Monday, March 18, 2024

NetHack [3.1]: Beyond this Place of Wrath and Tears

 
One of the levels of Gehennom, this version's version of Hell.
      
I was in pretty good shape when I wrapped up the last NetHack session, having just conquered the Castle level, found the Wand of Wishing, and collected almost everything I needed or wanted for my "ascension kit." Before continuing, though, I spent a couple of hours revisiting earlier levels to accomplish some final things:
    
  • Commenters suggested that I use my Wand of Wishes for a Bag of Holding. It turns out I didn't need to waste a wish. One of the bags in the shop on Level 25 was a Bag of Holding. I bought it for $150. For the rest of the session, I kept most of my potions and scrolls in it to protect them from traps.
      
Ha! No regular bag is worth that much gold!
        
  • I sacrificed some more corpses to my god at the altar on Level 20. Still no artifact weapon.
  • I explored several vaults that I'd left alone on the way down. One of them had a portal to a brand new area called "Fort Ludios." More on that later. On my first visit, I killed a few orcs but otherwise left it alone until I could visit again on the way back down.
  • I returned to the Gnomish Mines again. There were a couple of chaotic unicorns on the way, so I took the time to toss a few gems at them.
      
How?
      
  • I couldn't believe how many "junk" scrolls and potions I'd left behind. I took the time to blank the scrolls, dilute the potions to water, and bless the stacks of water.
  • I donated another $8,000 to the priest in the temple in the Gnome town and got -2 to my armor class.
  • I sacrificed a bunch more corpses on that altar. Nothing would give me any artifact weapon.
     
Disappointed!
    
  • Finally, I decided to wish for it. First, though, I wished for a couple of Scrolls of Charging and used one to recharge my magic marker. I wrote a couple of Scrolls of Enchant Armor, but those took around 12 charges each, and the marker only recharged to 50 in the first place. I got a warning that a Scroll of Genocide would cost even more. 
  • The Wand had come with two wishes. I was persuaded by my commenters' suggestions, and I used the other for the sword Grayswandir. With reluctance, I gave up my +6 longsword. I used the other Scroll of Charging to get 3 charges back on the wand.
    
At the bottom of the Gnomish mines, I finally found the damned secret door that everyone was saying ought to be there. I kicked it in and found a "gray stone," plus some other gems. It was, of course, a "luckstone," I don't quite understand what luck is doing for me, but if it has anything to do with the ease of the rest of the session, I'm all for it.
       
On my fifteenth visit . . .
        
On the way back down to the Castle, I went through the portal in the Level 18 vault and took on Fort Ludios. It took forever--longer than the Castle. There were dozens and dozens of guards, dragons, and monsters.The guards dropped heaps of helms, shields, boots, cloaks, and rations. I piled up some of the rations for later, and put even more in my Bag of Holding, but I didn't have the patience to test every piece of armor again. I also didn't really see the point, as I was unlikely to do better than the items I already had.
    
But in addition to their standard equipment, many of the guards spawned with wands and potions. I haven't quite gotten used to enemies using items. Every once in a while, one of them beans me in the head with a potion and makes me blind or confused or something. More alarming, the game kept saying things like, "the death ray whizzes by you!," indicating that they had Wands of Death. I had to keep repositioning myself to get out of such enemies' lines of sight. They never hit me, though. I'm not sure what would have happened if they had. My Shield of Reflection seems to send back most spells (and dragon breath), but I don't know if it always works. I'm also not sure whether "Magic Resistance" would save me from it. Best not to find out. I did end up picking up a couple of wands with a couple of charges left. By the end of the session, I had six charges among three wands.
    
Moments like this make you pause and reconsider what you're doing.
    
The interior of the castle offered battles with hobgoblins, orcs, and kobolds--trivial enemies at this point--plus a unique character named Croesus. He did the only damage to me on the entire level, and it wasn't much.
      
The interior of the castle had a room full of gold--tens of thousands of pieces, I'm sure, but I didn't really have any use for it. I left it where it was for now. I looked around but didn't find any other artifacts. The throne gave me +4 maximum hit points the first time I sat in it and disappeared in a "puff of logic" the second time. 
     
I'd feel even better if I got a wish.
     
I returned to the main branch, went back to the castle, took a save and a backup (I want to emphasize that I still haven't reloaded from one), and let myself fall down a trap door. I landed in the Valley of the Dead. Immediately, I was swarmed by dozens and dozens of ghosts (which you can't see even with "See Invisibility"), mummies, vampires, vampire lords, wraiths, zombies. I literally screamed as they approached, assuming that their level-draining attacks would be the death of me. My ranged attacks couldn't keep up with their volume and my Teleportitis didn't work on the level. I wedged myself in a corner, but ghosts can pass through walls. I winced the first time a wraith touched me.
   
But nothing happened. Not a single one of their attacks drained a single level. Nor did they damage me significantly. I just stood there and swung at them with my sword, its silver properties burning the flesh of many of the attackers, killing one after the other without suffering any effects. What is with this game? Did I accidentally download a hacked version? Is there something that resists level draining? If so, it must be new to this version. I couldn't believe I'd ever considered genociding vampire lords; they did nothing
   
As the bodies fell, I ate the wraith corpses (only one out of three wraith deaths left corpses, alas), rising from Level 16 to Level 21. 
     
This situation is nowhere near as dire as it looks.
      
The rest of the level had a lot of chests, which I painstakingly unlocked and searched, despite the fact that there's not much I want or need anymore. I did find a couple of useful Scrolls of Enchant Weapon and Enchant Armor. Unfortunately, one of the latter--and here was my one major mistake of the session--destroyed my Shield of Reflection. When you use a Scroll of Enchant Armor, the game picks a random armor piece from what you're wearing, but I guess the highest you can normally enchant is to +5, and if you try to go above that, the item is destroyed. The shield was my only +5 item, but I should have taken it off before reading the scroll. I had to use one of the three wishes to get it back (at +2). Enchanting other items made up for the loss.
   
I was surprised to find stairs going back to the Castle. I thought the trip down was one-way. On the far western side of the map, I encountered a Priest of Moloch, who warned that I had entered a sacred place. There was an "unaligned" altar in the room. I should mention at this point that I have a general idea what I need to do to win the game. I wasn't going to leave that to experimentation. I know that the High Priest of Moloch has the Amulet of Yendor, but I believe he's down further in the dungeon and not this priest. 
   
A hallway leading away from the altar room led to a stairway. I saved again here and thought about wrapping things up, as this seems to be the real point of no return. When you go down the stairs, the game warns: "You are standing at the gate to Gehennom. Unspeakable cruelty and harm lurk down there. Are you sure you want to enter?" I sucked it up, said "yes," and went down--and was surprised to see a stairway going back up. Is there a point of no return in this version? 
     
It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehennom.
     
The next few levels were pure mazes, full of gold and traps, such that I started wearing my Ring of Levitation to avoid the latter and then got annoyed at always having to take it off to pick up the former. I'm not sure why I'm bothering to collect gold anyway. The twisty passages did a good job of disguising one of my most hated foes: the yellow light. I very nearly used my Scroll of Genocide on them. They kept coming around corners and exploding in my face, leaving me blinded for a few dozen turns. Admittedly, this isn't as big a deal as it sounds, since I have "Telepathy."
    
The demonic enemies on these levels were easy to deal with; most took extra damage from the silver in Grayswandir. There were a lot of minotaurs, and these were the first enemies in a long time to pose even a slight threat. A couple of them got me down to near-50% of my hit points before I killed them. I had plenty of resources to deal with them, of course, if they threatened me any more than that, including just backing away and throwing missiles. Minotaurs all dropped Wands of Digging. Unable to use them all, I got in the habit of blasting random holes in the dungeon walls to facilitate the return trip.
       
A typical Gehennom level.
      
I got hungry fast enough in these mazes that even though I brought plenty of rations, I started to wish I'd brought more. Eventually, I stopped exploring the maze levels completely. I just went far enough to find the stairs down. I suppose it's cheating to take screenshots of each level to help you on the way back? I won't use them unless I'm cheating by then anyway.
    
Level 35 was a special level. There was a regular maze around the edges of the map, but the central part had a fortress with vampires and a demon named Asmodeus. He apparated right next to my character and demanded $4,357. Despite this being the sort of game in which you probably should pay such ransoms, I said no. He teleported away after a couple of hits from my sword.
        
It would be a stronger request if you were in front of me instead of behind me.
       
Level 37 was also unique, and it's here that I suffered (maybe) my only near-death of the session. The level was full of water squares--I guess it was supposed to be a kind of swamp--so I immediately put my Ring of Levitation on. Before long, I was attacked by someone named Juiblex, who engulfed me like those vortexes do, trapping me in a small cage of his own flesh. Within a couple of hits, I was down to 50% hit points. Even worse, I got the message that, "you feel very sick." I know from experience that "Sick" leads to death in just a few turns if not cured. I knew that I could cure it with my Potion of Extra Healing, but I guessed it didn't make sense to do so until I had killed or gotten away from Juiblex. I wasn't sure a Wand of Death would work from inside, but I told myself I'd try if he didn't die in a couple of hits. Fortunately, he did (he also responded badly to silver), when I was down to one-quarter of my hit points. I quickly took the Potion of Extra Healing out of the Bag of Holding and quaffed it. I guess maybe the unicorn horn would have worked, too.
    
The closest I've come to death in a long time.
     
I continued through the next levels of the maze, cleaving through minotaurs, bone devils, and balrogs. Teleportitis didn't work on some of the levels. Wands of Digging (and pick-axes) didn't work on others. I picked up useful scrolls and potions but mostly didn't bother to even test other things. I meet the occasional cockatrice or rust monster, which I'm always careful to kill at a distance or just avoid, but they do hit me now and then, and I've managed to avoid their effects the same way I avoided level drain. Does it have to do with luck?
   
The last level I explored before closing this session (Level 41) was another special one. It had a fortress in the center apparently ruled by the demon Baalzebub. Like Asmodeus earlier, he teleported right next to me and demanded almost all my gold. Despite having no reason not to give it to him, I said no. He conjured some fellow demons. He and his friends were capable of stunning me with gaze attacks, so I put on my blindfold as soon as I could. Like Asmodeus, he warped away every time I hit him. Unlike Asmodeus, he came back frequently. I kept waiting for him and swiping at him when he appeared, but after about 10 rounds of that, he hadn't died, and I assumed he wasn't going to. I continued on to Level 42 and quit the game there.
  
And then the coward teleported away. He's the little & in the southwest.
    
I have no good answer to the question of why I didn't use one of my Wand of Death charges on Baalzebub or Asmodeus. Certainly, they sounded like the very sorts of enemies I was saving the Wand for. I guess I wanted to wait and see whether they really posed a threat.
      
So let me ask a question that I'm sure is going to come back to haunt me: if dragons and vampire lords and demon princes don't offer any real danger, what at this point could possibly kill me?
   
Time so far: 30 hours


Friday, March 15, 2024

BRIEF: 2088: The Cryllan Mission - The Second Scenario (1990)

The Pai brothers had a unique thing with goats. They were a big part of The Secrets of Bharas, too.
      
2088: The Cryllan Mission - The Second Scenario
United States
Victory Software (developer and publisher)
Released 1990 for Apple II GS
Rejected for: Insufficient differentiation from previous title
        
Here's a game that invites us to reflect on the distinctions we make between "games," "expansions," "quests," "remakes," "versions," "patches," "sequels," and even "engines." So much of it comes down to marketing. We regard The Knight of Diamonds as a "sequel" to the original Wizardry even though it required Wizardry to run and was labeled a "scenario" at the time. Origin wanted us to see Ultima VII, Part 2 as a second half to Part 1 just because it used the same engine and basic mechanics. I'm playing a 1993 "version" of NetHack even though it adds so much plot that if it were commercial, the publisher would probably market it as a wholly different game. 
      
Look close for that small gold sticker.
       
I've said before that I believe instead of waiting 15 years between games, Bethesda should have just taken the mechanics and landscape already developed for Skyrim, whipped together a new plot (with associated quests and NPC dialogues, of course), and sold it for another $75. But would a new plot set in the same game world, using the same engine, be an "expansion" or a brand new game? Does it all come down to what the box says?
   
For the Pai brothers, the authors of 2088, the pressures that led to these questions were not philosophic but economic. Vivek Pai related the story to  me almost six years ago, when I was playing 2088: The Cryllan Mission (1989). In the late 1980s, Victory Software--relying on marketing from Apple--thought that the Apple IIGS was the platform of the future. They fused their interests in popular culture with their own Indian heritage to create 2088, optimistically spending tens of thousands of dollars on around 5,000 full-color game boxes with impressive, professional art. A year later, it was clear to everyone that the IIGS didn't have much longer to live, and the Pai brothers were looking morosely at the thousands of expensive boxes still sitting in their garage. Figuring that once you already have the game engine, commands, menus, graphics, sound, enemies, and combat, it's virtually no effort to write new dialogue and mix around some tiles, the brothers got to work and ordered a couple thousand gold stickers that read "The Second Scenario," slapped them awkwardly on the boxes under the title, and started shipping it.
         
Creating a character in the "academy."
     
2088 isn't a sequel to, but rather a re-imagining of the original game. It opens with the same plot (after all, the back of the box didn't change, nor did the manual): It's 2088, and the U.S.S. Houston has gone missing on the planet Crylla. You're part of a rescue expedition gone to find them. The mechanics of gameplay have not changed except for the addition of an "Ask [for] Object" option during NPC dialogue and a slight tweak to the way doctor and nurse characters operate (they can now only heal if adjacent to the character). Graphis have been marginally improved. Otherwise, this is the same engine we've seen in 2088 and The Secrets of Bharas (1991).
     
The game begins as you use an "Academy" application to create a team of six party members, all of whom can be soldiers, science officers, nurses, or doctors. The game randomly rolls for marksmanship, intelligence, kinetics (avoiding enemy fire), dexterity, and stamina, and you can distribute a bonus pool to adjust these statistics. The character then goes through the academy and might get additional development in those skills.  
       
There are roaches behind the counter of the food store in this town.
      
I made a party and started exploring the land, making comparisons to the first scenario. The content is definitely different. The starting continent is 128 x 128, the same as the first game, but it's a different shape, uses slightly different tiles, and does not wrap (it's surrounded by water). There's talk of other continents accessible by boat, though, which the first scenario didn't have, which suggests the overall game world, like the engine, is going to be a little more like Bharas than the first game. 
        
Exploring outdoors. The first 2088 had cities you couldn't enter without passes, too.
       
The name of the starting land is Soonye. It has a couple of towns, cities, and dungeons, all of which have different names than in the first scenario. Inside those towns are NPCs, also with different names than the first scenario. And yet, the themes so far are all the same. Before they disappeared, the Houston astronauts identified the people of Crylla as peaceful and trusting, but we find them to be armed and suspicious. NPCs tell us that this is a recent change. They blame it on "misanthropes"--it's not clear if they're supposed to be a race or a philosophy--doing everything from infecting the government to robbing travelers on the highway. The towns have force fields that stop anyone from entering at night. Cities require passes to enter. All of this is the same as the original mission. I didn't take (or keep) extensive notes on NPC dialogue in the original, so I haven't been able to identify any obvious examples of simple paragraph-rewriting, but a couple of the dialogues have felt awfully familiar.
       
This exact dialogue did not exist in the first game, but the same themes were there.
        
Also identical (or near-identical) to the first game are the inventory system, character development system, and combat mechanics. Each character starts with rifles and thermal armor and can upgrade, as money becomes available, to stronger versions of both. Characters level up at fixed experience thresholds.
   
Combat occurs in the same rather innovative turn-based tactical grid, with characters trading moves with enemies and able to  move, attack, rest, or cast grenades during their rounds. The game has a relatively sophisticated (for its time) auto-combat system, in which you can set a variety of preferences and watch the action. Pathfinding is poor, and it treats rifles like melee weapons, but otherwise works out relatively well. 
    
Dungeons look to be the same bland, multi-leveled creations that they were in 2088 and Bharas, probably necessary for a few key items. It also has that weird "transport" system in which you can have, like, a laser-enabled hover car, but every character has to enter and exit individually, and once you're in a transport, combat uses its weapons and "armor" instead of your personal ones. 
        
Encountering some local fauna in the Linkronite Mines.
        
As I explored the land, I had the overwhelming sense that I had already played the game, thematically in its predecessor and mechanically in its successor. It felt like the same themes and quests were taking shape. I imagined spending between 12 (2088) and 63 (Bharas) hours with it only to find another variation on the Star Trek episode "Patterns of Force"--another revelation that the Houston crew had overthrown and militarized the Cryllan people--only with different maps and rewritten dialogue, and I asked myself if I would regard such time as well-spent. I decided I would not. Hence, the BRIEF.
   
However, I must now confess two things:
      
1. This decision was highly influenced by my growing distaste for Ultima-style games with iconographic interfaces that do not either a) have a coordinate system, or b) provide at least a rough map in the box. I started to map the land of Soonye because it's the only way I know to ensure that you've found all locations. I screwed up at some point, as I always do when I try to map a large overland world without any coordinates. I'm honestly thinking I'm going to refuse to play such games in the future unless Andrew Schultz has posted a map on GameFAQs.
         
About as far as I got with the map before I realized I'd hopelessly bungled it.
         
2. Part of me wants to verify for sure that the plot was going to resolve in the same way. I tried opening the disks with CiderPress, but I wasn't able to extract text from the relevant files. I don't know Apple IIGS disk formats, so I'm not sure what to try. If anyone else wants to take a stab at it, I'm 99% sure that the relevant disk is the "outdoor" one and the relevant files are the ones named PLAYER.TEXTS:LandX:TownX:PersonX.
      
Barring any further developments in those areas, I'm inclined to leave it a BRIEF. I don't know if this precedent will always hold, but in general, I think if the box, manual, plot, and engine are the same as a previous game, it's not really a "new" game. That doesn't mean I wouldn't happily play it if I really liked the game.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

NetHack [3.1]: Wish List

 
I am not going back to these mines again.
      
To start this session, I wasted a bunch of time going all the way back to the bottom level of the Gnomish Mines, only to fail to find a luckstone or whatever it was I was supposed to find there, despite searching every wall and futilely using my pick-axe at every place that looked like it might have a secret area. I guess it wasn't a complete waste, as I stopped at the temple on my way through the town, donated $6,000 to the priest, and got some intrinsic protection. I also killed and ate a wraith on the way back, bringing me to Level 15.
   
How, precisely?
      
When I reached Level 20, I discovered that at some point, somehow, about 10 of my items had become cursed, including my Ring of Regeneration, my Speed Boots, my Bell of Opening, my credit card, and my blindfold. I don't know how or where that happened. I spent about an hour sorting it out, first by casting "Remove Curse" until it was useless. Fortunately, I found a fountain, an altar, and a treasure zoo on the level. The altar was aligned lawful, but I used a tip from a commenter to sacrifice corpses on it until it changed to chaotic. I then used the fountain to turn all my potions into potions of water, had the altar bless them, and dipped the remaining cursed items into the potions. It took a while and I lost some decent potions. 
          
Kick his ass, Erevan!
      
Around this time, I decided to narrate a couple of full levels in detail, so here goes:
 
I begin in the southwest corner of Level 21. The room is dark, and I light it up with a lamp. There's nothing in it. I put on my blindfold and see three initial entities on the level: a wraith (yay!), a troll, and a human priest of Solonor Thelandira. I head for the wraith first. I ate one fairly recently, while returning from the Gnomish Mines, and it brought me to Level 15. If I play my cards right, I can get another level out of this one. I don't want him to touch me, so I grab his attention and then lead him back to the main room, where I'll have a few rounds to hit him with daggers or wands. It takes three daggers and two blasts from the Wand of Lightning, but I kill him. Fortunately, he leaves a corpse (along with a Wand of Digging). I eat it and jump to Level 16.
      
Tossing stuff at a wraith before he can reach me.
     
In the room the wraith came from, I find the steps down. There's a statue of an ogre king that comes to life when I approach, but he's friendly, so I don't attack. My "Auto Searching" senses identify a trap before I step on it. A message appears: "You hear someone counting money." I think this means that there's a hidden vault somewhere on the level, but I can't remember what vaults mean or if it's a good idea to loot them. 

I head west, and the troll moves to intercept me as I approach. I'm not really scared of him, so I just fight him in melee combat. He dies in a few hits, as does a rope golem that spontaneously generated behind me during the fight. I have to quickly eat the troll to prevent him from regenerating; I'm sure there are other ways, but I don't remember what they are. I kick open the door to the next room--I always kick doors, as it exercises strength and dexterity. Some of them are sometimes trapped, but they never do much damage.
      
Or go through the back door, it turns out. Where do you get "the right tune"?
      
On the far west side of the level, I find a room with a priest of Solomor Thelandira, a lawful deity. The altar is thus aligned lawful. I know there was some confusion about whether an altar could be converted if a priest was in the room, but I don't really need to convert it since there's another one just one level above me, so I leave it alone. A few trivial enemies spawn in the rest of the rooms. I clear them out and head down the stairs.
   
On Level 22, my blindfold shows me a throne room with a black dragon right in the middle of a bunch of orcs. Black dragons are among the most dangerous creatures in the game, with "Disintegration" breath, but eating their corpses gives you resistance to the same. I know from experience that dragons don't breathe if you're in melee range, so I kick open the door and step out of his line of fire. The next time my Teleportitis activates, I teleport to the square right next to him and engage him in melee combat. He dies in about 12 hits. I eat his corpse and gain the resistance that I'm looking for. It was a gamble, but it paid off. 
      
Preparing to jump right next to the dragon.
     
While I'm eating the dragon, by the way, the orcs and other enemies, including a fire giant, are beating away at me. They literally do no damage, or so little that my regeneration heals me in the next round. I've never felt so invulnerable playing a game of NetHack. I'm sure it's all going to come crashing down at some point. I'll make some arrogant mistake and get killed. But for now--and especially after this session--it's hard to see what's going to kill me.
   
I head to the throne room and start sitting in the throne. I get a couple of messages that I feel out of place, and I get confused for a few turns. But on my fifth or sixth try--I swear to Erevan Ilesere--I get the ability to wish for another object. Already having magic resistance from my scale mail, I decided to use this one on "Reflection." It takes a while because I thought there was an object called a Cloak of Reflection, but I guess it doesn't exist in this version. The game keeps telling me it's not a valid object (fortunately, that doesn't cancel the wish). I think Amulets and Shields of Reflection are both valid, and I spend some time debating which I'd rather have. I don't think there are Shields of Anything Else whereas there are several other potentially-useful amulet types, so I try the shield and get it.
        
I'm glad I kept trying.
      
I find a magic marker amid all the debris, which will be useful later for writing scrolls. My dexterity keeps fluctuating from 17 to 16, sometimes getting exercised from the door-kicking, sometimes getting "abused" from being over-satiated a lot of the time.
   
On Level 23, there's another killer bee hive in the northeast, which gives me another load of royal honey for both nutrition and increasing strength. 
        
I love it when my blindfold shows me this.
        
Level 25 offers a store, but without a single useful object except for (ironically) an Amulet of Reflection. I sell some gems there. There are four mimics in the place, which I think is a record. An altar room in the northwest has another chaotic altar and a friendly "Elvenking." He sounds important, but I can't find anything to do with him.
   
Level 26 has a type of room I've never seen before: a swamp in which every other square is water. I navigate this room very carefully, making sure not to blunder into the water squares while fighting various eels that live there. 
       
Threading my way through the swamp.
       
Level 27 starts out very weird. It begins in a long, rectangular room from north to south. There are a bunch of friendly monsters in the room, including gremlins, which keep falling into pools of water and multiplying, making it hard to get around. A titan attacks me with a Wand of Cold when I arrive, but I kill him in short order. My blindfold alerts me to other monsters on the level, including an angel, a couatl, a vampire lord, and Medusa. Most of them are all the way to the far east.
   
I find a secret door in the upper-left, but it just opens onto a pool of water, so I can't go that way. The walls are impervious to my pick-axe and I cannot teleport. Boulders and three pools of water prevent me from searching some of the walls in the southeast. I destroy one of the boulders with my pick-axe and shove the other into the northernmost pool, turning it into dry ground. Stepping on it, I find a secret door to the southeast. It lets me out, but only to confront me with a large lake of water blocking me from getting to the other "islands" on the level. I clearly need some sort of levitation. I don't think jumping is an option. Even if it was, it would require me to drop and leave behind more stuff than I feel comfortable dropping. Oh, and I find an Amulet of Magical Breathing under the titan's corpse, but even if it will let me walk through the water, I don't want to ruin all my stuff again.
     
Trying to figure out what to do here.
        
Disgruntled, I begin making my way back up the levels, looking for anything that will help. A giant spawns and attacks me with a Wand of Fire, which I take off his corpse after I kill him. I believe Wands of Fire can dry up pools of water, but it only has four charges. I also think Wands of Ice can freeze pools, and I come across one I left behind on Level 18, but it's dead. I break a statue and get a spellbook with "Haste," but that doesn't help. Finally, back on Level 8, I found a Potion of Levitation in a store. That would seem to be what I need, but it also means I can't get back unless I find some other means on the other side of Medusa.
    
I hesitate to tell you this next part because I don't think you're going to believe me. I promise I'm telling the truth and I've been adhering to all the NetHack rules--no scumming, no permadeath. I've backed up my character a couple of times, but I haven't reloaded. I mean, if I was going to narrate a bunch of lies, surely I'd make up something more believable than sitting in the throne on the way back down through Level 22 and getting yet another wish, right?
      
This is what I need, but is it enough?
      
But that's what happens. And now I'm in a conundrum. I can wish for a Ring of Levitation and be done with the levitation question or get another ultra-cool item for my ascension kit. Or maybe a blessed Scroll of Genocide for liches, or a special helm or pair of gloves. Ultimately, I decide to go for the Ring of Levitation, though. I don't know how many more of these situations I'm going to encounter. The throne vanishes after the wish, keeping me from trying a third time.
   
Back on the medusa level, I drink the potion before putting on the ring, and I'm glad I got the ring, as the potion only lasts a dozen or so rounds. I see a mind flayer approaching on the level. The game says several times that it "locks on to my telepathy." I don't know what that means, but it seems like a good creature not to get close to, so I destroy it with missile weapons and wands. Afterwards, I eat its corpse and get +1 intelligence. The angel also attacks me and actually manages to damage me for the first time this session, to the tune of about 20 hit points, before I kill him.
   
This whole time, I'm keeping an eye on Medusa by occasionally putting on my blindfold. Eventually, I make my way over to her room--a mirror of the entry room--on the far side of the level. A secret door opens as I approach and the vampire lord emerges. I destroy him and a lich with missile weapons. 
  
There's a wand underneath a boulder, and at first I imagine I've found yet another couple of wishes, but it turns out to be a Wand of Speed Monster.
     
Keeping an eye on Medusa and her minions.
     
Medusa's building turns out to have multiple rings of rooms, and I slowly make my way to her, killing the other enemies in the hall. I make sure to have on my blindfold when I open the final door to her chamber, which also contains a baby green dragon. No sooner do I have the door open than the game says, "You destroy Medusa!" When I take off my blindfold, she's been turned into a statue. I can only imagine that she tried her gaze attack on me, and it hit my Shield of Reflection.
   
Lest you think this session is too blessed, I realize at this point that I accidentally left my pick-axe outside the shop where I got the Potion of Levitation. (Shopkeepers make you drop them outside so you can't tunnel out of the shop without paying.) So I either have to go all the way back or move forward, hoping I find one later. I can already picture the entry in which I relate how I died in some preventable way because I didn't have a pick-axe. I sigh and go back for it.
      
@#$#% shopkeeper.
      
Half an hour later, I return to the Medusa level and gleefully shatter all her statutes. One of them has a spellbook of "Remove Curse." While trying to read it to learn the spell better, for some reason all of my gold disappears.
     
Medusa's full level.
     
I move down from the Medusa Level. Level 28 is a maze with a variety of monsters but nothing interesting. I find two Wands of Digging on the level, and since I already have two in my inventory, I just use them to blast open walls to make it easier to get around the level.
  
Level 29 is the famous castle level. As with the Medusa level, Teleportitis doesn't work. The castle is surrounded by a moat, a closed drawbridge marking the entrance. Something I heard in the game--a hint from the Oracle or maybe from a priest--indicates that I need to play music to lower the drawbridge. Having no way to do that, I put on the Ring of Levitation and circle around to the back door. The ring helps me avoid a number of trap doors in the hallway. There are several dragons guarding treasure chambers. I kill them and get the "Resist Shock" intrinsic by eating the corpse of a blue one.
     
I think that's what this means, anyway.
     
The hallway leads to a main chamber absolutely full of monsters: soldiers, elementals, nagas, and so on. The only thing that really scares me are the rust monsters, but if I just back up a few steps, they can't get to me without falling down to the next level and I can toss weapons and spells at them.
    
It's nice when they kill each other.
      
When it's all done, I spend a lot of time writing Scrolls of Identify with my marker, blessing them with my potions, and identifying stacks of items strewn all over the level. The good things I find are: a pair of Gloves of Dexterity, 6 tallow candles, a Scroll of Genocide, a Scroll of Enchant Weapon, and a Potion of Gain Ability. There are also a million C-rations and K-rations, which I stuff in a chest in case I come through this way again. You'll be happy to know that the throne disappeared the first time I tried to sit on it. 
   
There is, of course, a Wand of Wishing in a corner chamber. I identify it with a stack of other stuff; it has 2 charges. I think if I use the first on a Scroll of Recharging, I might be able to get as many as three wishes out of it. 
     
It's about time we got some wishes around here.
       
There are no stairs heading down, so I think I'll have to drop through one of the trap doors. Before I do, let me get your opinions on a) what to wish for (or whether to avoid wishing for anything just yet), b) what to genocide, and c) whether I need more levels. This is what I have, along with some notes:
    
  • Amulet of Magical Breathing. I'm sure it has some uses beyond breathing underwater. Perhaps it's necessary for some of the levels coming up, or from protecting against some monsters. I feel like the slot could be better spent on a different amulet, though; I just don't know what.
  • Blessed +6 long sword. I would have liked to find an artifact weapon, but this is doing just fine.
  • Speed Boots +0. I remember this being vital to my ascension kits in previous NetHacks.
  • Shield of Reflection +2. Ditto.
  • Gray Dragon Scale Mail +2. Ditto again.
  • Gauntlets of Dexterity +0. Could be persuaded to part with them if there are better gauntlets or gloves.
  • Orcish Helm +2. I'm sure there must be some artifact helms that could replace this.
  • Elven Cloak +4. Pretty happy with this.
  • A variety of food items, not worth enumerating.
  • Blessed Scroll of Identify
  • 2 Scrolls of Blank Paper (I keep dipping scrolls I don't want into fountains).
  • Scroll of Genocide
  • Scroll of Punishment. Found recently; waiting to dip; afraid I'll accidentally hit the wrong number and read it. I should just drop it.
  • Potion of Holy Water
  • Ring of Fire Resistance. I have fire resistance intrinsically. I don't remember if items stack.
  • Ring of Regeneration. My native regeneration is so high, I'm not sure why I'm still carrying this.
  • Ring of Protection +2. This could be sacrificed for something more important.
  • Ring of Levitation. Probably vital.
  • Two Wands of Digging, 9 charges total.
  • Wand of Death, 2 charges.
  • Wand of Wishing, 2 charges.
  • Wand of Teleportation, 6 charges.
  • Wand of Magic Missile. I have no idea why.
  • 7 Tallow Candles and 1 Wax Candle. I don't know the difference.
  • Magic Marker with 8 charges left.
  • Bell of Opening.
  • Palantir of Westernesse.
  • Pick-Axe.
  • Blessed +0 Unicorn Horn.
  • Blindfold.
  • Magic Lamp.
  • Credit Card (for unlocking).
    
I'll be happy to take advice. Next time, I'll see you in Hell!
   
Time so far: 25 hours

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Shadow of Yserbius: Summary and Rating

 
I solve one quest.
        
The Shadow of Yserbius
United States
Ybarra Productions (developer); Sierra Online (publisher)
Multiplayer online version released 1992 for DOS on the Sierra Network (later the ImagiNation Network)
Solo offline version released 1993 for DOS
Taken offline in 1996
Date Started: 9 February 2024 
Date Ended: 7 March 2024
Total Hours: 24
Difficulty: Medium-Hard (3.5/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)
     
Summary:
     
Yserbius is a relatively pointless offline version of a popular online RPG in which you explore the ruins of a fallen kingdom and try to defeat the evil that caused it to collapse. The interface, combat mechanics, and enemy difficulty are clearly meant to be faced by multiple characters at once. The single-player version involves a lot of grinding and a persistent feeling that you're not going to get very far. It seems likely that Sierra intended it not for authentic offline play but to whet the player's appetite for an online account.
   
Aside from the well-composed graphics, the game mechanics are about 8 years old for the era, offering not much greater complexity than Wizardry or The Bard's Tale. You navigate a series of 16 x 16 dungeon levels in 3D view and meet monster parties of different sizes, which you engage in turn-based combat. The interface is acceptable, particularly the automap, but it requires too much mouse work. Combat mechanics, equipment, NPC interaction, and character leveling are all acceptable but nothing special.
    
*****
    
Well, I solved a quest of sorts before the end. I gathered King Cleowyn's scepter, robe, and crown from the Secret Area level (which turned out to be three sections of one small map, not three separate maps) and brought them to the Mausoleum. I found slots in the walls that accepted the items, and visited them (as an NPC had suggested) in the order of crown, robe, scepter. I was briefly stymied when I repeatedly couldn't get past a pack of "hell wolves" without dying, but I took an alternate route and managed to make it to a final chamber. There, I had to fight a battle with three ghouls and two liches, but fortunately they die to "Poison Cloud" like everyone else; I just had to keep myself alive long enough for it to work.
       
I thought I killed the spirit of King Cleowyn in an earlier session.
     
The "reward" was a couple hundred thousand experience points plus four items of equipment: the Sword of the Crypt, the Mourning Star, the Bow of Sorrow, and Galabryan Chainmail.
   
It was the equipment that made me quit. I was probably going to quit anyway, but there's an element of ragequitting in my quitting. None of those items is clearly better than any of the items I already had, and they sell for a lot less. I don't know if that means anything or not. One of the things I'm heartily sick of hearing on this blog, no matter what the game, is that "an item's sale price doesn't necessarily reflect its utility," especially when there's no other goddamned way to tell what items do. Don't tell me to look at statistics. The statistics barely change. And what I need--protection against petrification, primarily--isn't reflected in the statistics. If the developers were so bone-headed as to make more useful items sell for less money, and there's no other way to tell their relative rankings, and you can't point to any source online that offers any help, then please just leave me to my ignorance. Otherwise, I'll be too busy fantasizing about what I'm going to do to the developers when I meet them in hell to concentrate on the game.
    
Before I solved the quest of Cleowyn's artifacts, I did a few other things:
    
  • I finally killed the king hobgoblin in the basement. He had a Ring of Warding--one of many things that there's no way to tell what it does.
  • I finished mapping most of the Great Corridor. There were a few places with fixed battles I couldn't pass. I got a blessing for Knights and Dwarves, whatever that does, and found the battle that gives me the King's Pass.
     
If I hadn't received this blessing, when would it have been a problem?
     
  • I used the pass to get to the King's Domicile, although the guard takes it from you, so you have to go find a new one every time you want to enter. I mapped a part of the domicile, but trap doors kept dropping me down to the Lava Cellar.
     
Why don't you just give me that one back?
    
  • The King's Domicile, incidentally, introduces spinners for the first time in the game. This is absolutely not the way to do spinners. They beep when you step into them, and then there's like a five second pause while you spin. The whole point of spinners is to mess up navigation; they lose that point when you alert the player that they've been spun.
  • Banshees remained my bêtes noires until the end of the game. I couldn't last a single round with even one of them.
      
I never stand a chance against them.
       
I'm quitting on Level 18, so I'll never know what's behind those Level 20 doors. Please tell me if you know. Are they just shortcuts to deeper parts of the dungeon? I can tell from online sources that I barely scratched the surface when it comes to dungeon maps. I gather they go down to Level 12 and there are about 60 of them. There's a main quest to kill En-Li-Kil, the out-of-control "time elemental," though I don't know if it's possible with only one party member.
    
In a GIMLET, the game earns: 
     
  • 4 points for the game world, offering a perfectly fine, if derivative story about a fallen kingdom, a wizard, and a demon. The game does a decent job referencing this backstory through dungeon encounters and NPCs.
  • 5 points for character creation and development. The choice of classes and the rewards offered by leveling up are relatively standard for a competent commercial RPG. I felt that each new level brought me significant power, even into the teens. Different character choices would create a significantly different combat experience, if nothing else.
    
As far as I went.
     
  • 5 points for NPCs. There are a lot of them, and they impart a lot of lore, which is really all it takes to get halfway up the scale. There are no dialogue options or role-playing options with them.
  • 4 points for encounters and foes.The monsters offered by the game are varied enough, with an appropriate number of special attacks and other strengths. The non-combat encounters include wall messages, keyed doors, and other light puzzles. They might have gotten more interesting later.
  • 4 points for magic and combat. What would be an adequate-but-not-particularly special combat system for a party becomes less interesting for a single character. There are a few tactics worth exploring and maybe a few that I didn't find.
      
This was the last battle I fought in this session.
     
  • 3 points for equipment. A reasonably good selection with reasonably good randomization, undone by making it impossible to tell what most things do
  • 2 points for the economy. It's fun for the first 10 character levels. Then you've bought everything there is to buy and the money won't stop. There are a million things that the developers could have done to make it more interesting for a single player, including more equipment, an item identification system, a hireling system, or paying for fast travel.
       
I think the Sword of Destruction was the best sword that I found.
      
  • 4 points for quests. The game has what appears to be a main quest and a number of side quests.
  • 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. It gets most of that for graphics, which are both pleasant and functional. The sound is too sparse to be worth any points, and the interface lacks enough keyboard support, particularly in combat. I give a little credit for the automap.
  • 3 points for gameplay. I give it some credit for a little nonlinearity and a little replayability, but it's a little too grindy and hard for one character.
   
That gives us a final score of 37, which frankly isn't a great score by 1993. I know I'm rating a multiplayer game on a single-player rating scale, but I'd still expect a 1993 game to be at least as good as Might and Magic or The Bard's Tale or Dungeon Master. There's something about Yserbius that feels . . . "basic," I guess. I'm using that word the way the kids do these days: adequate, unremarkable, nothing that really stands out. I could see how it would be fun as a multiplayer experience, chatting with folks in the tavern and so forth, but I don't see how it offers anything unique as a multiplayer experience. It's like meeting your friends in, I don't know, Albuquerque. You're bound to have a good time because it's a city and they're your friends--but why didn't we pick New Orleans or Seattle or something?
      
This cover works for me.
      
But there wasn't much else around in terms of online RPGs--basically this and AOL's Neverwinter Nights (1991)--so I can see how it may have scratched that multiplayer itch that I've never experienced. By the time the offline version of Yserbius was published, its sequel, The Fates of Twinion, was already up and running and getting more accolades than the base game. Twinion was packaged with Yserbius in the offline version. I fired it up for a few minutes. I didn't notice anything different in terms of mechanics, but there were some minor graphical improvements. Its story begins after the defeat of the demon En-Li-Kil, with Cleowyn's daughter, Aeowyn, suddenly arriving, declaring herself queen, and building her own palace in the depths of Yserbius. She then sends out a call for adventurers to venture even deeper into the mountain to find a mysterious Portal of Time. Yserbius's second sequel, Ruins of Cawdor (1995) never got an offline version. According to online sources, it did not take place in the realm of Twinion but instead offered a plot based on Macbeth
      
Twinion has some texture improvements but is mostly the same style of game.
       
That goddamned Spear of Destiny ad greets me again as I open the February 1994 Computer Gaming World to read reviewer Bernie Yee's reaction to the offline Yserbius. "A hollow shell of its vibrant on-line self," he declares. "Playing Yserbius without fellow on-line gamers is like being in an amusement park after hours, one in which the rides aren't all that fun to begin with." That's an interesting statement. He's basically agreeing with me that the only attraction to the regular Yserbius is the novelty of online play, and that stripped of that novelty, the base game is just blah: "Yserbius is no technological achievement in game design." He offers some praise for the auto-map but notes that the tactics of combat pale in comparison to the Gold Box series and contemporary games like Darklands. He recommends it as an introduction to the mechanics, so that players can prepare themselves for online play, but "there is no way that in the age of Lands of Lore, Riftwar, and Ultima VIII: Pagan, you can take . . . Yserbius seriously as a stand-alone game." Damn. Where has CGW been hiding this Bernie Yee? I may have met my soulmate.
    
I feel like my "difficulty" rating, which I rarely explain, deserves a little more discussion. Fundamentally, Yserbius is "easy," since getting killed just means getting kicked out of the dungeon. The "hard" part is the tedium associated with going back into the dungeon, finding your way to where you died, and probably getting killed again. Surviving many of its combats, particularly as a solo character, is hard. But it's easy in the sense that if you're willing to grind, the game will give you plenty of leash to do it. The rating I landed on was a combination of the two.
     
Twinion also has a new main menu. I think this is supposed to be the same place, though.
      
I watched some online play, as I was curious if the NPCs and encounters were the same as in the offline version. It appears they were. I hope it goes without saying that the game is much more tactical in its online incarnation, where cooperation among players allows for timely combinations of skills and spells that I could not experience. The videos also confirmed that at upper levels, all classes get essentially all skills and all spells, making class differences less important than in the first 10-15 levels. It appears that I didn't invest enough in "Sovereign" scrolls, which allow you to grab an enemy party and turn them to your side. That could have come in handy. Finally, it appears that if I had made it to Level 20, I would have had to decide whether I wanted to keep the character fully offline or transition him to online play.
     
The Shadow of Yserbius remained online until 1996. AT&T purchased the ImagiNation Network from Sierra in 1994 and kept the game going, but they sold the network to AOL in 1996. Multiple sites say that AOL killed the game because it competed with Neverwinter Nights, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. How could it "compete" if AOL now owned it? There were reportedly lines of people waiting to get in to Neverwinter each night; why couldn't the service support a second online RPG? I suspect that the game was just horribly outdated by then. Nonetheless, one should never underestimate the power of nostalgic fans. From 2007-2015, a fan-sponsored ImagiNation Revival Project put the games online for a new generation of players. I'm not sure there was ever an explanation for why that server went offline, but for whatever reason, a new fan named Zane W. decided to step up. He re-coded both Yserbius and Twinion from scratch, making some additions and adjustments, and opened it as MedievaLands.
        
Character creation in MedievaLands offers more information about the variables.
       
The game has some slick improvements, including upgraded graphics, an interface that keeps the map on the screen at all times, much better sound effects, and quality of life improvements like the ability to see how many doses a potion has left and--hell, yeah--actual weapon and armor statistics. It also adds quests and achievements that the original game doesn't have. The changes are enough that I would probably consider MedievaLands a fundamentally different game, even if I were interested in trying to experience online gameplay. In any event, the few times I logged in, there was no one else online to adventure with.
     
The post-combat loot screen in MedievaLands.
      
Yserbius creator Joe Ybarra is still in the industry, or was as of a few years ago, with credits on some Age of Empires titles. He moved to a producer role in the 1990s. I don't think we'll see him again unless I get the MMO bug at some point and want to try Shadowbane (2003), if it's still even possible to do so. That's the key problem with preserving the history of MMOs. Wizardry and Ultima will last forever, but an MMO is only around as long as its community is active and paying subscription fees.
    
A final question: What should I call this in the "Won?" column? Would it have been possible for a solo player to defeat En-Li-Kil and complete the final quest? Or should I call it an "N/A"?