The Dark Queen of Krynn: Wet Behind the Ears

 

"Stand back and back off" doesn't have the same ring to it.

          

The Dark Queen of Krynn has been extremely combat-heavy, but I've been enjoying it a lot. Combat is the best part of the Gold Box engine, after all, and although I expected to enjoy it less because of overpowered characters, Dark Queen has managed to keep it fresh and challenging, requiring a level of concentration and strategy that don't think I've had to engage since Pool of Radiance.

    

The developers introduced a number of strategies meant to challenge even veteran players and characters. The first is the use of monsters that have otherwise never (or very rarely) made appearances in Gold Box games. The underwater levels had us fight amphi dragons, sea dragons, sea snakes, giant squids, and giant anemones, all of which could absorb a ton of damage and many of whom could poison. Because none of our fire-based spells (including "Fireball") worked underwater, it wasn't so easy to clear them out en masse. There was a brief air-based portion of the underwater world, and here we met not only fire elementals and fire minions but terrifying creatures called fireshadows, which have the ability to coat characters in fire, causing them to take damage every round indefinitely. The only way I could figure out to stop the damage was to completely heal the character. "Dispel Magic" did nothing.

       

With anemones like this, who needs a stiff drink?

        

Second, the game has found a lot of ways to nerf the party's power with the environment. Chief among these is a much lower success rate in resting, healing, and re-memorizing spells than any of its predecessors. You have to be prepared to take on most maps with existing resources. I have never been so happy with my heavy investment in cleric magic (everyone but Squirrel has some cleric spells). You know you've got a tough game when your Level 13 party is rationing "Cure Light Wounds."

   

In addition to limited resting, the game has made a lot heavier use of traps, ambushes, and special encounters that give the enemy initiative, and environmental effects to suppress abilities. The underwater level not only canceled fire magic, but it also made missile weapons useless and made it so most of my characters could only move a couple of spaces per round. (One was given a Ring of Free Action early in the level.)

      

Enemies are also a lot harder. As some of you pointed out in the comments to my first entry, enemy spellcasters often come into battle pre-buffed. In this session, I had to fight several enemy wizards who had "Mirror Image," "Fire Shield," and maybe even "Globe of Invulnerability" already cast. Spells washed over them, missile weapons often did nothing more than puncture an image, and melee attacks damaged my characters more than the enemies. Even regular enemies have enough hit points to require a couple of "Delayed Blast Fireballs" to seriously damage them.

       

Two enemies I think I'm facing for the first time.

    

Also: I haven't been poisoned so much since my useless thief fumbled every trap in Wizardry. I've grown to thinking of poison as an extremely rare occurrence in Gold Box games; so much so that I often don't even have "Neutralize Poison" memorized. This game, practically every enemy seems capable of it. Sea snakes were so bad that I actually started memorizing and casting "Snake Charm." Later, in the wizard's tower, I fought battles that pitted me against several dozen giant spiders, each with several dozen hit points. My characters were dropping like flies. Remember, in Dungeons and Dragons, poison immediately knocks out the character (the game actually says that he dies), and you can't cast "Neutralize Poison" in combat.

    

None of this is a complaint. I've greatly enjoyed digging deep into my spell bag for anything that would provide a tactical advantage, making use of items and scrolls, casting healing and buffing spells in combat, making effective use of terrain, and forcing myself to concentrate attacks on one enemy at a time. It does make the game relatively slow, however. I had to try one battle in the wizard's tower five times before I could get through it with all my characters alive.

          

Healing wounded sea elves in their realm.

        

My enjoyment of combat helps make up for a plot that already has me lost. I'm grateful that I have to blog about it, because that forces me to read everything twice so I can hopefully make some sense of it. The setup seems to be "there are still forces loyal to Takhisis out there," and the party's approach is to bumble along until we run into some of them.

 

I don't think anything that happened in the undersea kingdom had anything to do with Takhisis, but who knows. Our rescuers turned out to be sea elves, and it wasn't long before we were visited by their prince, Lyzian. They apparently already knew Captain Daenor, and primarily rescued him, but they kept us alive because they were unable to heal his wounds. He credited our ability to survive underwater to a "Deepsea" spell, and he gave us one Ring of Free Action so that one character could move around normally.

             

There were some okay role-playing options in this setting.

     

He was barely done speaking when the sea elves' complex was suddenly attacked by an army of giant sea creatures and sahuagin. Lyzian ran off to organize the defense and told us to find the "safe halls" to the west. Instead, we wandered around the map. It was very large, about four times the size (in coordinates, at least) of the standard Gold Box map, but there wasn't much in the way of fixed encounters. We kept stumbling upon random encounters, including combats with sea dragons and amphi dragons (both of which are "dragon enough" to die quickly at the end of a dragonlance), as well as mini-encounters with injured sea elves to whom we provided healing and "Neutralize Poison" spells.

     

One mini-encounter asked us to carry injured sea elves to the safe rooms, so we finally made our way there. Shortly after we arrived, dragon attacks damaged the door, and the elves asked us to journey to a forge in the southeast part of their complex, where we could find a hinge to repair the door. 

          

A map of the sea elves' city, from the journal.

         

I think underwater civilizations are just dumb, I don't care if they're here or in Aquaman. It never makes sense that characters can talk underwater, fight with the same types of weapons, wear the same types of armor, and survive amidst the pressure. (Yes, I know: "magic.") Stories that use underwater kingdoms always make the suspension of disbelief worse by including things that make no sense underwater, like furniture and doors with hinges. Here, not only do the sea elves somehow have a "forge," but the prince sleeps in a bed and even has an armoire in his room. Neptune preserve us.

       

Anyway, we fought our way to the forge. There was a particularly difficult battle against sea dragons trashing the elves' temple. They're capable of breathing steam, and a hit without saving instantly kills any of my characters. I had to give the Ring of Free Action to Midsummer and have her swallow a Potion of Speed to have any chance of killing them before they got one of us.

           

The sea dragon gets his steam attack off before we can stop him.

         

Back in the safe hall, the elves used the hinge to repair the door. Lyzian showed up, covered in blood, and made a snarky suggestion that we'd been resting in the hall the entire time. Fortunately, the other elves defended us, telling Lyzian of our deeds, and he apologized. He asked us to find Daenor in his chambers while he was taken off for healing.

          

Damned right we did.

         

We did find Daenor. He was feverish and said something about sahuagin, eggs, and someone named Talhook. He had somehow spied a conversation in which Lord Prince Talhook of the sahuagin had coerced the sea dragons' help by stealing their eggs. Someone is always stealing eggs in this setting.

            

Or maybe that's just a convenient excuse.

        

When Lyzian heard the news, he synthesized it with intelligence he had about strange happenings in the old city of Celanost, where there's one building full of air that "used to harbor outlander guests long ago." He asked us to go there and look for them. He gave us a magic shell that would disable the "Deepsea" spell when we reached the air area, then cast it again when we left. 

       

Reaching Celanost meant traveling south from the sea elf city down a long, narrow passage in which we faced numerous battles with sea creatures. The city was a standard 16 x 16 map, divided into water and air halves. The air half was full of battles with fire elementals, fireshadows, and human wizards. I had to reload several times in the ultimate battle because I couldn't find a way to reliably damage the mage before he could destroy my party with "Delayed Blast Fireball." I think in the end I ran a character with "Silence" and "Resist Fire" active down to him and attacked him in melee combat.

         

You'd think they'd have sucked up all the oxygen in this area.

        

We found the eggs and began the journey back to the elves' city. In the long corridor, we had an encounter with sea dragons and had the option to attack or give them the eggs. I hadn't saved in a while at that point, so I gave them the eggs even though I wanted to know what would happen if we fought them instead. As it happens, they departed with their eggs and the assault came to an end.

         

Or so we thought. Lyzian offered his chambers for rest, and when we entered, we were ambushed by Lord Prince Talhook and a company of sahuagin. They weren't nearly as hard as even a random battle with the sea monsters, and we killed them in short order.

         

Sahuagins got bigger since Pool of Radiance.

        

Afterwards, the prince said that he'd sent word of our deeds to the "king in Dargonost." (I gather from Googling that Dargonost is the eponym of the Dargonesti elves, another name for sea elves.) In reward for our services, the king had sent along a second footman's dragonlance, which of course I gave to my second knight. That will be handy.

    

Lyzian then arranged for us to be brought to the continent of Taladas, where our ship had been heading. Daenor, mysteriously, "will join you when he can." Lyzian gave us a shell to present to someone named Ezra, who would be able to help us.  He then cast a spell that knocked us out, but not before we saw the sea elves morph into dolphins.

        

I don't know if I'm comfortable being unconscious around a dolphin.

        

We awoke in an inn in a fishing village called Hizden. It was a half-map, with the usual set of services. We got our equipment identified, got trained, rested and re-memorized spells, and so on. Already we have more wealth that we can carry, and we had to leave a bunch of steel pieces behind. No one wanted to talk about the sea elves and clammed up every time we asked.

           

I hope we find a magic store or some other money sink.

       

We eventually found Ezra and gave him the shell. He intimated that Lyzian was his father, and that perhaps many or all of the residents of Hizden were half-breed children of sea elves. He suggested we travel north from Hizden to an old lighthouse and consult with the keeper, whose "wisdom is profound."

          

Maybe an example?

        

As we were leaving, we were attacked by a group of sahuagin and sea dragons, who had apparently followed us. They soon discovered how much more powerful the party is on land.

        

When we met underwater, I didn't get a chance to show you my specialty.

    

We finally emerged on the overland map. I suppressed an urge to stake off randomly and instead walked north to the lighthouse.

       

I'm always happy when it doesn't say: "You enter the building and record your impressions as Journal Entry 72."

       

Miscellaneous notes:

    

• This game must be hard for a newly-created party. I had a tough enough time with my leveled characters and overpowered equipment. 

• Speaking of overpowered equipment, my new dragonlance has been my only upgrade so far. I've found a few +2 and one +3 item, but nothing better than what we brought.

• The sound is more complex here than in previous Gold Box games that I remember. I'm not an expert, but the effects sound recorded rather than digitized, and instead of constant background music, the game offers brief tunes to accompany key events. I'd leave more music turned on if more games did that. 

• "Lightning Bolt" and Wands of Lightning act differently underwater than on land. Instead of casting in a line, they travel to a central location and then burst, damaging everyone in a radius.

• I believe even unconscious characters gain experience in this game, which is a Gold Box first.

• When "Delayed Blast Fireball" was introduced in Secret of the Silver Blades, you could actually set a delay. They removed that option at some point.

         

As I wrap up, we've explored a few levels of the lighthouse. A trap on Level 1 dropped us two floors into the basement, where we roused the fury of its denizens--an absolutely enormous party of greater otyughs, purple worms, boring beetles, and giant spiders. These creatures had us completely surrounded as the battle began. The combat ranks up there among the top 5 in Gold Box history and maybe even the top 10 in RPG history. None of the enemies had spells, but they were capable of massive physical attacks each round, and some were capable of poisoning. They soaked up wave after wave of mass damage spells, and I had to keep half my party occupied each round with healing.

            

Blasting a bunch of garbage-eaters with fireballs. They can take a lot of them.

         

I think it might be since Pool of Radiance that I've faced such a huge battle against so many purely-physical enemies. When it was over the first time, I had one character dead. I could have raised him or taken him back to Hizden, but I decided to fight the battle again just for fun. Whatever Dark Queen turns into, I'll be grateful for these few hours.

    

Time so far: 9 hours