Amberstar: I Finally Get Things

Oh. Uh . . . great. I'll . . . start . . . using it now.

        

My fortunes reversed after the last entry, and this one took me a lot of time to accomplish some meager things. I started by exploring an 8 x 8 sub-basement under the wine cellar. I had noted some down stairs while solving the quest earlier. The small area had a chest but nothing else to do.

        

I thought I would next try the villa northeast of Twinlake that had been owned by a man named Jonathan. He was an inventor, and his son told me there might be useful items there. There were, but I visited too soon. The first time you visit the villa, the game dumps you into the basement via a trap, and you have to search and fight your way out. Since the villa has three large levels, one with numerous sections that don't interconnect, it's a bit of a challenge. I lasted as long as I could, but eventually the orcs and goblins got the best of me, and I had to reload from outside.
        

One hit to any of my characters will kill them.

         
Not sure what to do next, I made another round of both Twinlake and Crystal. This was good because I'd missed a few things. Some notes from this experience:
    

• After you rescue her cat, Sunny in Twinlake will offer to sell you hats if you talk to her again. They lower your armor class by one, and so far there haven't been any helmets, so it's a good deal.

• Spike, the dog, cannot in fact join any guild. That must be why his stats are pretty good at the beginning--they're never going to get any better. 

• There's a house in Twinlake that's presented in iconographic view, like it's important, but I couldn't find anything to do there. More on this later.

• Although I found Trasric's orb in one of his plants, I had previously missed the owner of the greenhouse in Crystal: a gnome named Olfin. Olfin, like Gwendolyn back in Twinlake, is also seeking the Rose of Sadness. He relates that it was created for a desert princess named Jasmin. It's said to be found only in the "Sea of Peace," which he equates with the Desert of Sighs northeast of Crystal. 

          

Olfin gives some intelligence.

           

• Knowing how to speak with animals didn't help me with the demon-possessed homunculus in the Lord Chancellor's house. It wasn't until after I visited Illien that I realized that the gobbledygook in which he was speaking is actually the game's runic language, decipherable via a reference card that came with the game. (You can understand my confusion: how do you speak runic?) It turns out what the demon is saying is: "MORTALS, LOOK DEEP INTO MY EYES AND SEE THE PAIN MY PRINCE IS PREPARING FOR YOU. NO ONE CAN STOP THE PLANS OF PRINCE BRALKUR. HE WILL SUCK YOUR SOUL FROM YOUR BODY THE WAY YOU SUCK AN EGG." Not to criticize, but the demon should have stopped after "body"; the rest just made us laugh. Anyway, the demon's words turned out not to have anything to do with how to get into the cellar, so that was a dead end.

• The wine cellar in Twinlake has some kind of lock on one wall, and a wall in the basement of the villa has a similar lock. I suspect they connect if I can find some way to open it. (The fact that they share the same automap is also a bit of a giveaway.) I tried picking to no avail.

• Breth, the innkeeper in Twinlake, tells us that his brother Orlando, innkeeper in Crystal, is having some issues with his wine cellar, and I should ask him about his PROBLEM. I then forget to do this when I'm in Crystal. Between Sunny and Breth, I've learned that I want to speak to NPCs again after finishing their quests because they sometimes have new things to say.

       
I return to Firlas, the sage who left his Bone of Wisdom in Twinlake. I correctly guessed that the bone that Spike possessed was the Bone of Wisdom. In return, Firlas--to my surprise--gives me a piece of the Amberstar! I don't know why I expected this, but I still expected that after all this introductory question and party-building, the pieces of the Amberstar were all going to be at the bottoms of a series of dungeons. If a simple fetch quest can produce one of the pieces, perhaps the game won't devolve into a boring slog through 130 dungeon levels.
        

1/13 done!

        
I am a bit concerned, though, at Firlas's statement that he found it at the bottom of a river "years ago." If everyone else treated their pieces so carelessly, it'll be a miracle if I actually find them all.
           

Wasting time in the desert.

        
Lacking anything else to do in the places I already visited, I start working my way around the continent counter-clockwise. I start with the top of the map, north of Crystal, but I don't find any Rose of Sadness in the desert, and a lot of the area is covered in deadly swamp that I avoid. I do find a bridge that reliably produces a troll when crossing it. So far, the combats have largely been fixed and non-repeatable, and the bridge is the only place I've found where one can reliably grind if necessary. The problem is that the troll offers only 4 experience points and can poison the party members, so it's not quite worth it.
            

Even with rats and trolls, the game couches poisoning as "casting a spell."

          
Illien is a small town inhabited by elves. It has a store, herb store, potion shop, food shop, and a temple. The elves call themselves the "guardians of the eyrie"--the home of great eagles to Illien's south. Statues in the town square pay homage to a lineage of elected or appointed guardians starting with Tillien (presumably the town's founder) and continuing until Pelanis, the town's current lord.
            

The game gives you some flavor text as you enter each new area.

         
Pelanis relates the town's current situation: A dragon has recently appeared and is threatening the Eagles. The dragon has also apparently laid an egg in its lair. Pelanis wants us to kill the dragon and steal its egg to be raised by the Eagles. The dragon lives in a cliff that I'll need to reach by raft, but Pelanis tells me I can use his, moored on the river to the northwest. He also suggests that we make a trip to the Tower of the Grey Wizard while we have the raft.
  
In the tavern, drinking morosely, I find Kelvin, a bard whose harp was swindled by a trickster called the Riddlemaster. I know this already because I found the note from the Riddlemaster to Kelvin back in Crystal, along with 5,000 gold that has been funding my level increases since then. Kelvin begs me to buy a ship, find the Riddlemaster's island, and get the harp back. As a reward, he'll give me yet another piece of the Amberstar, which he wears around his neck like it's not one of the 13 most important things in the world right now.
            

I guess we can't just kill him and take it.

        
I continue circling the map--there really isn't a lot on it--and eventually come to the town of Gemstone, another relatively small place. Among the standard offerings, it has a tool shop, where I could buy a crowbar if I hadn't found one in the barrel. I do buy a pick-axe, a shovel, and a rope, just in case. NPCs in the hallways warn me to heal illness as quickly as possible (otherwise, it can damage attributes permanently) and to be careful with which spells I choose to learn, as I only get a certain number of "spell learning" points.
        

Good tip.

       
In the tavern, I find my sixth companion, a dwarf warrior named Drobanir, who's already Level 6. His inclusion means that my party has become heavily melee-oriented, and I should probably replace Spike with a Grey Wizard and perhaps Gryban with a White Wizard. I need to look in the manual again to see how well paladines can serve in lieu of White Wizards. But I haven't found either of those characters yet, so my party is full for now.
          

My not-terribly-creative combat lineup.

         
The armory in Gemstone has a lot of high-end weapons and armor, and I can imagine I'll be back here once I've saved some more money. I assume getting insanely rich in this game is at least possible because there's a gem shop that sells gems whose only purpose is to convert piles of coin into something more portable (something we also saw in Pool of Radiance). Right now, though, I'm swiftly depleting the 5,000 stake I found in Crystal, and I still need to recover that so I can spend it on a boat.
       

This mithril mail is worth one and a half ships.

        
For some reason, I become disenchanted with "circling the map" at this point, so I make my way back to Twinlake. On the way, though, I find a house in the middle of a swamp. The map titles it the "guardhouse" of something called a "swampstation." An old man living in the house talks about a "plant" that closed years ago after part of the structure collapsed. There's a dungeon beneath the house, but it's guarded by a magic mouth that requires a password (this was also a common feature in Thalion's Dragonflight).
          

These are creepy.

           
By the time I return to Twinlake, I've realized that the "empty" house is probably not empty. Like most other parts of the game, it's probably just time-sensitive. Sure enough, when I wait around long enough, the owner returns. He's a wizard named Shandra. Clearly I was supposed to meet him early in the game, as he gives me a history book that holds the manual's tale of Tarbos and the Amberstar, which I guess I wasn't supposed to read until now, a map of Lyramion, which I guess I wasn't supposed to use until now, and a recommendation that I can find his apprentice in the Tower of the Grey Wizards. He also gives us a bunch of spell scrolls and potions.
          

I wonder if the original packaging had a clear note saying not to read the tale until you encounter it in-game.

       
I should have probably headed to the Tower of the Grey Wizards next, but for some reason I decided to try the villa again now that I had Drobanir (also, everyone had gained a level and I had some slightly better gear). It worked better than the first time, although I still had to reload a few times after some disastrous battles. The villa had been abandoned years ago after its owner, Jonathan, died. Orcs and goblins had moved into the place, using it as a base for their raiding parties, intent on breaching the locked door to Jonathan's old laboratory.
 
As I explored, I fought maybe a dozen battles with orcs, goblins, and rats. The big problem is that at this phase of the game, if the characters just dropped their weapons, they'd still somehow miss the ground. The enemies aren't much better. So round after round creeps in this petty pace as no one hits anything but air. I assume it will get more exciting as everyone gets better and spells become more of an option. Right now, Trasric runs out pretty fast--although he does have an awesome spell, "Tornado," that absolutely wipes the map of monsters. He can only cast it once before fully recovering his spell points, but when his mana is fully charged, I know I can win at least one battle.
           

Perhaps the largest battle in the villa: two hill orcs, two mountain orcs, two goblins.

        
The orcs and goblins drop leather armor, clubs, and other items that I could sell if I could carry them all, but I soon run afoul of both encumbrance and space limits. I also start finding so much useful stuff that I end up having to drop most of what I've collected for sale. It kills me to leave so much on the ground because I don't know where else I'm going to get the money.
           

This stuff is probably worth about 300 gold pieces, and I have no room for it.

          
Eventually, we find our way to Jonathan's laboratory. A magic mouth requires the name JONATHAN to pass. We then have to pass through a room with a bunch of spinners, and then another one with a bunch of teleporters. Eventually, we arrive at the lab.
         

The beginning of a teleporter maze.

        
The trip is mostly worth it. The lab is full of diary pages that describe Jonathan's inventions along with clues to where we can find them. One entry describes the creation of a magical floating disc for Pharaoh Relanukh. It allows easy transport over flat land and still bodies of water. It was buried with the pharaoh in a great desert to the southeast. For his friend Melvin, Captain of the Construction Brigade, Jonathan created a locater device that shows one's coordinates even underground. It was lost in the Gralswamp when Melvin was attacked by subterranean monsters. I suspect this is the swamp that I visited recently, and I now have the password from Jonathan's diary: WATER.
         

Arriving in the lab.

        
From a fallen meteor with iron ore, Jonathan constructed a compass, and this was hidden right in his lab. I found it and activated it. Like the watch, it disappeared from my inventory and latched itself to my interface. At this point, I belatedly realized that was how the painting that I found in my house (which distinguishes day from night) must work. I used it, and sure enough, I now have a little diagram that shows a moon and star at night and a sun during the day. It's a bit superfluous with the clock (which properly follows a 24-hour system), but whatever.
         

Jonathan's diary describes the impetus for making a clock.

          
Jonathan also apparently created the clock, which I found in the sewers. A chest in his office held a "tunnel key" that I suspect opens the way from his basement to the Twinlake wine cellar (I was far away from it at this point) as well as a "mountain crystal" and a signet ring. The signet ring would seem to belong to the Lord Chancellor of Crystal, who left it behind after consulting with Jonathan about a clock. This might be what I need to get into his basement.
  
In one basement area of Jonathan's villa was a transporter that took the party to a small island. The island had some useful stuff--potions, scrolls, good equipment on the body of a dead orc, and in a chest, another piece of the Amberstar. The problem is, I can't get back from the island. There's a locked door in a house on the island that I assume has the return teleporter, but nothing I do will get me through the door. I don't know if I need a key or just higher lockpicking skill. So I regretfully had to reload from before using the teleporter. I also left a couple of chests in Jonathan's basement that similarly refused to yield to my lockpicking skills.
       

Jonathan apparently had a teleporter to a vacation spot.

        
Up on the main floor, a half-orc cook named Torg gave me some intelligence about the orc and goblin band. He offered to accompany us, but he was just a second-level warrior. I otherwise would have liked to take him. Aided by a lot of resting, we managed to clear out the rest of the orcs and goblins and eventually find the exit from the villa.
          

I really felt bad not taking him.

        
Miscellaneous notes:
           

• I don't know why I would buy herbs from the herb shop. The manual doesn't say anything about a potion-crafting system, and there are no skills along those lines. Maybe some NPC teaches me later. 

• The retention of every dialogue keyword in later dialogues has already become unwieldy.

          

I hope Pelanis didn't have anything to contribute about BALA or GWENDOLYN, because I'm no longer asking everyone about everything.

           

• To speak to the elves in Illien, I had to activate my elvish character, Trasric. Later, I found a half-elf named Thaer who was willing to teach elvish to anyone, but for a lot of money. There's a dwarf in Illien that nobody could speak to; I'll have to try again now that I have Drobanir.

• Major inventory problems already. Most of the problem is that I have too many scrolls waiting for a Grey Wizard or White Wizard to memorize them. (My two paladines can eventually memorize White Wizard spells, but their "Read Magic" skills are too low right now.) It doesn't help that Spike can't carry anything.

• I like that the game shows the race, sex, age, and level of NPCs while you're speaking with them. 

           

I won't be messing with Shandra.

            

• I like leveling up and allocating skill points. It's quite addictive. I just wish it happened more often. Now that I need several hundred points between levels, the 10 I get from a fight with a half dozen orcs seems relatively paltry.
• I also like that it makes many of its encounters contextual. Rather than just having to fight eight orcs, for instance, you interrupt them playing dice.

           

This kind of thing just adds a little welcome flavor to the repetitive textures and enemies.

         
At this point, these are my quests and leads. I've ordered them roughly by what I perceive to be the ease. Some of the ones at the bottom, I'm not sure I have the right items or information to pursue yet.

• Use the tunnel key to bridge the wine cellar and Jonathan's laboratory. I'm not sure if I expect to find anything doing this, but the key needs to get out of my inventory.

• Ask Orlando about the PROBLEM in his wine cellar.

• Talk to the NPC dwarf on the streets of Illien.

• Take the raft to the Grey Wizards' tower and recruit Shandra's apprentice.

• Return to the Lord Chancellor's house in Crystal and try to figure out what happened to him.

• Go to the Gralswamp and look for the positioning device.

• Find the transportation device in the pharaoh's tomb.

• Make 5,000 gold pieces, find a ship, take it to the Riddlemaster, and retrieve Kelvin's harp. 

• Take another pass at Jonathan's place once my lockpicking skill improves.

                    

I hated leaving this behind.

         

• Find the Black Wizard guild so I can level up Trasric. I have a note about coordinates, but I don't know how to find coordinates until I find the device Jonathan talked about.

• Kill the dragon and steal his egg for the Eagles.

• Find the Rose of Sadness in the Sea of Peace for Gwendolyn and/or Olfin.

• Visit Sansri's Insel, an island south of the main continent, find the necklace that can operate windgates.

             
I'll close this entry with a brief summary of the backstory, since I only got it "officially" during this entry. The story begins from the perspective of "Tar," a human toddler abandoned in the woods as a child. A couple from the pastoral town of Forkbrook adopted him. Bullied mercilessly as a child (he had black hair while everyone else in the village had blond), he became a lonely, aloof young man. One day, while walking in the woods, he met an undead bear that attacked and breathed into him, giving him some kind of power.

Tar returned to his village and used his new power to kill one of his bullies. His horrified parents took him to the local wizard, Latheoz, who in turn took him to a school of magic called the Seekers of Perilous Knowledge. Tar rose fast in their ranks and started courting Princess Mylneh, daughter of King Marakahn and niece of Grandmaster Kantuon.

Tar became the youngest student to ever pass the Master's Trials. For his first trial, he decided to summon a demon, which requires the wizard to actually enter Hell. Usually, demons are summoned from one of the less-dangerous upper levels, but the ambitious Tar descended all the way into the bottom, where he ran into the King of Hell, Thornahuun. Thornahuun called him "Tarbos" and revealed that he was Tarbos's father and that his mother had been a mortal witch.
         

I realized after writing this entry that I never included a screenshot showing all the interface elements together, so here's one. I assume when I get the locater, it will display coordinates in the middle.

         
The encounter led Tarbos to delve into forbidden books and scrolls, which got him kicked out of the school. He used his knowledge to summon Thornahuun and bind him, then used his horrific new power to destroy the 13 grandmasters of the Seekers. He raised an undead army and announced his intention to take Marakahn's lands and daughter. As he conquered the northern lands, a dozen wizards (four grey, four white, four black) gathered at Castle Godsbane with Princess Mylneh to create the Amberstar. They used it to banish Tarbos to one of Lyramion's moons, then to seal Godsbane so no one could enter and perform the counterspell that would return Tarbos to the world. The Amberstar, now needed to unlock the castle, was split into 13 parts and hidden. An order of paladines was established to guard the castle.
 
A thousand years later, the new King of Hell, Bralkur, Thornahuun's brother, made a deal with a dark wizard named Marmion. Bralkur's magic got Marmion through the castle's barriers, and Marmion has begun the counterspell. (Apparently, it takes a long time.) The seal of the Amberstar thus has become a liability, as it needs to be reassembled so that someone can enter and stop Marmion.
  
It's a somewhat original story but with very familiar trappings. I think a better story would be that the party has been commissioned to find a way to destroy the moon so that Tarbos can't return. Maybe that's what Ambermoon is about.
         
Time so far: 16 hours