Yendorian Tales: Here There Be Dragons

 

I spent a lot of this session watching dragons fly overhead.

       

The land of Yendor is in trouble. Monsters have been invading the mines, threatening the production of Nuore, the reagent necessary to fuel all magic. The great wizard Zamora was struck down by a shadowy figure during a public address; the orb that was supposed to banish all evil was stolen. Our only clues to restoring order are to be found in Zamora's journal, which only members of the Society of Wizards can translate. The first one, the Hermit, told us to seek out the Diplomat. The Diplomat, who turned out to the governor's advisor in Port Hope, asked us to retrieve a Grapnel Arrow and then use it to grab the Great Red Gem in a particular mine.

   

I ended the last session wondering what mine would contain the gem. Fortunately, I found it almost immediately. It was in the cave network northwest of Port Hope, and probably the reason I didn't note it during my first circuit of the cave is that I didn't register it as important. High on the cave wall, one square between it and the the party, it was out of reach except for the Grapnel Arrow. The only annoying part was having to flee from dozens of parties of bats on the way.

        

Grabbing the gem.

       

Using the Key of Port Hope to warp immediately to the city (hell, yeah!), I gave the gem to Paundor. He crushed it into a powder and then said to go to Moloch, where we'd find someone to help us further. He also increased our dexterity by 4.

      

As his dialogue closed, an apparition of the orb appeared, and Zamora's voice said: "Half of 'W' is sixth." This goes with our previous clues that:

   

• The first of last is third.
• The third of first is last.

 

"Half of W" probably doesn't refer to its position in the alphabet, since it's at an odd number (23). It probably means either V or U. We still don't know how many letters there are between "sixth" and "last"; if half of W is V, it's at least one, since no word ends in VR. So possible patterns are:

  

_ _ L _ _ V _ R

    

_ _ L _ _ UR

 

My crossword mind sees BELIEVER in the first case and SULFUR in the second, but there are of course many other possibilities, especially if we increase the number of spaces after the sixth position. For all I know, it's FILIBUSTER. 

    

We used the Key of Stachus to get most of the way to Moloch. You might recall that we learned last session that there is an island in the southwest quadrant of the game map, but it's surrounded by fog. I wanted to walk along the water to see if I could see the fog. It turns out that I couldn't, but while walking, I found a buried treasure chest that had the Key of Saccate, the starting city. That's great. Saccate has almost all the game's services, and it's close to the other starting cities, where I know I can pay for training, sell excess goods, sell gems and Ancient Scrolls, and get healed.  

        

I wipe out three parties of mages.

     

Even better, there was a second chest with a Scroll of Death. That sounded awesome, but it doesn't work in combat. Instead, it wipes all enemy parties off of the game map, which is a nice way to avoid having to fight or flee from all of them when I'm just trying to get somewhere. On the other hand, it can only be used once per rest, and the enemy parties repopulate fast. I tended to save it for when I saw parties of mages. It's hard to flee from mages (if you want to flee), as the final character to flee is the target of all attacks and is often killed.

        

Speaking of combats, my characters got some very powerful, almost game-breaking spells at Level 8. The two clerics got "Critical Wounds" and my wizard got "Spontaneous Combustion." Both damage all enemies on the screen (except those immune to fire, in the case of the wizard) for about 10-20 points. Very few enemies can stand up to a single round in which all three spellcasters unleash. The only thing stopping me from just spamming these spells is the cost in Nuore and the fact that I have limited spell points, but both increasingly ceased to be much of a concern during this session. Even if I wasn't finding processed Nuore (needed for spellcasting) and purple potions (which fully restore spell points) fairly plentiful, the economy has become so generous that I could just buy heaps of them.

      

Casting "Spontaneous Combustion" at mummies and zombies.

        

Before hitting Moloch again, I went to Mine 8 to its southeast. The lucrative mine had a lot of platinum, gold, and silver plus a large treasure chamber with plenty of gray (moderate healing) and white (full healing) potions. Enemies were demons and devils, but I mostly just ran from them. There were fixed battles with demons and mummies, plus a memorable one that combined swamp trolls, ghosts, and alligators.  

   

In Moloch, I had already met the person who would help me: Bysette. Last time, he demanded to know who had "sent me," and I had no answer. This time I did: PAUNDOR. "You will need to return a ring I lost before I can assist you anymore," he said. Where did he lose it? On a ship called Blackmane. He couldn't tell me anything else, so now BLACKMANE is one of the keywords I feed to all NPCs. When I get done exploring the cities I haven't explored, I'll return to the original ones and prompt those NPCs, too, I guess.

    

I kept working my way counter-clockwise around the world. As I approached the mountains to the northeast, dragons and wyverns started appearing overhead. When they fly by, which they do frequently, the game pauses for the animation. As long as the party isn't in their direct path, they just continue off-screen and I can move again. If the party is even slightly clipped by a wing, however, we enter combat. I can kill a wyvern—I did it back on Level 3, you may recall—but the red and green dragons are something else. Like demons and devils, they have an ungodly armor class. I can barely touch them. Still, I'm sure with a concerted spell-based effort, I could make it happen. I just wasn't in the mood to put in that kind of effort yet.

     

This wyvern is about to get me.

      

There are some caves depicted in the mountains that are only accessible from the desert side, so I couldn't explore them yet. I was able to enter one cave southeast of Devon and Duomin. It had a couple of treasure chapters with lots of ore and mining tools, which was ironic because there was nothing to be found in the cave's walls. Fixed combats were with thieves and mages.

   

Devon, which I reached next, was a dead city, like Magincia in Ultima IV. Set in the middle of a creepy swamp, it was swarming with skeletons, ghosts, and other undead. There were only a couple of NPCs. The first, a ghost named Paltivar, was haunting his own shop, moving crates, hoping his assistant Joseph would return. He reacted to JOURNAL and said that he'd help me if I found his assistant. More on that in a bit.

        

Devon's cemetery.

        

The second NPC was Joan, attending the grave of her husband, Winze, and somehow not getting attacked by all the undead in the area. She confirmed that Winze was a member of the Society of Wizards, but I couldn't get anything else from her.

    

Finally, a wizard named Alcott was holed up in the temple. He admitted quite freely that he was the one who had raised all the undead and sent the townsfolk fleeing. After a few bits of dialogue, he attacked me with an army of zombies, mummies, and ghosts. I destroyed them with mass-damage spells, but Alcott himself was stubborn. He finally fell to my blades, drank a potion, and disappeared.

     

Littering!

        

My notes said that Joseph was the NPC permanently in the drunk tank in Mantov. I assaulted someone to get a quick trip to the Mantov jail. Joseph wanted a bottle of Sweet Wine for his cooperation. The tavern didn't know what I was talking about. So that's another thing on my list of keywords.

       

How far in the past? Devon has been a ghost town long enough for a brand-new city (New Devon) to be built.

           

In Duomin, a mining town, everyone was abuzz because a kid had been kidnapped by a dragon. His mother, Whitney, begged for his return. The city had an armor shop, a mine shop, a tavern, a fighter trainer, and, surprisingly, a jail. I thought all arrestees went to Mantov, but apparently not, because Keith and Humphrey were in there for horse theft and drunk and disorderly, respectively. 

      

I think Victor was one of the guards.

          

I got another hit on JOURNAL with Prezlin, the owner of the alchemist's shop in New Devon. "Please find out how my old friend Winze is doing and let me know." When told that his friend was DEAD, he suggested that we meet at his shop in New Devon.

    

All the rumors said the dragon flew east after kidnapping the boy, so we went directly to the mine visible from Duomin, which I labeled Mine 9. Despite circling it three times, I couldn't find any sign of a red dragon or a kidnapped boy. What I did find, aside from a bunch of random battles with gnolls and mine trolls, were eight treasure caves. I came out of the mine pockets spilling with weapons, armor, ore, potions, scrolls, and processed Nuore. I don't know why the game got so generous when it had already been pretty generous.

       

I would pay real-world money for an "open all chests" spell.

                 

Further up the mountain range, I found a path into the mountains. Exploring was a pain in the neck, having to stop frequently for the dragon animations, flee from the occasional attack, and reload every time someone got frozen by a wyvern.

   

I eventually found my way to another cave, entered, and was almost immediately greeted by a red dragon blocking the path. Individual red dragons aren't that hard. One strategy I use for tough enemies is to toss a silver potion on them early, which poisons them and makes them take damage every round. If I can't seem to hit them, I toss gold potions on them every round, which reliably do 15 points of acid damage. My clerics heal characters as needed while my mage, taking a purple potion when he needs to recharge, blasts away with "Beam of Death" and "Ball of Power."

   

When the dragon was dead, I got a message that a young boy went running out of the cave. I warped back to Duomin with the key, talked to Whitney, and got 5,000 gold pieces and enough experience points for Level 9.

      

Nothing ever explained what the dragon wanted with the kid.

        

I warped back to Staccate and the surrounding cities to level everyone up, which cost almost 50,000 gold pieces, but I had about 300,000 by then. I was feeding the new keywords to everyone I encountered in both towns. In Helsingor, I got a hit on BLACKMANE with a Captain Chigon, who I must have missed the first time. He admitted to being a pirate and said that he disguised Blackmane as a passenger ship, then robbed the passengers during the first night at sea. He insisted on fighting for Bysette's ring.

   

When battle began, he was accompanied by about two dozen assassins, rogues, and harriers. Assassins have a chance of one-shotting characters during their attacks, so the battle took me a few tries. When it was over, I had Bysette's ring.

   

Before returning to Moloch, I decided to spend some of my money on enhancements. The guy in the Athaneum can add +1 to non-magical items and +2 to magical items. The cost was only a few hundred gold pieces per enhancement, not the tens of thousands I assumed. I'm not sure why I didn't do this earlier. I thought I could go immediately to Port Hope and get the same items enhanced up to +4, but it turns out that the guy there only works with items already at +3, so I have to find an intermediate enhancer.

       

Alcala's equipment after our visit to the enhancers.

       

I brought the ring back to Bysette, who gave me a "magic branch" and told me to seek out the Merchant. If it's not clear, I think these titles—Hermit, Diplomat, Merchant—all belong to members of the Society of Wizards. (I wonder if the Merchant isn't Prezlin, who I've already met, given that he owns a shop.) Again, a floating orb appeared with Zamora's voice: "It is in the middle backwards." This suggests, if taken literally, that the letters TI appear in the middle of the word. Putting that together with our previous hints, the options are now:

    

_ _ L T I V _ R

    

_ _ L T I U _ R

    

This assumes that "middle" is literal, and there thus must be an equal number of letters to the left and right of the TI. It also assumes the word isn't ridiculously long. I suppose it could be. It could be:

   

_ _ L _ _ V T I _ _ _ _ _ _ R 

   

But it's probably not. On the other hand, I can't get any real words out of the first two options, so either it's a proper name or a nonsense word.

         

Hmph. I'll bet it's just a regular branch.

      

Miscellaneous notes:

   

• The game won't let you carry more than 50,000 lose gold pieces at a time. Once you hit that number, you have to store the excess in a chest. If you get the excess from trading in shops, I guess you get a free chest with it, because that's never been a problem. You can also occasionally find empty chests in dungeons and such. But if you don't have an empty chest and you hit the cap while exploring out in the world, you're out of luck. The game is inconsistent as to whether, when you don't have any "loose" gold, it will deduct from a chest. Sometimes it just says you don't have enough. 

      

Here, I have 269,472 gold pieces

        

• My thief has gotten a lot better with his lockpicks. He only springs about one trap in ten. Unfortunately, one of the traps that started showing up this session can curse multiple players. That status means that the character misses most attacks. It can only be healed at healers, as far as I can tell. It's not worth the risk. My spellcasters now open all chests. I wish I'd put a second wizard in the thief's spot. 

• Speaking of healers, you can donate money to their temples. I'm not sure whether there's any benefit to doing so. Nothing ever seems to happen. 

      

"Surplaying."

      

• The city keys subvert the crime and punishment system. You can get drunk in Saccate, and instead of leaving town by the main gate, just teleport somewhere (even right back to Saccate). Your crimes are wiped away.

    

I ended this session in the far north of the map, first by visiting what I labeled "Mine 10." It had Nuore, nickel, and iron. The centerpiece was a fixed battle with a unique creature called a paleoscinus, which looked sort of like a giant armadillo. He shot spikes at us, but he thankfully wasn't hard to hit.

      

I felt bad about killing him. He looks like a pet turtle I used to have.

             

Behind him was an exit to the desert—which I don't think I'm ready for yet—and a chest with the Key of Anatolay.

   

The town near Mine 10 turned out to be a town of giants—ogres, cyclopes, stone giants, and forest giants—with giant-sized buildings and a giant-sized jail. A human NPC is in one of the jail cells, but if I talk to him, he just says: "Since I have given you my map of the desert there is nothing else to tell you." I don't know what he's talking about, and I assume it's a bug. If this was my only way to get a map of the desert, that's too bad.

   

Most of the other encounters in the city were hostile. Giants have a "stomp" attack that does damage to everyone, so I avoided as many battles as possible. I was able to talk with Koleman, King of the Giants, in his throne room. He didn't have much to say, just that he resented the "little people" invading his space. 

       

Forest giants apparently wear animal skins inside modern, pristine buildings.

       

I'm almost done with my primary exploration of the main world, and I'm hoping things move quickly after that. This game is fun enough, but it's not a 40-hour game, and most of the things that I liked about it 10 hours ago are starting to wear a bit. 

    

Time so far: 26 hours 

     

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Please remember that this Saturday, 20 June, is MUD Day! More information is found here.  

 

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The Search for Freedom: Undistinguished Destruction

Really, he looks just like his statues.

 

Guest Post by Alphabetical Anonymous       

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

      

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

      

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

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

     

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

    

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

      

A relatively rare role-playing choice.

      

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

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

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

    

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

           

Turning undead rarely fails to satisfy.

      

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

    

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

     

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

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

       

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

      

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

       

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

   

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

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

     

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

     

The full battle map that I stitched together.

       

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

       

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

         

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

     

A world that responds to our actions is always welcome.

     

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

    

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   06/13/2026 

Yendorian Tales: Keep to the Right

Where I've been lately.

           

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

   

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

   

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

          

My explorations for most of this session.

        

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

   

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

         

A lot of the last seven hours was just this.

        

Here are the highlights:

   

Mine 3

       

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

     

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

         

Mine 4

     

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

       

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

        

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

 

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

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

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

      

How was I carrying all of these things?

     

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

   

Port Hope 

      

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

   

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

        

Meeting with Paundor.

        

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

   

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

     

Cave 1 

       

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

 

You guys were barely a threat six levels ago.

          

Mine 5

      

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

     

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

      

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

      

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

   

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

   

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

       

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

         

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

 

     

Mine 6 

 

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

      

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

       

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

    

• Rest before battle. 

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

• Immediately soften them with the Scroll of Gravity. 

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

           

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

          

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

     

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

    

Stachus 

   

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

      

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

      

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

    

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

 

Maybe later.

         

Mine 7

   

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

       

Moloch    

     

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

     

Using the Dispelling Gem on the ghosts.

           

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

     

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

            

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

      

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

       

I remember that guy!

       

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

     

Finishing Up

 

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

  

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

   

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

        

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

              

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

   

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

      

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

       

Time so far: 21 hours 

    

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