Pagan: In the Hall of the Mountain King

 

I wash my hands of this Avatar.

             

The Guardian has marooned the Avatar on the world of Pagan, which is dominated by four elemental titans, each with its own school of magic. The Avatar has learned that if he wants to escape, he's going to have to master the different magical systems: Necromancy, Tempestry, Theurgy, and Sorcery. He has managed to apprentice himself to the head (and perhaps only) Necromancer. He has sent me on a quest to learn Necromancy from his predecessors, now long-dead in the Catacombs. When I wrapped up the last session, I was exploring the Catacombs, trying to find these teachers. I have found plenty of corpses, but none that respond to the "Death Speak" spell.

      

As we begin, let's deal with two lingering questions from the last session:

   

1. What happens if you use the Key of the Caretaker on your entire reagent bag? Alas, the game just says, "something is not right." I expected DOSBox to crash.

 

2. Can you jump up onto the roof of that columbarium from the pedestal? Yes! There's nothing there, though. But at least we learned some new vocabulary. Loculi are the slots on the wall; columbaria are structures with lots of loculi. These days, they typically just hold urns.

        

At least the view is nice.

       

With that accomplished, I keep exploring:

     

• Lots of ghouls and skeletons, at least one ghost.

     

Either this guy has killed a lot of people or the Pagans stopped using loculi at some point and just started tossing bodies into a pile.

       

• An area where the Catacomb wall has crumbled away and the surrounding cave is intruding. As I enter, a chunk of concrete falls from the ceiling and crashes to the ground.

• Plaques: SHOENROCK | HEGLAND HEGWOOD | JOHN OF GARLAND | TIS FAR TOO LATE FOR ME | HEAVRIN, ARCHITECT, LAID TO REST IN HIS OWN PLAN | DON'T LOOK NOW I TOLD YOU IT WAS MY ECHIDNAS | LESIFER BELOVED SISTER M.F.H. (?). I assume that like the gravestones, these are references to the design team or other in-jokes.

• A locked tomb has a plaque next to it: THE BIRTHPLACE OF MORIENS (the first necromancer). I revoke my previous vow not to search all the skeletons in the area, but I don't find the key.

     

I'm going to be glad later that I noted this.

       

• A tomb to KAYLITH, TREASURER. This one is unlocked. It has a couple of containers with obsidian pieces, junk, and (best of all) another bag.

• Traps include sinkholes opening up into lava or acid or  something (recounted last time), gouts of flame that come out of the floor, and jets on the walls that shoot fireballs.

      

Nailed by a fireball. A sinkhole lies nearby.

      

• Exploration is confounded by one-way gates.

• A body labeled MASTER OF THE KEYS has a key. It does not open the Birthplace of Moriens but rather a locked chest protected by two fireball jets. There is nothing in this chest. 

      

A locked door is advertised as going to the Lower Catacombs. I don't know where to find the key, but it turns out that's not an issue. When I open the door to a particular mausoleum, I immediately fall through the floor to a cavern. A trio of barrels nearby has a ton of spell reagents, in particular the two I need for the "Death Speak" spell, just in case I didn't think to bring them. It's soon clear that I'm going to need a second reagent bag. Just when I thought I had enough bags.

       

About to fall.

       

As I explore the area, the ground shakes, rocks fall from the ceiling, fireballs shoot from the walls, and ghosts, skeletons, and ghouls periodically attack. At last, I find stairs leading upwards to a corpse on a platform. It is labeled "Necromancer." I thought I'd be casting "Death Speak" on random bones, but I guess the ancient necromancers are pretty well-labeled.

        

What a moron.

      

This one sits up when I cast "Death Speak." He says that I'll be visiting the other necromancers in succession. Each will teach me a spell that I need to reach the next one. This one teaches me "Mask of Death" (QAS CORP), which will make me appear dead to anyone who sees me.

   

It becomes clear a few minutes later why I'd want to do that. I run into a trio of demons. In battle, I'm unable to kill more than one of them. I could probably handle them with enough reloads and some luck, but as expected, when I cast "Mask of Death," they take no notice of me.

         

No one's going to confuse these guys with gargoyles.

        

Following my rightmost-wall exploration pattern, I'm soon killed by a lightning bolt that comes out of nowhere. On a reload, I go the other way and pick up a couple of backpacks full of reagents before meeting the second necromancer, Bentos. He teaches me "Rock Flesh" (REL SANCT YLEM), which requires wood and dirt.

    

This spell gets me past a corridor full of lightning bolts, although I note that nothing visual changes about the Avatar with either "Mask of Death" or "Rock Flesh."

   

Past a kith and some more ghouls is the third necromancer, who teaches me "Summon Dead" (KAL XEN CORP), which requires blood, bone, and wood. Fortunately, the game keeps throwing reagents at me. After I speak to this necromancer, I'm automatically teleported to the next area.

   

The pattern breaks at this point, as I don't need "Summon Dead" to reach the next necromancer, past some pillars that shoot lightning at regular intervals. This one teaches me "Grant Peace" (IN VAS CORP), which puts skeletons to rest permanently. This is timely, as one particular skeleton keeps menacing me while I try to talk to this necromancer, although as soon as I'm finished with the conversation, I'm teleported to a new cavern.

     

I know who I'm casting it on first.

       

This last necromancer, incidentally, tells me that he doesn't trust me and doubts my devotion to Lithos. This is a solid observation, as I'm not devoted to Lithos at all. Unfortunately, the game doesn't give me the option to say that. I can only say: "I am devoted, Necromancer." Dialogue options and role-playing aren't really things in this game.

      

This last cavern is large and square, with an area of grass and foliage in its center. A building in the middle of the grassy area has a large throne, but as I approach, I'm teleported away. 

     

I never discover what this key is for.

       

More caverns. Lava. More fireballs shooting inexplicably out of the walls and exploding nearby. Ghouls. Changelings. I find a suit of magic armor and yet another reagent bag, then a key with no lock anywhere nearby. This is getting annoying. I have to reload a couple of times when fireballs kill me. I have to jump from platform to platform. I'm teleported mid-jump to yet another new area. Here's another necromancer—only he's not the last, as he says I'll need to seek someone named Galious, who will teach me how to get an audience with Lithos.

        

Alcohol and a rock?

       

This unnamed necromancer, meanwhile, teaches me "Withstand Death" (VAS AN CORP), though he warns me that I'll only be able to cast it once, I guess in my entire life. He says I'll know when I need it. I mix it but naturally don't cast it.

   

Past more tremors, skeletons, chests of reagents, a kith, and a seeker, I find a building with a door. Galious is lying on a slab inside. He says that to reach Lithos, the Mountain King, I will need to find Stone Cove and cast "Create Golem" (IN ORT YLEM XEN) on a patch of mud. Only this golem will be able to open the door to Lithos's hall.

      

A nearby door takes me back to a familiar area: the Upper Catacombs, before I fell through the collapsing floor. I don't remember doors that I couldn't open, but I start poking around. It doesn't help that I took a four-week hiatus in the middle of this entry and can't remember anything about the geography of this area. I keep getting killed by exploding flaming skulls (how are you supposed to defend against these?) and crumbling floors that dump me into lava.

        

There are a lot of reagents here.

       

A door that I don't remember leads to an extremely long and windy set of caverns, with multiple places that appear to be dead ends until I jump over a river or maneuver around some rock. The game gets extremely finicky with movement in this area, and I have trouble going where I want to go. Amidst more skeletons, tremors, falling rocks, fireballs, and floor traps, a lever opens the way to a door.

    

The door takes me to a large cavern that ends at a lake. A small structure has a locked door, but more important is an enormous double-door right next to it. I find a patch of ground that looks like mud and cast "Create Golem." An earth golem appears. I have several commands; for now, I have it "Follow" me to the door and then "Open" the door.

      

With great power comes great grunts.

        

It would be nice if Lithos were just sitting on a throne on the other side of the door, but of course that's too easy. In the subsequent long and complicated series of caverns, I reload close to 50 times, dying from falling stones, fireballs, and falling into water because of either mistimed jumps or platforms that disappeared underneath me. The vaunted improvements conferred by the famous patch seem to disappear in this area; the Avatar dies repeatedly by simply misjudging distances and miscalculating the appearance and disappearance of stones. It doesn't help that the "jump" command (clicking with both mouse buttons) fails about half the time.

         

A second later, that platform will disappear, and I'll be in the drink.

       

I ultimately have to find a couple of keys to get through a couple of doors, but along the way:

    

• A ruined building with two double-lanterns outside. What is powering these lanterns?

       

Did they run gas lines down here?

      

• Multiple areas in which sections of platforms appear and disappear. 

• A maze of invisible force fields in between pillars. They become visible, and damage the Avatar significantly, when he tries to walk through them. A note on a dead apprentice from times of yore indicates that the Avatar can throw the area's copious mushrooms between the pillars to test for force fields and thus find the path through the maze. I do this for a little while, but it turns out that the force fields, while harmful, do not actually stop the Avatar from going through the pillars. And since there's no obstacle to resting and healing as often as necessary, this area is just begging for a brute force solution. At its end, a chest offers a key and an orb that allows free passage through the fields in both this and another area.

     

A mushroom reveals a force field. Because it's organic, I guess.

       

• Two skeletons belong to two previous apprentices, twins, named Bruce and Bryan. The texts are both identical, bemoaning that their "frail bones" have ensured they will never meet Lithos, both asking the finder to tell the other brother of his passing. 

• A futhark room on a platform teleports me back to the beginning of the area.  

    

At last, I'm in Lithos's chamber. A long row of skeletons and ghouls stands at attention (kind of a waste of resources, in my opinion) in a long row leading up to a pair of stone obelisks with busts of Lithos on the top. The caverns rumble and his face appears out of stone before me.

       

Duh-duh-duh-duh-DUH-duh-duh, DUH-duh-duh, DUH-duh-duh . . .

            

"What human is this who comes before me?" The Avatar explains that Vividos is now the Necromancer, which Lithos already knew. Lithos demands that Lothian, the recently deceased Necromancer, must be interred: "The scent of her rotting flesh shall perfume my garden of delights." The Avatar asks to become Vividos's apprentice. "Then fall before me and serve your master!" Lithos rumbles; the screen shakes; the Avatar stumbles to the ground and gets back up again. 

    

Just as with the necromancers in the caverns, the player has no dialogue options, just automatic lines. This is a bit of a slap in the face to players of previous Ultimas. But the offensively scripted nature of Pagan becomes even clearer in what happens next. "Kneel before me, worm!" Lithos demands. I'm preparing myself to click on the dialogue option that of course will say "The Avatar kneels to no one" when, right in front of me, the Avatar #*&@ing does it! No input from me at all. He just kneels, bows, and refers to Lithos as "my lord."

   

Did the developers forget that the Avatar doesn't really want to be Vividos's apprentice? That he isn't even from this world? That he is, in fact, the savior of multiple worlds? That he's a savvy traveler of the multiverse? I should be able to have a peer-level discussion with Lithos, getting some insights into the true nature of Pagan and its gods, clarifying some elements of its official history. Instead, the game has me acting like the most pathetic supplicant to an unworthy god. At best, you could claim that the Avatar is just going through the motions long enough to get off this rock, but that isn't very Avatar-ish of him. Plus, you would think that if anyone would know about multidimensional travel, it would be the putative gods of this setting.

   

But instead of asking any of the sensible questions, the Avatar just meekly accepts his next task, to inter Lothian as per Vividos's instructions. Lithos's final words are: "Do not come before me again until you are the Necromancer!" "Or what?" I wanted to say. I even went back to the beginning of the room, then turned around and marched back to the obelisks. He didn't appear.

       

On the way out, I kill all his stupid servants.

      

The game lost me this session, first mechanically, then thematically. I am playing the rest of it in protest. If it weren't an Ultima game and I didn't just come off a month-long hiatus, we wouldn't even be talking. 

     

There is a teleportation pad near Lithos's hall, which suggests that I'm going to have to come back here again. But it reminds me of the teleportation system, and even though I have some areas of the catacombs left to explore (I think), I decide to warp out of this place. When the menu comes up, I choose to return to the Plateau and Mythran, mostly because I can't remember if I need to check in with him now and then.

         

I like to think that "Nowhere" just dumps the Avatar into a void.

        

I find Mythran on his first floor, and conversation with him reminds me that he has spells and scrolls for sale, which is good since I've been collecting money for no reason. He teaches me two Thaumaturgy spells, "Meteor Shower" and "Confusion Blast," both of which require reagents I have to buy from him. They don't sound like they're going to be necessary to solve puzzles, so I just note the necessary reagents for now.

      

He also sells me two Scrolls of Dispelling Magical Portals, which turns out to be serendipitous. When I warp back to the Palace, I decide to remind myself what's happening with Devon and his forthcoming execution. Devon is still in the dungeons, it turns out. While I'm reviewing screenshots, I come across Salkind's logbook of executions, which indicates that the "forbidden research" for which Bentic was executed is "secured in the dungeon evidence chamber."

   

I can see Bentic's Journal in a sealed room. I spend 15 minutes or so clicking around on the walls and looking around the dungeon for levers. I'm not going to pretend like I figured it out myself; I got frustrated and looked up a hint. The solution is to use one of Mythran's scrolls, which really ought to be called Reveal Secret Doors or something, to Dispelling Magical Portals. 

         

The "magical portal" is right in front of me.

          

Bentic was definitely into some dangerous stuff. He'd done some genetic genealogy and determined that Devon was the illegitimate son of the previous Tempest, Keldan, and having been born first had a better claim to the throne of Pagan than Lady Mordea. 

    

No sooner have I put down the book than three guards show up to arrest me. "Try to take me!" I shout, but the game doesn't actually let me fight. It just fades to black over the sound of clanking and crashing.

         

Is it because my name is "Thief"?

       

When we fade in again, I'm being escorted by the guards to the docks, where Lady Mordea, Salkind, Darion (captain of the guard), and the executioner Shaana are already arrayed in front of Devon. The guards relate that they have caught me stealing. "The block always welcomes another neck," Mordea gloats. Devon offers a sad goodbye.

   

I have the choice to say that "Devon is the rightful heir!" or "The tyrant Mordea has no birthright!" They seem essentially identical to me. I try the second, and Mordea kills me instantly with a lightning bolt. On a reload, I try the first option. Everyone is confused.

       

At least I got their attention.

        

Mordea orders the execution to proceed. "I have proof!" I shout. Before anyone can stop me, I explain what I found in the book. The resulting conversation is amusing, as Salkind confirms the contents by saying: "Mordea, I locked the book safely away!" and Mordea herself says, "Fool! Now the whole world knows the secret!" just before blasting Salkind into the sea.

      

I like how you can see the daggers Mordea is staring at Salkind even though the graphics aren't quite good enough to depict it.

       

Mordea again orders the execution, but Shaana grows a pair and refuses. Mordea blasts her to the ground. She then orders Darion to do it, but Darion also (surprisingly) puts honor first: "I cannot kill him, my lady. He is the Tempest." Soon, he's writhing on the docks. The three generic guards don't even get a chance to disobey; they're soon sprawled on the planks along with the Avatar.

   

Mordea starts casting a spell to kill Devon, but he somehow figures out his Tempest powers and blows her off the end of the dock, where a sea monster appears to swallow her. The Avatar groans and gets to his feet. Devon joyously turns to me and declares the end of Mordea's tyrannical rule. "I make it my duty to bring prosperity to all of Tenebrae," he says, before announcing that he's going to leave for a while. "I need time away from Tenebrae to contemplate all of the recent events." He casts a spell (he sure learned Tempestry fast), jumps off the end of the docks, and strides away on the water.

      

Could you teach me that spell before you go?

      

So that's a bit of a wreck. The city has no leader; its supposed new leader has gone on sabbatical, and almost all of its named citizens are dead in front of me. (Once again, the Avatar has saved a society mostly by depopulating it.) Well, maybe. I'm not sure how to interpret it, but both Shaana and Darion seem to groan when I double-click on their bodies. I can't access their inventories the way I can for the generic guards. Later, Shaana is in her house, though with no new dialogue.

         

Despite his previous claim, Devon is in the Palace when I visit (though he doesn't have much to say), and all of the guards now say that they serve him. I guess that's progress.

     

Good luck undoing all those beheadings.

         

I finish this long session by returning to Vividos, wondering why he doesn't have a damned teleporter pad. I tell him that I have met with Lithos. He gives me something called the Key of the Scion, which he says will get me through locked doors in the Catacombs as well as make Lothian's body ready for burial. It looks just like the Key of the Caretaker. That's not going to be confusing. I touch the key to Lothian's body, and the ground immediately consumes her. Lithos booms that he's pleased.

     

Why don't you just lick his boots, Avatar?

         

I'm ready to move on to the next school of magic, but Vividos and necromancy aren't done with me. The Necromancer names me his Scion and says that my next task is to make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Moriens, the first Necromancer. I will access this place through the Upper Catacombs. Vividos says he saw something amazing on his own pilgrimage, but he won't tell me what it was. In any event, I guess we'll start the next session back in the catacombs again.

            

I can hear the Avatar saying, "Oh yes, my pilgrimage" in a perfectly flat tone.

       

Miscellaneous notes:

 

• I started to face serious encumbrance issues this session. I dumped most of the flaming oil containers.    

• There are times in which I inexplicably cannot pick up an item right next to me. 

        

What is that damned "X" all about?

       

• How am I supposed to avoid floor traps? I can't seem to jump over them. 

• As I save, load, sleep, and just walk along, the Guardian frequently speaks up to taunt me about what he's doing to Britannia while I'm stuck here. 

• There are still a lot of locked doors in the Palace's dungeon. I wonder whether there's any way to open them. 

     

The sequence on the docks was fun (I thought Mordea's defeat would be the climax of the game), but I'm still raw about the Lithos encounter. As there doesn't seem to be any more character development, the plot is mostly linear, and the game clearly isn't going to give me any meaningful choices, I honestly feel as if I'd get as much from Pagan if I simply watched it. I'm not going to do that, but I will say that a better game would have inspired me to be creative and to avoid the obvious subtitle.

        

Time so far: 27 hours 

    

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

Next entry in this series

10/10/2026 

Citadel: Won! (with New Summary and Rating)

 

Not to confuse beknight and benighted.

        

Citadel: Adventure of the Crystal Keep

Canada

Postcraft International (developer and publisher)

Released in 1989 for Macintosh

Date Started: 1 July 2018

Date Ended: 3 August 2018 (Chet); 19 June 2026 (Quirkz)

Total Hours: 8 for Chet (not won); 24 for Quirkz
Difficulty: Hard (4/5)

Final Rating: 30

Original Ranking: 174/305 (57%)

Current Ranking:  356/588 (61%)

      

Summary:

 

Citadel: the Adventure of Crystal Keep is a single-dungeon, rescue-the-princess blobber in the tradition of games like Wizardry and The Bard's Tale, but with some real-time action mixed in. It covers 12 levels, features eight classes and 44 spells, and comes with a few riddles and a decent variety of navigational puzzles.

    

****

 

Guest post by Quirkz:

     

[Quirkz ended the last entry feeling a bit depressed with his lack of progress, although by that point he had mapped at least part of all of the dungeon's levels. As this session begins, he sets his jaw and enters the dungeon one last time.]

 

I backtrack to the eighth floor where there's a locked door I've never been able to open. I try "Blast Portal" on it, and it works like a charm. Inside is a woman named Gladiis, depicted holding an orb. She drops a key when defeated. The room also has some gold, a glowing shield (seems to provide 2 more protection) and some mithril banded mail that I give to Caltrop to replace his vanilla chain mail, improving his AC by 3.

    

How are you going to fight with that thing in your hands?

   

At first I think this key is going to get me past one of my obstacles, but it doesn't let me into any of the locked doors I know. I retest this room with "Open Portal," which just picks the lock instead of destroying the door, and find that Gladiis's key is for her own door. Now I'm starting to feel like I just broke into a woman's house and killed her. Testing a theory, I reload and drop one of my party members, approaching with a group of 5, but she does not seem inclined to join forces. (The hint book goes into a wildly unintuitive interaction here involving speakeasy-grade door shenanigans, fortune telling, trances, and secret attacks. I never would have guessed any of these things. It confirms Gladiis is an opponent, though, not a friend.) I leave her dead because I want the magical shield, armor, and gold.

     
Reviewing my party stash, I find that I've got a small collection of items of unknown purpose, including two chalices from early levels that have high enough sale value that's probably what they were for. The descriptions mention a liquid inside, which made me think I'd need them as a solution to something, but there hasn't been a way to use them. I've got the hourglass. There's the gold flute; I understand what it will be for, but not how, when, or where to use it. And now the slate.

     
On the obstacles side, I still don't know how to get through half a dozen enchanted doors on 9 and 10; I don't know how to claim that fourth skull wand that might free Synd; I've got a massively confusing floor 11 to map and navigate; and then there's most of the twelfth and final floor to complete.

      
More exploration on 11. I think I'm doing well for a while, until I end up at the end of a long hallway that should be familiar, but the stairs are going the wrong direction. "Locatus" shows I'm on a different side of the floor than expected. I need to use that more. I take the stairs down anyway, trying to get a sense of what's on 12. It's a short room that leads to more stairs up and then a whole chain of rooms, including at one point a one-way set of stairs. There's another door maze on 12 like those on 11. At this point I'm fairly lost and don't trust my map, but I figure that wandering at random will at least show me some new things. I find another invisibility ring, always welcome.

       
I end up in a room with an altar holding one large scroll. I grab it, which causes the altar to crack and a big fight to begin: purple worms, an arch devil, some deaths, and some others. I'm very careful around the worms, who I think can decapitate or swallow people. One or two of my fighters are hitting, but I'm mostly throwing axes. Afterwards, an icon says: "Hurry, the blood scroll needs to be brought to the light of a new day to destroy him forever." Is this Synd? From her prism? There's a doorway at the end of the room, but when I go up I'm inside the anti-magic room, and all the doors are locked from the inside. Clearly I've done things out of order.

 

An altar shattering just because you touched it is an ominous portent.

       

I try to backtrack, but when I go downstairs there's another scroll on the altar, which is intact again. A game bug? I grab this scroll, too, but it's a trap. Five of my characters teleport away, leaving me just with the wizard. I can switch parties, but only to the cleric, who's a human and can't see in the dark. Somehow Siobhan finds Mulk and joins up. I try to switch parties again, but the option isn't available. The other four guys are missing for now. I wander some more, hoping to find the rest of the crew, but nobody shows up. I end up back inside the anti-magic dome several times, and I realize it's doing the same thing as the pyramid a few levels back, with one set of stairs giving four different paths down depending on the direction of your approach. I also realize there are two altars. One must be the real one, one must be fake. Good to know, because odds are high I'll be doing this again.

     
I still try to escape, thinking if I can get to the surface maybe the bartender will give me hints about my lost party. I stumble on a locked gate and am surprised when the game tells me I have the key. I step inside a small room. Unexpectedly, I plummet several floors to my death. This was the elevator shaft, except the elevator was on 11, and I'm on 12. The weird thing is it doesn't show the hole in the ground on this level, and it looked safe.

    
Well, it was probably all going to be a reload anyway. I've now seen half of 12 and have a sense of the endgame. What I don't have is any clue how the penultimate chapter is played.  

     

The penultimate battle, which does not look much different from the other battles I've been seeing for the last three levels.

    

I start working on 11 again, making heavy use of "Locatus." I keep ending up in places I didn't expect, facing directions I didn't expect. I slowly catch on that when I step into the anti-magic zone there's a flicker, and it's not just turning off the magic, it's also teleporting me to other points in a symmetrical room. It's not clear whether there's a pattern yet or whether it's random, but I can solve this by casting "Locatus" every time I step out of the zone. I have to redo my map, but 11 is nearly a solved problem, once I get the stairwells aligned with the correct spots on 12. It also feels like I've been through most or all of 12, just maybe not in the right order.

     
Gains include a fourth spellbook and the cleric runes for "Morale" and "Cleric Touch" (Level 10, the highest party heal). I don't seem to need either. "Haelan Al" is more than sufficient. As for the spellbooks, Siobhan is juggling two because they have different spells in them and I can't afford to buy duplicate scrolls or pay the 10k gold needed for ink to create scrolls myself.

     
Thinking there has to be something I missed with Lady Synd, I go back and try that gold flute again. Four characters are teleported away. My remaining two take the elevator and circle back to that plaque about playing music. The flute has 8 keys, and lacking a code or song I start at one end and play five notes. This time the wall opens, and my party waits inside. I swear I tried this multiple times before. I have no idea what was different this time. Checking the hint book much later, it suggests there is a proper code, and we needed to ask Burliman to get it. But testing a second time, I am able to trigger an unlock without playing that proper code. I really don't know what's right here, but it's aggravating.

     
Now we have a wand, probably the last one. Also a dancing sword, which sells for over 20k, though I'm still theorizing that maybe the dancing part is usable somehow, like a ranged weapon or something that works on enchanted doors. I don't sell it right away, even though it could buy a bit of training. We drop Mulk off at camp (he's too distracted by a pretty lady, I roleplay) and return to Synd. Brandish away! The gem dissolves, and Synd appears as an icon on the floor. In the party, we see that she is seriously buff, a level 21 Magus with 100 HP. That's twice as good as my best. She has AC -2 because she's got the sword Defender, the best weapon in the game. Also 95% magic resistance. 18s in intelligence and mien, 17 in dexterity, 16 in knowledge—these stats are better than any of mine. She also has a key on her, which is probably what I've been waiting for.
     

The moment everyone's been waiting for since they first saw the box art.

       

Now we can step through the square that the gem occupied, and behind it there are stairs leading down. Maybe this is a shortcut to the end? No, the stairs reverse and go back up across several levels. There's a pit in the ceiling, and I "Risan" up, expecting something glorious, but it's a small collection of duplicate magic items: another light orb, several elven arrows, a gargoyle, and a chalice, and somewhere in there I find a cursed necklace that locks itself on Synd. (The hint book suggests Synd would go this way looking for the blood scroll, before realizing it's down on 12. The game itself does nothing to support this idea.)

     
From there, I have to backtrack and determine whether it's worth selling the gear. Synd refuses to leave the dungeon until the evil is cleansed, evicting herself from the party on the doorstep. I hope she's there when I come back. It also means I can't uncurse her necklace. The gear sells for enough that I can level Jexica to 8 and DV to 7. On the one hand, I probably don't need it, and the 21 days of training feel like bad roleplaying, but on the other hand when Synd is 21, it feels foolish to delve to the deepest dungeon with a knight who's still level 6 and has the XP to be 10 or more.

    
Synd really is there when we re-enter the dungeon, thank goodness, having waited three weeks for us.

     

I could have used all of this in my party while exploring parts of 9, 10, 11, and 12.

        

We head down to Floor 11 and hit the central anti-magic zone. Synd's key fits the lock in the center, and we're able to step into the four-way stairs waiting there. I blink for a second as my brain shifts gears, because I've been thinking of this key as an exit tool and planning on retracing my torturous path up and down parts of 11 and 12, but this lets us bypass all that. I explored all of 12 without Synd, but with her you only need to visit one room. I'm not sure whether that's a crafty trick or terrible design. It certainly speeds up the ending once you know what you're doing.

    
From the anti-magic stairs, I know one of these four paths leads to the false altar, one to the true altar, and two to other areas.

       
I pick one at random and find myself standing in front of the real altar. I grab the scroll, re-fight the battle, and get the message to head for the surface. 

      

Those were his greatest minions?

               

The hardest part is getting lucky with the teleporter in the anti-magic zone, which has to send me to the south or west if I want to escape. It takes a couple of tries, but "Locatus" makes it easy to verify. At the elevator, I find myself confused because the buttons won't work. There's this weird, repeated thrumming sound every time I try to do anything, and it's got me convinced that the game has bugged out. I reload at the altar, re-fight the battle, and try again, but I get the same result. I decide maybe the elevator just doesn't work with the scroll, which the cluebook confirms later.

     
I'm stymied for a second, but I realize there is indeed one set of stairs up from 11 to 10. From 10, I've got 50 pits to "Risan" to 9. At 9, I have a very long pause to think, but I find there is exactly one square that lets me "Risan" to 8. This is why we map, people.

Floor 8 has the pyramid stairs to 7; 7 can "Risan" to 6, putting me in the "dead-end" treasure zone I fought with for half the game. From there, one more "Risan" to 5 puts me back in territory I've known since the first few hours, and it's trivial to rush for the exit.

     
When we're two steps from the door, Nequilar chuckles and appears before us, and a combat starts. For a dozen rounds, everybody misses each other, so I take the tried-and-true method of backing off and throwing axes. It takes a dozen hits or so, but that's it. There's no magic, no real strategy to it, just the same gimmick that's been making the last 8 or so hours work.

              

Honestly, I feel kind of bad about it, but I genuinely think my characters are supposed to be level 13 or 15 here, rather than 7 to 11, but the lack of gold in the game made that impossible. The guidebook shows experience up to level 15.

     
Anyway, Nequilar falls, Lady Synd calls us champions, and two steps later the end-credits roll, which coincidentally terminates my last save file. Reopening it just re-rolls the credits. If I want to play any further, I have to open an earlier file from before the altar.

     

I've got your written comments right here.

       

There are some loose ends. I never figured out what to do with the hourglass or the slate, or how to get past the enchanted doors, if there is a way. If there isn't, the game has six or so rooms you can never visit. I also never got to backstab anything. The thief and ninja have it listed as a combat option, but it was grayed out every time. I also never successfully picked a lock, despite that supposedly being a thing. There's a note in the manual to "use 'Inquire' often" but I can't find that at all. It sounds like a hint system, but maybe it means talking to the bartender about lost party members?

     
I also ended the game without really understanding any race or class benefits or restrictions (other than the vision). The manual hints but does not say what equipment is forbidden. I once had a spell go wrong when a cleric was holding a sword, but the manual says they can wear armor but not helms or shields, and my cleric had both of those the whole game with no ill effect.
        
While I'm nostalgic for it, and did find points of fun and satisfaction as I progressed, it is also an intermittently frustrating and imbalanced game, with a variety of problems and uneven challenges, and possibly some bugs or errors.

The first major obstacle is merely getting to character Level 2. Those early few-to-many hours are desperate, and it's very easy to get locked into a death spiral unless you know what you're doing or save with unashamed frequency.

      
The economy is ridiculously tight, to the point of being flawed, unless you make use of one or two different exploits, which are relatively easy to find and can completely break the game. The bad economy limits leveling, which impacts combat and spell effectiveness in a cascade of poor results and dissatisfaction. Full disclosure: I started a second run to test some things, and if you know what you're doing and also know what you don't need, the first seven levels do go easier, but it requires selling nearly everything, including most of the scrolls your wizard would normally scribe into a spellbook, and also limiting yourself to only one or two prestige class characters. After that, the gold still dries up, and unless you want to abuse wishes, you're not getting all of your heroes past Level 10.

      
The interface itself is sometimes your enemy, and inconsistent and occasionally buggy results can leave you feeling stranded or confused about the next steps. The experiences with both the flute and the enchanted doors in particular strike me as inexcusable, and the intermittently interactive door to Synd's prison was a problem.

      
The save system is unintuitive and downright dangerous, if you ask me, and it proved as great an enemy to my progress as any in-game threat.

      
Among the worst elements: I never once killed a monster with a spell. For that matter, I never cast a useful cleric spell above level 2, "Haelan Al." I tried a couple of other combat spells from Levels 2-4, but as far as I could tell they were inconsequential. (Testing later, I did finally kill some weak enemies with "Gestuns," but it took casting six of them in a single combat.) Two cleric spells that would have been useful, "Awake" and "Dispellere," are not made clear in the game and can only be found in the hint book (or by absurd levels of experimentation). My wizard had several essential navigational spells ("Locatus," "Levitas," "Risen") but such limited spell slots she barely ever did anything else. She often had to memorize one spell at a time in the dungeon, as the situation called for it. Half the spells seemed underwhelming, ineffective, or had a purpose I still don't understand or want.

        
Melee combat went from brutally difficult to trivially easy to then being so ineffective that I had to resort to a quirk or gimmick with the thrown axes to prevail. 
       

"Dispellere," which I only got from the hintbook, is a kind of in-combat genocide spell for a particular monster type—but you need to pick the monster when you memorize the spell, and it has a limited list of possibilities. Vampires and ghosts are good choices. The rest don't need it. You'll wish that deaths and mantrees were on the list.

       

The riddles and mapping challenges were for the most part fair, even clever. I had some irritation at points, but only half of that was deserved, and knowing what I do now I could probably complete the game a second time in half the number of hours. I'm not sure if my problem with rescuing Lady Synd was a bug or something I did, but that probably set me back several hours just by itself.

     
If you like mapping, this one is for you. The game rewards meticulous notes in several places and different ways. It even has an in-game map pad that I didn't use, but I have to give it credit for being pretty advanced back in a 1989 Mac game.

    
A few promising features, like lock picking and backstabbing, are either unimplemented, or documented incorrectly, or have a bug preventing them from working. Splitting the party is rarely used, but it's an effective strategy in those cases.

     
I didn't take advantage much of leaving a slot in my party open, and from what I can tell it really only applied three times: recruiting Fra Elsof, rescuing Burliman the clerk from jail, and then letting Synd join the party.

      

           
I don't really want to do a full GIMLET because I'm not sure I understand Chet's point system well enough, but I'll run through the key points. [Ed. Quirkz offered the text. I put the scores at the end based on his accounts.]

     

• Game World: One dungeon and a menu town. There's a backstory. It doesn't get very deep. Score: 3.

• Character Creation and Development: The creation interface is as unique as it is annoying. Classes are distinct and most have value. Development is crucial, but hindered by the economy. They have an alignment system, but it's only used for about three things. Score: 4. 

• NPC Interaction: Maybe recruiting party members counts here; maybe the way Gladiis is explained in the cluebook counts. Otherwise, it's interacting with shopkeepers. Score: 2.

• Encounters and Foes: There is a good variety of creatures, but too many of them boil down to physical attacks that either plink once for 1 damage or twice for 2 damage. Then there are a handful that potentially deliver status effects, and those few are genuinely scary, including poison, unconsciousness, and level drain. It's possible there were others that I missed. Only a couple of fights are against spellcasters, and those tend to either succeed quickly or become decisive full-party wipes. There are a couple of okay riddles and plenty of mapping puzzles, but also possibly a few bugs that directly affect some of the riddles. Score: 4.

• Magic and Combat: The manual makes it look like there's going to be a lot of useful magical tools, but in practice much of it was useless (or my spellcasters were too low level to benefit), and it boiled down to a few essentials—healing and navigation spells, mostly. Lots of wasted potential here. Combat is real-time and somewhat tactical, but also either breaks down or becomes gimmick-heavy (maybe that's my fault for using the gimmick too much) in tight situations. It almost always feels the same, with few combats requiring a distinct approach or being a memorable fight. Score: 3.

• Equipment: Decent here, with a variety of weapons, armor, and several important accessories. Magic items, especially invisibility, are important upgrades, but clerics are weirdly under-served by the options. Keys, scrolls, and the skull wands all play a big part, and treasures that serve mostly as a way to get gold are welcome. There's some unneeded redundancy in the weapons list, and I still don't know what to think about the slate and the hourglass, which appeared to be important but never had a use. Score: 4.

• Economy: Starts either frustrating or challengingly tight, depending on how you proceed through the first few levels, but then just gets worse and worse until it's the primary obstacle in the game. There are exploits to get around it, but that would feel like cheating. Score: 3.

• Quests: One main quest, well defined, but no side quests and no alternate outcomes. If I were giving points I'd dock it one here for having bugs (or severe interface issues) that interfered with multiple key steps. Score: 1.

• Graphics, Sound, Interface: Graphics are okay for the era, though the lack of color was a disappointment that I'm not over even after 30 years. The screen is too small, and interacting with everything in town is annoying and fiddly. Navigating works well by keyboard and is mostly great. Combat requires mostly mouse control, and is generally okay, though it's also possible for things to go badly wrong: selecting the wrong character if two overlap, accidentally unequipping or throwing weapons when you don't want to, and sometimes a missed click triggers a "make combat speed up" mode rather than letting you take an action, which can get you killed. Sounds are sparse, but decent when used, and only occasionally annoying. 19-year-old me appreciated the Monty Python "run away!" line too much. Occasionally things get buried in the interface, as you can tell by my not finding the combat message window or the ability to withdraw until I was halfway through the game. Score: 3.

• Gameplay: Exploration and mapping challenges seem generally good (despite the problems I caused myself by trying so many things out of order). Combats rarely found a good balance point, and tended to either fall into being a little too easy or needing a gimmick to get out. The game is mostly linear and not very replayable. Score: 3.

     

All told I don't think it would rate highly, but despite the frustrations I'm glad I played it again. It's an obscure and rare Mac-only game and there isn't much available online about it. I'm very happy it will now have a place on the blog.

 

        

****

 

Chet here again. Thank you, Quirkz, for such detailed coverage of this title that I under-served. The sum of the ratings I assigned based on your comments is 30, which is exactly the same rating that I gave the game in 2018, although some of the categories are changed by 1 point each.

   

As we now know, the promised Citadel II: Dark Tower never appeared, and this was Postcraft's only game. It was a weird lark for the California-based company, which otherwise specialized in desktop publishing and typography software. I was unable to find anything about its director, David Pavan, and it does not appear that any of the design team ever worked on other games.

    

****

   

Previous entry in this series

   

For further reading:

• Wizardry (1981), the game that primarily inspired Citadel.
• My first take at a "Summary and Rating" from 2018, which also has some information about contemporary reviews.
• Quirkz Media, Quirkz's web site, with his various publications and projects.

 10/08/2026

Citadel: Try Ignorance

   

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

     

Guest post from Quirkz: 

 

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

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

            

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

      

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

               

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      

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

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

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

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

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

        

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theory: anti-magic fields are generated by blacklights.

   

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

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

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

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

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

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

      

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    

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10/06/2026