutting from the floor and a large stone mound with the bones and equipment of previous adventurers at its base. A robed man who I assumed was the same one who stole the Salamander Stone, stood in the center alongside a petrified version of what turned out to be Ingramosch. The robed man gloated: "Huh, you must be thinking you cornered me? Far from it! You have walked into my trap. Arkandor will take care of you!"

       

The man disappeared in a puff of smoke and an enormous dragon crawled out of the dark corner of the cavern and perched himself on the mound. "How sweet," it roared. "Fresh meat!" The battle began.

        

You're not going to find it very juicy.

          

(I should mention that with the speech pack, the cultist's and the dragon's speeches are fully voiced, and the dragon's voice is particularly well done. I'd encourage you to watch it on YouTube: Here's the beginning of the battle, and here's the end, only I experienced it without the relentless pulse of inappropriately upbeat music practically overwhelming everything else.) 

    

We've already covered all of the mistakes that I'd made up to this point. My party was on death's door from thirst (although admittedly this didn't have any effect yet on our statistics); Gnomon and Lyra had no weapons; Toliman had only a few arrows; and my mages were all at half-mast with their astral points. Then it turns out I made three more major errors before and during the battle:

   

1. I don't know how much of a difference the Dragon Slayer sword would have made, but it was in Xamidimura's possession. Her regular weapon was a longsword. She carried a shield in her left hand. Someone will tell me if I missed something, but I don't think there's any way to change from a one-handed weapon to a two-handed weapon in battle. If you try to simply switch weapons, the game says you can't do it with something in your other hand. There's a "Drop" command, but you cannot drop what's in your left hand, only what's in your inventory. You can switch the shield in your left hand for something else, but that still doesn't free up both hands. The only way it would work is if you switched the shield for something you could then "Use," leaving the hand free, but I had nothing that would work for this purpose. Thus, I fought the battle without Dragon Slayer.

       

Aaaargh!

       

2. I assumed Ingramosch was the dragon's ally. I mean, after all, this temple is under his house. I also didn't perceive that he was stoned/paralyzed/whatever. So I wasted time and spell points nailing him with "Lightning" for several rounds before I realized he was inert. When I tried to turn him to my side with "Evil Eye," the game told me that he was already on my side. I guess there was probably no way to cure his condition during battle, but I could have at least avoided wasting time on him.

     

Toliman adds insult to injury.

        

3. I didn't understand how targeting worked for the dragon. During my first few rounds, I cast "Lightning" and damage spells at the dragons, and fired at it with Toliman's last few arrows, by just clicking the dragon's center mass. But this was obviously out of melee range. It looked to me like there was only one square, way to the right, where a character could get into melee range of the dragon's tail. Only after the battle was half over did I realize that any character adjacent to the mound could target the dragon, but only by clicking on a square that was adjacent to the character (so it looks like he's targeting the mound), not the dragon's center mass.  

      

Xamidimura attacks from what I originally thought was the only square from which he could be attacked.

       

Because of these errors, two of my fighters essentially did nothing for the first dozen rounds while the third inched her way over to what I perceived as the one available melee square. Toliman, Lyra, and Lilii Borea cast damage spells on the dragon and did quite well, hitting it for a couple dozen points with each casting. But they were soon out of spellpower.

      

That's not bad for a regular arrow.

       

The dragon, meanwhile, had a fire breath attack and a smoke attack, both of which did surprisingly pathetic damage to the characters he targeted. When Xamidimura finally reached that square next to his tail, he started swatting her with the tail, but it also seemed to do very little damage.

      

Arkandor uses his breath attack.

       

Eventually, I figured out that I could target the dragon by targeting the mound, and I brought all the other characters up to adjacent squares. Unlike most enemies, the dragon seemed to be able to parry multiple times per round. Even with this, the party seemed to be doing well for a few rounds, but all of a sudden, the dragon got a lot more effective. Instead of six or eight points, he started doing like 40 points of damage with his attacks. One by one, my characters started to fall. Three of them died; two fell unconscious.

    

Then, all at once, Mahasim struck the final blow. Not the killing blow; the dragon just decided to concede: "You are fortunate, but you are honorable fighters. You shall be allowed to live." And with that, he withdrew. We got precisely nothing from the battle except experience.

       

"And by 'you,' I definitely mean the single form."

       

Three of my characters were dead, two unconscious, but for some reason Ingramosch was now in the party—and somehow he had the Salamander Stone in his possession. He had no words of explanation (I think he was still stoned or something), so we just poked around looking for the way forward.

      

The aftermath.

          

We found a stairway upward. At the top, we were met with the game's closing cinematic. In it:

   

• Elsurion Starlight, the brother of the Elf King, who had given us the main quest during the first session, came running up to us. He said the town was in "turmoil," but he had charted us a boat to escape in.

      

What about the three of us who are dead?

     

• During the boat trip, Elsurion healed Ingramosch (who he called a "prince"). We gave Ingramosch the Salamander Stone, and Ingramosch asked to see the Elf King.

• We switched from a boat to a carriage and rode into an Elven settlement in the forest. It seemed to consist of treehouses.

• More Dwarves and Elves arrived over subsequent days. 

     

Something about this image cracks me up. The dwarves just look so petulant.

       

• Two weeks later, Elsurion told us that the Elves and Dwarves had reached an agreement to attack the orcs "next year, or the year after at the latest."

• We had a big banquet in which the Elf King thanked us and announced to everyone that we were under his personal protection. "Our lands, the mountains, the rivers, and the unending forests, they are all open to you for as long as you shall live."

      

This would be more meaningful if the final game didn't take place in a single city.

      

• After the final congratulations screen at the top of this entry, we were prompted to save the game a final time. 

      

Obviously, none of this feels particularly satisfying with three of my six party members dead. Since it would be nice to have a hale party to import into Shadows over Riva, I'm toying with doing the final battle again. I think it would require me to backtrack to the last source of water. Assuming I can make it through the "Good show!" area with healing potions, and that the length of the journey doesn't make us die of thirst on the way, I can probably safely make it back. A more extreme measure would be to restart from before this session, do a better job preparing in town, and playing the entire dungeon again. A less extreme version would just be to re-fight the final battle with the characters dying of thirst but knowing how to properly attack, and having one of my characters equipped ahead of time with Dragon Slayer.

         

An appropriately Tolkienesque-looking king.

       

I'll think about it, but in the meantime, let's deal with a question that's nagging me: . . . What?

     

This question has several parts:

   

• Was the mage who stole the Salamander Stone Sudran Alatzer? If not, who was he?

• Where did he go before the final battle began?

• Why did Ingramosch have the Salamander Stone after the battle?

      

I don't even know who you are.

       

• If the cult went to so much trouble to steal the stone from us multiple times, why just let us walk away with it in the end?

• What is this cult all about, anyway?

• If the god is the "One Without Name," why does he have a name? Or is Arkandor not the god?

• If Ingramosch wasn't a part of it, why did he live in the house that had an entrance to its temple?

• What was the purpose of the black statuette and the dragon claw? 

      

While you work on those, I'll work on the "summary and rating."

     

Time so far: 60 hours