BRIEF: Monster Combat (1980) and Its Many Variants, Including Game 573: Giant Monster Combat (1981?)

 

        

Monster Combat

United States

Independently developed; published as type-in BASIC code in 1980 in BYTE. Typed into multiple machines.

Enhanced version called Giant Monster Combat published as BASIC code in 1981 in Creative Computing

Version called Giant Monster Attack published as BASIC code in Big Computer Games in 1983.

Variant called Giant Monster Combat developed by unknown author for the Atari 800 in maybe 1981. 

Date Started: 3 April 2026

Date Ended: 4 April 2026

Total Hours: 4

Difficulty: Very Easy (1.0/5) in the sense that the only winning condition is to leave the forest. Moderate (2.0/5) in the sense that it's a bit hard to survive for long periods. Easy (2.0/5) splits the difference.

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)   

         

We've seen a number of type-in games on my blog (that is, games published as code that magazine subscribers were expected to type in to their own computers), and none of them have been excellent. Most of them are barely RPGs. For this reason, a number of readers have suggested that it's a waste of time to keep including them on my master list.

   

But a few of them are illustrative of a process by which games are created, simplified, re-created, and expanded, and thus worth analyzing. For instance:

    

• Mike Mayfield's Star Trek (1971) for mainframe computers spawned a fantasy version called Hobbit (1975), which Joseph Power recreated as a type-in game called The Wizard's Castle (1980), which in turn inspired a number of variants into the 1990s, including The Cursed Chambers (1981), The Warlock's Treasure (1983), Leygref's Castle (1986), The Yendor's  Castle (1986), Mission: Mainframe (1987; this one merging its source with elements of Rogue), and Bones (1991).

• Epyx's series of Dunjonquest games in the late 1970s encouraged Brian Reynolds's simplified Quest 1 (1981), a type-in game that led to Doomcastle (1982), Super Quest (1983), Dragon Quest (1983), Dungeons, Dragons, and Other Perils (1984), and Cavequest (1985).

   

We see a similar process here again with Monster Combat, which like The Wizard's Castle traces its origins to Star Trek, but through the Think series (1975-1977) for the PLATO system, which includes The King's Mission Game (1977) and Swords and Sorcery (1978). (The Wilderness from 1985 is also in this line but of course post-dates Monster Combat.) Monster Combat's author, Lee J. Chapel, grew up in Springfield, Illinois, and my guess is that he went to Springfield High School, which had a PLATO terminal. In 1980, Chapel published the first version of Monster Combat in the December 1980 BYTE: a tight 104 lines of BASIC code for the KIM-1 microcomputer. He was attending the University of Wisconsin at Madison at the time, which to the best of my knowledge did not have PLATO access, but the game is dissimilar enough from its source that this kind of separation in time and distance makes sense. It feels a bit like someone recreating one of the Think games from memory, and with more limited equipment.

      

Monster Combat in its original appearance.

       

I couldn't find a workable version of the original (1980) game online, so I thought I'd give myself a taste of the classic experience and type it in myself. Chapel wrote it on a KIM-1 computer, but it looked like pretty standard BASIC to me, so I typed it on the TRS-80. I flubbed about 25% of the lines, of course, and spent about an hour troubleshooting it line by line. When the random number generator didn't seem to be working, I did some sleuthing and found that RND(1) produces a random number between 0 and 1 on the KIM-1 but produces exactly 1 on the TRS-80 Model III. I had to change about 25 instances to RND(0) to get the same result. No other modifications were needed, however.

      

Me typing code.

      

This ur-Monster Combat is a primitive game that starts the unnamed character in a 10 x 10 forest randomly seeded with open spaces ("X") and walls ("I"). The character starts in a random position. As soon as the game starts, and every time he moves after that, there's a chance of:

     

• Finding a treasure guarded by a monster.
• Finding a treasure with no guardian.
• Getting picked up by a bat and deposited elsewhere in the forest.
• Falling into a pit.

                

A jeweled sword turns out to be magical.

     

Most of the time, it's the first option. The name of the monster is randomly selected (e.g., minotaur, harpy, zombie, dragon, wyvern, zombie), as is the treasure it is guarding (e.g., a jeweled sword, a treasure chest, a jar of rubies, 100 gold pieces). The monster type is unimportant, as it has a randomly-generated strength.

 

The player can choose to fight, flee, or bribe the monster to let him go. If he fights, he has to wager a portion of his strength (he starts with between 500 and 2000 points) against the monster. The game fights a behind-the-scenes battle and informs the player of the outcome, either "THE MONSTER KILLED YOU. YOU LOSE EVERYTHING." or "YOU BEAT THE MONSTER." If you beat the monster, you get his treasure. A couple of special things can happen here: the jeweled sword can turn out to be a magic sword, which doubles the character's strength; the chest can be trapped, which kills the character immediately; and the chest can contain a magic mirror, which immediately kills any future basilisks.

     

A bit of gameplay.

         

The wagering of the character's strength against the monster's is what makes this entire line stand out. I'm not sure I've encountered this mechanic in any game that wasn't based on Monster Combat. Chapel didn't get it from any of the PLATO games. He likely found their relatively sophisticated methods of combat impossible to implement and invented something simple to replace them.

   

The goal of the game is to simply earn as much treasure as possible before wandering out of the forest, at which point you get a "CONGRATULATIONS" message along with your treasure total.

      

Not a lucrative outing.

          

The game is too primitive to meet my definitions of an RPG, and indeed no online database lists it as such. It is also too primitive for me to trace its origin to the PLATO Think series; the only thing it really retains is the use of a 10 x 10 game world. But the Think connection shows through more strongly in the "enhanced" versions that Chapel published in subsequent years. Still working on a KIM-1, he expanded the code to about 350 lines for Giant Monster Combat, published in the 1981 Creative Computing. (The new title is in the program, but the title page in the magazine still uses Monster Combat.) Again, no one seems to have typed this one into a program that remains online, but substantially the same version appeared in the 1983 book Big Computer Games, edited by David B. Ahl, converted to Microsoft BASIC by Chris Vogeli. I was able to find Commodore 64 and DOS versions of that one.

         

The game's appearance in Creative Computing.

       

Giant Monster Combat/Attack is recognizably the same game as Monster Combat, but it does a few new things. The ones that have analogues in the PLATO Think series are annotated with an asterisk (*):

   

• It allows the player to write down his strength and spell inventory from a previous game, then re-create his character at the start of a new game.

• Instead of just "forest" and "walls," ASCII characters now distinguish the forest as having trees, paths, walls, inns, and enchanted castles.

      

Starting out in the "giant" version of the game.

      

• Although the player only sees a 10 x 10 area at a time, there are 10 x 10 areas in the game.* Each is fixed in what it contains (i.e., number of trees, inns, castles) but randomized in the specific position of those items every time you leave and return.*

• The player has an inventory of magic spells: "Sleep," "Charm," and "Invisibility." They are found during encounters just like other treasures. If you acquire above a certain threshold of these spells, the game lets you convert them to combat strength.

• The list of monsters is expanded. Monsters now have set strength specific to the type, ranging from 5 (goblin) to 100 (basilisk). The manual now specifies that you have a 50% chance of winning if you wager exactly a monster's strength and a 95% chance at double his strength.

• You can meet multiple enemies at once. Three zombies have a combined strength of 90, for instance. 

• Trees must be chopped down to move through them*, requiring strength.

• Inns provide safe places to rest and restore health (for a small bit of treasure); magic castles provide treasure.* (These were magic circles and treasure chests in Swords and Sorcery and living pyramids and chests in The King's Mission Game.) Innkeepers sometimes offer hints as to the locations of castles. 

     

At the magic castle, I get my strength restored, two treasure points, and a magic mirror.

        

• In addition to direction of movement, the player specifies the distance.* Moving now depletes strength. 

• There are more random encounters (e.g., thick brush, quicksand) that can cost strength or time. 

     

A series of unfortunate events.

        

• If you walk out of the forest before you're ready (or if a giant eagle carries you out of the forest in a random encounter), you can choose to re-enter immediately. 

       

The overall goal hasn't changed (acquire as much treasure as possible), but the game now tracks your time in the forest (*) and enforces a time limit of 30 days. If you survive that long, you're automatically whisked from the forest. You can re-enter with your strength and magic, but with no treasure. In the magazine, Chapel says he earned 7,562 points but that "if you get above two thousand you're doing well." I got 1,009 in my best game out of five.

      

A dubious victory.

           

This version was adapted for the Atari 800 by Sheila Spencer and published in The Creative Atari in 1983. It regresses the name to Monster Combat but otherwise appears to play the same. 

      

Spencer's version is not the Giant Monster Combat variant (supposedly from 1981) that I found linked from the Atari Mania site. This version adds a few new things:

   

• The title screen has the game name in a large font, with some color.

     

The only version with in-game instructions, suggesting it might have been sold independently of type-in code.

      

• There are in-game instructions.

• The game uses ATASCII characters (such as a spade symbol for trees) specific to the Atari.

• There's a compass on the exploration screen.

• The screen fully redraws between actions rather than presenting a constantly-scrolling set of messages and maps.

• When you fight a monster, while the game works out the result, it flashes words like "splatter!," "mangle!," and "bash!," not unlike Stuart Smith's Fracas (1980). 

        

Gameplay in the most advanced version of this title.

        

• In addition to hints as to the locations of castles, innkeepers also provide hints as to the location of the edge of the forest.

• Walls are replaced by "castles that you cannot enter" (+ symbols on the screen above). The serve the same purposes of blocking movement in a particular direction.

• Finding an enchanted castle is accompanied by a screen of ATASCII graphics.

      

Not a horrible job, really.

       

• The victory screen has a "congratulations" message in a large font and does a better job organizing information about your expedition.  

           

No.

          

I don't know whether to trust Atari Mania's claim of 1981 for the year of this version. Attribute information has been stripped from the BASIC code.

    

Other sightings of Monster Combat/Giant Monster Combat/Giant Monster Attack:

   

• Personal Computing Today published a variant of the (non-Giant) original for the Acorn Atom in the September 1983 issue. There is no mention of Chapel; it is credited to A.J. Presvail.

• A TRS-80 version of the original game floating about has misspellings and generates every terrain tile as an impassable wall.

• An independent developer going under Cout Games converted the original (again, non-Giant) to the Commodore 64 in 2017. 

     

A recent C64 adaptation of the base game.

      

• El Explorador de RPG catalogues two TI-99 versions of the original. 

    

It is a sad inevitability, seen with titles such as The Wizard's Castle and The Valley, that someone will try to commercialize just about every type-in game, often with no attribution to the original author. Some of these knock-offs will be quite literally plagiarized from the original; others will gussy it up with graphics, additional features, and better controls. In the case of Monster Combat, we have:

   

• Adventure Dungeon (1983), by David Lo, published in the March 1983 CLOAD cassette magazine. I reviewed it in 2023, not realizing its origin.

• Idol of Monterey (1985), published by MicroSPARC for the Apple II. I reviewed it in 2024, also not realizing its connection to Monster Combat. 

• La Foresta Dimenticata dal Tempo ("The Forest that Time Forgot," 1987), an Italian diskmag game. It adds some graphics and a main quest, although I couldn't figure out how to possibly win it. I BRIEFed it in 2024.

      

The Italian Forest that Time Forgot (1987).

             

For all of these, El Explorador de RPG (correctly) popped up to note that they were just versions of Monster Combat, which I hadn't played because (correctly) no one had tagged it as an RPG—until someone on Atari Mania did so for the Giant version covered above. That's the one I'm rating, with a GIMLET of 9. It joins a long line of type-in pseudo-RPGs that are nonetheless important to have in mind for when someone creates a variant of them.

   

Atari Mania also lists three games written in 1991 by Layton Atari Developers: Monster Combat II, Monster Combat III, and Monster Combat IV. The site only has a download for III, and I can't find the others in any other location. III looks different enough from Chapel's Monster Combat that it's possible that the Layton series wasn't referencing this game at all. If II ever turns up, perhaps I'll be able to demonstrate some kind of transition, but until then I'm happy to see the end of this somewhat limited series.

      

Off the Beaten Star Trail

Star Trail provokes an existential crisis.

     

It would be worth recapping at this point the long road that led us here:

    

• At the beginning of the game, after character creation, we received a quest to recover the Salamander Stone from the Dwarven Pit and bring it to Lowangen. This took place in the city of Kvirasim at the northern edge of the map. We were told only that the Dwarven Pit was to the south.

• We moved south, following clues, stopping to solve a side quest in the city of Gashok. Eventually we reached the mountains in the southeast part of the world map, found the Dwarven Pit, and got the Salamander Stone.

• We moved west to Lowangen in the south-central part of the map, lost the stone, recovered it, and lost it again. The best clues as to where it had gone were to the Blood Peaks on the west side of the map.

• Eager to explore a little, we went far to the north, then west, the south to the Blood Peaks instead of just going west. Along the way, we did a side-quest for the subtitular Star Trail in Tiefhusen (northwest quadrant) that resulted in us not obtaining the weapon.

• It turned out that the entrance—or at least an entrance—to the Blood Peaks was not too far to the west from Tiefhusen. However, in taking this entrance, we ran into a party of orcs who stripped us of all of our items and threw us in a cell.

     

My travels prior to this session.

       

This entry started with a certain amount of eagerness to avoid that fate. I thought I'd avoid the orc encounter and probe at the Blood Peaks to the south and west. I did this before my last entry on Star Trail was published, so I didn't yet have commenter VK's assurances that such an entrance exists. When I didn't find anything, I just kept pushing south.

    

If I was after anything, I guess it was side quests. I had somehow gotten the impression, probably based on my experiences with the first game, that there were a lot more towns and dungeons like Gashok and Tiefhusen, with quests waiting to be completed and corridors waiting to be explored. Accordingly, I moved south, east, and north, trying all of the trails that I hadn't explored on my first pass. I didn't find a single (non-menu) town or a single dungeon, but I did hit a lot of other small miscellaneous encounters, including:

     

• Numerous battles with harpies, orcs, ogres, and wild animals. 

• Somewhere in the southern Blood Peaks, a huntress threatened to shoot us. We got her to talk to us, but she didn't give us any information. However, I did notice that DARK MAGES (presumably, the ones that stole the Salamander Stone from us) was a dialogue option that hadn't existed elsewhere before. 

      

That's a better threat in a world without magical healing.

      

• My explorations to the southwest were stymied by the need for snowshoes, which I'm not even sure exist.

      

I tried snowshoes once. I don't think they made walking in the snow any easier.

      

• An abandoned camp with various sundries.

• A very large party of orcs walking down the road. We refused to hide, got into an impossible battle, and had to reload.

     

We did not win this one.

       

• We spent a long time around Finsterkoppen, mapping all of the routes we hadn't taken, under the theory that if side-dungeons existed, they'd probably be in the mountains. We didn't find any, but we did find the alternate entrance to the Dwarven Pit. It's on the other side of the mountains from the main entrance in Finsterkopp, quite a distance by road.

      

My claustrophobia acted up just reading this description.

      

• I've noticed that Gnomon, my best trapper, has a lot more trouble finding food and water in the mountains than on flat land. I guess that makes a certain amount of sense.

• A mountain road ended with a landslide, which nearly killed us.

• We stopped to help a man whose cart had broken down. It turned out to be a ruse by bandits, and we started the subsequent combat unarmed. 

       

This same thing happens in Red Dead Redemption.

        

• At one point, the game asked: "Say, aren't you the least bit concerned that nothing's happened for so long?" I guess that was a subtle hint to get back on track. 

• We approached a pond and heard a bunch of buzzing. Investigating, we found ourselves attacked by "horseflies of enormous size, and obviously starving." We had an option to act. I'm sure some spells may have helped, but I just tried lighting a torch, which drove some of them off but left us damaged from their stings. 

    

There's no upside to investigating, but we had to know.

     

• On the far eastern side of the map, on a road that looked like it led off the map, we were stopped and threatened by archers. We had an option to attack them, but it ended in our massacre. I think this encounter exists simply to stop the player from trying to leave the map. 

• We encountered a huge brown bear. We decided to run rather than fight. It turned out that the bear was just protecting her cub.

      

I don't like when RPGs (cf. Baldur's Gate, Skyrim, Avowed) make me kill bears. I like bears.

         

• A tinker carrying a heavy load stopped to chat with us, then offered to sell us a copper pot. 

• We followed a blood trail into the woods, found a dead man next to a large, broken hammer, and buried "the poor sod."

     

What was this all about?

     

• A woman rode by on a moose. Later, she rode past us again and said, "You can really ride these beasts, even though I don't think anyone beside me actually does." I wish I knew how. We've been occasionally putting points into the "Ride" skill for nothing. 

           

She's riding side-saddle without a saddle. That's impressive.

       

At this point, we were all the way back at Kvirasim, the first town since Tiefhusen. We took the time to check the stores for snowshoes (nada), buy some spare boots, and restock herbs. Unfortunately, Kvirasim doesn't have what we really needed: a smith to repair our broken weapons. Thus, we went down to Gashok and spent a week in town, getting our weapons repaired at a rate of one per day. We were broke at the end of the week, but fortunately the market came to town on the last day, and we were able to sell some excess weapons to get another 20 gold pieces in our pockets. Just as we were getting ready to leave, we saw that the armorer sold—you guessed it—snowshoes.

   

Having bought them, we commenced a long journey back to the southwest. Taking the route that required snowshoes simply brought us to a dead-end, where we were once again mobbed by orcs, forced to surrender, and thrown into a cell in the Blood Peaks. I should have included this episode with the last entry.

      

Shame on me, I guess.

          

Still, the incident gave me hope. The two encounters that got us automatically tossed into an orc prison are relatively far apart from each other. That meant that there could be an alternate entrance anywhere between the two. I started exploring the network of trails here, taking every side path I hadn't already explored, stopping at every inn. I fought a lot of battles with wild cats, harpies, orcs, and ogres during this period, usually relying on computer combat, the accumulation of which finally got my two weakest characters (the ones who had been left behind in Lowangen) to Level 6. I would just point out that if I had kept my imported party, they would have all started at Level 7 and probably would have been Level 9 or 10 by now.

     

At some of the inns, I got hints as to the dark mages who had stolen the Salamander Stone from me—though  not much more than they came from the southwest where the orcs live. 

       

I assume he means that they were planning to return after their mission.

        

Along one side-trail, we came across an armored warrior limping down the road, her face crisscrossed with scars and bandages. The battered woman introduced herself as Korima of Attica. After we exhausted a few keywords with her, getting nowhere, she offered two things: first, to sell us a spare two-handed sword; second, to adventure with us for a daily rate. We enthusiastically chose the latter. 

      

Seeing actual Baid-Aids® on her face spoils the immersion a bit. 

            

Korima is a Level 7 fighter who comes with her own equipment, though we had to give her a spare sleeping bag. She was a great addition to the party, making combat a lot easier. The first night, we cast "Respondami" to get a sense of her true intentions, but it turned out that she was what she seemed to be: "As long as you pay me a piece of silver daily, I'll fight at your side."

       

I'm not always good at this, but Korima's origin was obvious to me immediately (Sorsha, as portrayed by Joanne Whalley in 1988's Willow). .

        

In fact, I soon prized her presence so much that I began to worry about running out of money and losing her. I was down to about 18 gold pieces at this point, which should have kept her in the party for another 180 days, but time can pass quickly in this game. Hence, we made our way back to Tiefhusen and sold a bunch of excess stuff (the snowshoes, weapons we'd looted from the orcs, hand mirrors, etc.) and earned back another couple hundred gold pieces.

      

I feel like we're taking advantage of her.

       

It's worth pausing here to talk a bit about the game's approach to the economy. It models real life in the sense that money is a tool, and you can make about as much of it as you want to spend the time and effort to make. Having a lot of money in the game is useful but not game-breaking. It allows you to rest in suites, dine out, buy extra herbs and potions, obtain premium healthcare, and buy new weapons instead of taking time to repair the worn-out ones—but there are low-cost or free alternatives to all of these things. I like the idea of an RPG in which most of your expenses are for services rather than goods, and I wish the game had continued on this line by offering coach rides between cities (there are some ferry boats) or allowed you to bribe NPCs to narrow down useful keywords.

    

There are a few major money-related plot points in the game, requiring the party to hand over large amounts of cash, but the game gives you the ability to go out and make that money through battle and trade. Since there are no high-value magic items for sale in any of the shops, you're incentivized not to overdo this, but it's nice to have the option when the occasion arises. 

    

The only real "money sink" in the game is in the form of herbs and potions, and even here, it's really about herbs. Since potions don't stack, there's a limited number that you can carry at any one time, especially with all the other survival gear you have to pack. Herbs stack and weigh next to nothing and can be consumed independently of potions, so they're a better use of both money and inventory space.

      

Lyra's current herb inventory. This doesn't count what the other characters have.

     

The other thing that disincentivizes the use of potions is that you need a recipe to make them. In the entire game, I only found one recipe, during the latest session, for a magic potion. It admittedly would be very useful, but it requires brandy, which I was never able to find after getting the recipe. It also doesn't stack, so you wouldn't carry it around just to make potions. You'd make the potion right there, after buying the brandy, in which case you frankly might as well just find an herbalist and buy the potion itself. In general, I don't think that the game gives you a lot of incentive to make potions, which is why I never bothered to replace my alchemy set after the orcs confiscated it in Lowangen.

   

Herbs on their own, however, are still extraordinarily useful, and I have Lyra spend an hour searching for them every time we camp. As you might imagine, I really bulked up my inventory during this session. Whirlweed, dried whirlweed, and four-leaf loneberry can all be chewed for health points, even in the middle of combat. Tarnele can be eaten just before bed to increase the restorative effects of sleeping. Many of the rest are used in various combinations when a healer uses "Treat Illness." I'm probably carrying a few that have no use unless I get that alchemy set back, but it feels like I'm close to the end of the game. If I didn't fully explore that mechanic, I'm at least glad it was there. I just wish I knew where to find more recipes. You'd think the herbalists would sell them.

       

Lyra on her nightly foraging.

      

With enough money to pay Korima for several years, we went back on the road, wandering the mountain trails, looking for an alternate entrance to the Blood Peaks. We might have found it sooner, but a priestess of Tsa threw us off the track by telling us there was a "path going straight into the mountains to the east." She had her "east" and "west" mixed up, we later figured. 

   

But eventually we found it: cave into a sheer rock face. We had to fight some orcs nearby, but I don't know whether that was a random encounter or a fixed one. I think this was meant to be our exit from the dungeon, as the game congratulates us if we turn around and leave.

      

At last!

         

Before I wrap up, I'll recount what happens to a party that does not reload but simply allows itself to be captured by the orcs. Each bullet point here is a different screen or message window:

   

• The party is completely surrounded by orcs.

• An orc captain tells us that we're prisoners of Ugorzzih.

      

Is that pronounced the French way?

       

• We have the option to fight or surrender. Either way, we wake up in a prison cell, but the surrendering way offers more messages in between.

• The orcs march the party across several mountains.

     

Like hiking with Irene.

       

• It's such a long journey that we stop for the night.

• We reach a cave. The orcs blindfold us and lock us in a cell.

• We are in the cell. Orcs bring us meals in the evening. 

     

Also invites an Irene comparison, but one that would end up with my body in a shallow grave.

      

• We are still in the cell. Orcs continue to bring us dinner. We find an obsidian knife behind a loose brick, left by some previous prisoner. 

• We are still in the cell. It has been two days. We've become aware of a knocking in the distance. Someone is repeating the same pattern: 2 long, 2 short, 3 short, 2 long.

     

Part of me is slightly disappointed that I won't get to find out what this is about.

      

• The same message repeated for another day.

• We've noticed prisoners in other cells. On this day, two guards return again to feed us, one standing guard while the other brings in the food.

• Finally, we can't take it anymore. On this day, we overpower the orcs with our hands and strike out, naked and afraid. 

      

What is an "arbach"?

         

This would be a great beginning to a game, but I've had enough of dancing to this game's tune. So when we pick up, remember that I took the alternate entrance that avoided all of this drama.

     

Time so far: 47 hours 

 

Arena: Quarterstaff

The second piece of the Staff of Chaos waits behind a ghost.

         

During this session, I found my first (perhaps only) artifact and found the second piece of the Staff of Chaos. In the process, the game's overall approach to quests became clear, and comments from readers suggest that it will be unvarying over the course of the game.

   

Whether a stage of the main quest or a side quest, the steps are always these:

    

1. Identify the province and city where you will get the location of the quest. This might involve several stages depending on where you start.

        

For instance, I got this clue in High Rock.

        

2. In the correct city, find the quest-giver. This will involve asking the man-on-the-street about the place you're trying to find.

 

3. Go to the quest giver. The first quest you will get will be to the dungeon containing a map to the thing you're actually looking for.

 

4. Explore that dungeon. For the Staff of Chaos quest, the dungeon will be two hand-crafted levels. For side-quests (including artifacts), it will be four small, procedurally-generated levels.

      

I'm glad there were no maps to the maps to the Necromancer's Amulet.

      

5. Bring the map back to the quest-giver, who will interpret it and give you the location of the dungeon holding the actual object.

 

6. Explore that dungeon. For the Staff of Chaos quest, the dungeon will be two hand-crafted levels. For side-quests (including artifacts), it will be four small, procedurally-generated levels. Find the item, and the quest is complete.

         

Finishing this artifact quest.

       

How you feel about this will depend on how much structure you like around your entertainment, I guess. You could describe the basics of football (either one) or basketball using similar rules, but people still watch them for all the variation that occurs within that structure. The same thing is true about an episodic television series like Law and Order or really any situation comedy. But as someone who does not really enjoy sports or overly-structured television shows, I find Arena's approach a little flat, and although I didn't have a bad time during this session, I'm not really looking forward to repeating this another six times.

   

I started this session in High Rock, where I had been told that the map to the dungeon containing the Necromancer's Amulet would be found in the Fortress of Drunora. The best I can figure, the process for creating dungeon levels is based on blocks of around 10 x 10 squares, with six blocks on the horizontal and three on the vertical. The blocks are designed in such a way that there is always enough space to get into them from at least one direction. This creates an openness to the random dungeons that you don't see in the handcrafted ones. The choice of texture for a particular level is randomized independently from the layout; certain textures come with certain furnishings and decorations. 

             

Most of a Drunora level on the automap.

        

The entrance and exit from each level (stairs up and stairs down) are in fixed locations at the intersections of four regular blocks. They are surrounded on three sides by walls which override the walls that the surrounding blocks would have contained, leading to some weird shapes sometimes. I might be wrong about some of these elements; my analysis is based on a relatively small sample.

  

As for monsters, the game seems to populate dungeons randomly based on the character level. In Drunora, I faced ghouls, minotaurs, rats, rogues, lizard men, giant spiders, skeletons, mages, orcs, spellswords, and zombies. Their appearance in the random dungeons is much more annoying than in the crafted dungeons because they spawn behind you a lot more often. At least 50% of the time, I first learned about the presence of an enemy when he started swatting at my back.

        

Encountering a rogue in the featureless corridors of Drunora.

        

A few new notes on enemies, combat, and dungeon exploration:

   

• Ghouls remain the most feared creatures. I still haven't gotten to the point at which I can defeat them with any ease. I later met some harder ones (e.g., hell hounds, zombies, ghosts, maybe trolls), but they were rare and ghouls have been common since the second dungeon.

• I like human enemies best because they invariably drop stuff. Rogues and nightblades always have full sets of leather, the only armor a battlemage can wear, so I can replace new pieces for my damaged pieces.

• Giant spiders are capable of paralysis, but I found I can still cast spells and use magic items while paralyzed. Until I spent the money on the "Free Action" spell, I found that a good use of this time was to use an item that cast "Sanctuary," which caused the enemy to stop attacking long enough for the paralysis to wear off.  

      

We're knocking on heaven's door?

         

• Despite my misgivings about where they spawn, I wouldn't have minded if more enemies had spawned in the random dungeons. It would make them a more viable place to grind. As it is, you may as well just wait for night to fall in one of the cities. 

• There are four types of attacks: a left-to-right slash, a right-to-left slash, a top-to-bottom slash, and a thrust. You drag the mouse in the appropriate direction for the attacks. I guess the different types of attacks have different levels of damage and accuracy, but it's not really palpable in combat.

      

I bring back my sword to slash the minotaur in the Fortress of Ice.

             

• In addition to keyboard shortcuts for these attacks, I would give a lot for the ability to hotkey certain spells. Scrolling through the list gets old.

• And while we're talking about wishes, I would love it if any of Morrowind's fast-travel spells made an appearance here, or if the game simply offered you the ability to go directly to the exit after recovering the quest item. 

• Ever since I found the first piece of the Staff of Chaos, Jagar Tharn appears to taunt me when I die. He says that his servants will find my body, and that he will resurrect me as one of his servants, perhaps allowing just enough of my mind to remain intact to know how badly I failed. That's cold. 

          

Nice fingernails, Elvira.

        

As per the system outlined above, in the Fortress of Drunora, I found the map to the location of the Necromancer's Amulet (there was no talk of "robes" this time): the Hole of Annodred on Summurset Isle. That's a long distance, but of course distance means nothing in this game, so 37 days later, I wandered into Cloudrest to identify and sell my items and buy a few new spells.

   

It was dark when I arrived, and I had trouble finding an inn, so I went around killing enemies until dawn broke. Around this time, I decided that I'd occasionally do a random quest when visiting a town. Some random quests involve dungeon exploration and use the template above, but others are just a matter of carrying an item from one location in a town to another location. In this case, I was asked by Sarunar of the House  of Lovimon to go to the Concave of Blood (a temple) and bring a book back to Saurnar at the Howling Goblin. The temple was literally two buildings away, and the whole thing took me less than a minute. For my trouble, I received 190 gold and 500 experience points. I think perhaps all of these fetch quests deliver 500 experience points. It's better than a poke in the eye, as my wife's grandmother would say, but killing a ghoul is worth something like 3,000 experience points, so fetch quests are definitely not the key to leveling up.

      

I encounter my first troll.

        

A quick additional note: In two cities in a row, I was told that the king would have a special quest for me. But in both cases, when I went to visit the king, he just gave me a generic welcome and shooed me out of his throne room. 

      

I'm told that the king has a quest.

 

He did not, in fact, have a quest.

                     

The Hole of Annodred was four more procedurally-generated levels with the same types of enemies as the Fortress of Drunora. On the fourth level, I found the Necromancer's Amulet in a chest.

   

The amulet was worth the trip. It subtracts 9 points from the armor class of every body part when you wear it. When used, it adds 50 points to the maximum number of spell points, absorbs magic attacks, and (slightly) regenerates health. I haven't used it enough to get a sense of how long these benefits last. Unlike other magic items, it doesn't have an explicit number of charges. Its description indicates that it might just decide to disappear on its own someday, but I don't know how seriously to take that. I did note that after I'd used it a couple of times, it became available to "repair" in stores, but I don't know if that process restores the charges.

       

A description of the Necromancer's Amulet. Note the low armor class for my head and right arm in the background.

     

I stopped getting artifact rumors after finding the Amulet, and my understanding from the comments is that the player isn't meant to find more than one. In that case, I'm reasonably happy with the Amulet, although I don't know all the other possibilities. However, a commenter alerted me to a work-around that I might have figured out on my own: If you leave the artifact with a smith to repair, the game no longer reads it in your inventory and thus gives you additional artifact quests. I might do another one later in the game depending on how things go. I'm sure some players use this exploit to acquire all of them, but that would be more Arena than I really need. 

       

Maybe later.

        

After obtaining the Necromancer's Amulet, I decided to go for the second piece of the Staff of Chaos at Labyrinthian in Skyrim. I knew exactly where it was, of course, but I had to go through the motions. My first stop was at Whiterun, where the rulers are not yet called "jarls." The city of course looked nothing like it does in Skyrim, although I must say that its size in Arena is more realistic than the half-dozen NPC houses that exist in the newer game. (Here's a sobering thought: if the next Elder Scrolls game is not released by 2028, which frankly seems likely, it will have been longer between Skyrim and its sequel than between Arena and Skyrim.) Anyway, I wasn't in Whiterun long, as the first person I asked about Labyrinthian told me I'd learn more in Winterhold.

         

My brief time in Whiterun.

      

In Winterhold, NPCs directed me to the mage's guild. (There was no hint of the College of Winterhold.) There, I learned that "knights from the Fortress of Ice" recently attacked a caravan and stole a tablet "that would decipher a part of the Elder Scrolls." The tablet also had a map to Labyrinthian. I took the quest and got the location of the Fortress of Ice.

   

The Fortress of Ice was aptly named, with ice walls and occasionally ice floors. The enemies here were mostly new, including snow dogs capable of spitting magical snowballs (I needed to keep magical defenses activated), ice golems, and knights in armor. They were much harder than previous enemies, and I mostly survived them by making use of a Longsword of Life-Stealing with dozens of charges that I had found in some previous dungeon.

     

A wolf waits menacingly around the corner in the Fortress of Ice.

        

The tablet was behind a door with an easy riddle (WIND):

       

MY WIFE'S ITALIAN GRANDMOTHER also would have worked, but she's passed.

     

The tablet was about as hard to pick up as keys elsewhere. I took it back to the mage's guild in Winterhold (presumably it's part of the city that later falls into the sea) and got the location to Labyrinthian.

        

Just where it ought to be.

       

I wasn't really expecting any connection to Skyrim's Labyrinthian, so I was surprised when the cut scene showed multiple buildings on a raised stone platform just like the Labyrinthian "complex" in the later game. 

     

The Labyrinthian complex, looking neither the same nor implausibly unlike its counterpart four games later.

         

When I entered, I was immediately confronted with three gates, something that Skyrim pays homage to by showing three (inoperable) grates shortly after the player enters that version of Labyrinthian—although it would make more sense if the Labyrinthian dungeon in Arena were the Shalidor's Maze dungeon in Skyrim.

     

This shot was from when I was on my way out, with Jagar Tharn's nightblade assassin attacking me.

           

As I approached the three gates, a message told me to go down the center path first. Of course, I was contrary and followed my usual "rightmost wall" pattern for a while. But here, the game isn't lying. The center path has several messages relating the tale of two brothers, Kanen the Elder and Magrus the Dim, who entered Labyrinthian for their own purposes. They ended up dying on two different areas on the second level, each holding one of the keys necessary to enter the area on the first level with the piece of the staff. There's a lot that doesn't make sense chronologically here (even more when you combine this game's lore with Skyrim's), but we'll go with it.

      

Is this written on the walls? Is someone speaking? The game never really tells you.

     

The first level of the dungeon is as maze-like as its name suggests, but it's nothing compared to the two unconnected halves of the second level. They're nightmares of corridors, lakes of lava, and tunnels both raised and sunken. That the automap keeps it all straight is a testimony to its quality. 

          

I found this lucrative treasure room in one of the dungeon's corners. Note the ghost about to attack in the lower-right.

       

Since you can only have one key "active" at a time, I had to find Magrus's first, return to the upper level, unlock the first door, and then go back down for Kanen's. Both keys were in rooms with two cells barred with gates, one cell containing the key and the other containing the ghost of one of the brothers. Each ghost offered a riddle to unlock the gate to his respective key:

    

• Magrus: More beautiful than the face of your God / Yet more wicked than a daemon's forked tongue? / Dead men eat it all the time / Live men who eat it die slow (NOTHING).

• Kanen: Two bodies have I / Though both joined in one. / The more still I stand / The quicker I run (HOURGLASS).

       

The shape of Shalidor's Maze in Skyrim makes reference to this riddle.

    

I had heard variants of these riddles before and thus didn't have any trouble with them. Soon, I had unlocked the doors on Level 1 and had obtained the second piece of the Staff of Chaos.

        

As before, the next time I rested, Jagar Tharn appeared in my dreams to threaten me and sent a nightblade to attack me. The second time I rested, Ria Silmane appeared to tell me that the next piece would be found in the Elden Grove, an ancient home to Elves and location of the sacred First Tree. It must therefore be in one of the provinces in which elves live. This sounds exactly like the type of place you'd find in the forests of Valenwood, so I think I'll head there next.

     

I don't remember hearing about this in any later Elder Scrolls game.

     

I was going to talk more about inventory and the economy, but this entry is already reasonably long, so I'll save it for next time. I gained exactly one level in each dungeon I explored during this session and am now Level 13.

   

I'm not feeling as positively about Arena as at the end of the last session, but it still works reasonably well in juxtaposition with Star Trail: low complexity versus high-complexity, action-oriented versus tactical, can-play-it-while-watching-a-lecture-series versus requires-full-attention. If I had to put down Arena for a couple of months, I could pick it up again without having to re-orient myself. I don't mean that as high praise, but there is a place for such games, and Arena fills that niche well.

   

Time so far: 14 hours