Clouds of Xeen: Circumnavigation

 

"Flying feet" is exactly the sort of thing this series would introduce.

       

Conscious of the need to eventually return to the Temple of Yak, I continued to area D4, which on the game map showed several branches of a river spilling over the edge of the world, a giant cyclops, and a city called Nightshadow. The map started with the party rescuing Celia the Maiden from a shack where some zombies had tied her up. I've never known zombies to do that.

        

These were the kidnapping-and-ransom type zombies.

      

You may recall I had tried this map before only to be deterred by "Stingers." They were no longer hard enough to bother me. Neither were "Killer Sprites," although they were capable of casting "Curse," which I can't cure yet. Of all the games of this era, Might and Magic seems to be the most eager to keep the characters continually inflicted with some condition or another. I can't think of many other games in which characters can be slept, poisoned, diseased, weak, drunk, cursed, or insane.

   

It was seeking a cure that I entered Nightshadow before finishing the rest of the outdoor map. I was immediately attacked by a "Bat Queen," which looks pretty cool. A lot of the monster portraits in the game are well done, if a bit goofy. The city was swarming with them, but they died quickly to physical attacks. If they occasionally got in a hit, they were capable of weakening the targeted character.

    

Nightshadow turned out to be a small 16 x 16 map. The town had no services except a magic guild. It was in the grip of a vampire named Count Draco, and the bat queens as well as a handful of gnome vampires (quite hard to hit) were his minions. I had to retreat from the city (fortunately, it had a magic mirror) to return to Vertigo for healing and blessings a couple of times during my explorations.

       

Nightshadow is the first city that wasn't quadruple-sized.

        

I came to three gravestones in the northeast corner of the city. One said, "Open his coffin and bid him farewell; only then can you use the magic of the well." This is a petty complaint, but this is the umpteenth time that the Might and Magic series has offered some kind of rhyming ditty (if you consider rhyming "well" with "well" a rhyme), and the umpteenth time that it has paid no attention to meter. The first line is good--it has three dactyls followed by a single stressed syllable: O-pen his COF-fin and BID him fare-WELL. But the second line is just a mess of too many syllables and inconsistent stresses. This was an easy problem to solve with a thesaurus and a little creativity. I know I've commented on this before; I think it's safe to say it's one of my "pet peeves."

 

Anyway, the other two stones said "a stitch in time" and "lives of a cat," both pointing to the number 9. Another stone: "If the dials are properly set, the count will definitely be upset." There were three sundials in the northern part of town that I turned to "9" (I'm not sure the creators really understand how "sundials" work if they think you turn them to point to specific hours). This allowed me to open the Count's coffin, located in the northern part of a treed area, at night. I lost my first attempt but won after I made the circuit of buffing wells. Between the Count and his gnome vampires, I got a lot of gold, gems, and useful equipment in the town, plus 50,000 experience points for beating the Count.

      

Well, that's an original name.

    

Shortly after clearing out Nightshadow, I took a magic mirror back to the city, just because it was closest to where I wanted to go outdoors, and guess what: the city had respawned!  At least partly. Gnome vampires didn't return, and all the coffins remained open, but bat queens roamed the streets again. I didn't know that was possible in this game.

     

I forgot to even note where I got this. Things move fast in this game.

       

The west side of D4 had a few new items. In a pile of bones, we found "Ligono's Missing Skull"--that must tie in to a quest we haven't been given yet. We had to fight off a few "Swamp Things," which look like living trees. C4 has even more swamp things and killer sprites, plus "Evil Rangers," who seem to have a particular hatred of my druid and can poison my characters with their missile attacks. There's one dungeon and one tower in this area, neither of which I have the proper items to enter.

B4 started to get into the icy wastes depicted in the southwest corner of the game map. There were ice trolls and evil archers--one-hit kills when I had the +10 levels from Nightshadow active. When it wore off, I couldn't even penetrate their armor class. I pressed through it but started to feel uncomfortable with my plan; I don't like fully relying on buffs. As usual, destroying the monsters' headquarters got me experience, gold, gems, and special items. I found a Holy Book of Elvenkind on a pedestal--another quest item for which I do not yet have a quest. There was yet another dungeon for which I need a stone.

     

"Identify Monster" helps confirm that I'm not doing any damage even though I'm hitting him.

     

The northwest corner of this area brought me to something called the Cave of Illusion. The cave was four levels, each full of water and teeming with water golems. The "illusion" part was that every visible trap or treasure turned out to be hallucinations. However, there were numerous skulls in alcoves that were very real. They offered permanent attribute boosts in exchange for gems; specifically, boosts of +2, +3, +5, and +10 for 5, 10, 50, and 200 gems, respectively. There was also one skull who offered the key to the Tower of High Magic for 300 gems. I spent literally every single gem I had, except for about 25, on these increases. 

      

Hard to pass up.

       

The bottom of the dungeon had a plug, but I was too weak to pull it out. I made a note to return when I have more strength or a strength buff. 

      

This sort of message is getting discouraging.

     

I did get enough strength increases to open the crates in the Temple of Yak. I cleared out those crates and, with the help of the +10 levels from the Nightshadow fountain, finished off the Yak Master. The crates had nothing but skeletons, so that was mostly a waste of time.

   

I next became curious whether the Tower of High Magic, for which I now had a key, was the tower in C4. It was. It was a difficult place. Enemies were flying feet--literally disembodied feet with wings--and sorcerers capable of mass-damage spells. The tower was full of traps that shot gouts of flame, electricity, and poison at the party, plus numerous squares that sapped all of our magic points. I had to use "Lloyd's Beacon" (after resting to replenish magic) to warp out of there several times to heal and refresh my buffs. The top floor had a chest that, when opened, released a dragon. It took me a couple of tries, but I managed to kill him.

     

My first attempt didn't go so well.

        

The tower's rewards were significant. There were magic potions that conferred permanent increases to fire, cold, electricity, and poison resistance, and the tower's loot helped replenish my stock of gems. Books on the top floor taught the "Prismatic Light" spell and the "Prestidigitation" skill, which increases magic ability for my sorcerer. Finally, I got a key to Darzog's Tower.

    

Like the Witches' Tower, the Tower of High Magic connected to the "cloud" layer above the land of Xeen. This time, there were numerous sorcerers milling around the area, and I had to kill them. I spent some more time experimenting with this "second level" of the game world. You need "Levitate" active to walk on the clouds; otherwise, you go hurtling (usually fatally) to the ground level. However, "Levitate" doesn't do anything if you step off the clouds and on to spaces of open air. Thus, it doesn't appear that you can fully explore the cloud layer. However, there were single-square clouds heading off into the distance from the Tower, suggesting I could use "Jump" to move across the cloud layer to some other destination. I was discouraged from too much exploration because some of the squares had lightning bolt traps, but there was a pile of gems in one square and a drum in another; I'm not sure what it did.

      

Stepping off the clouds transitions you back to the ground level.

A trap--or a predictable result of walking around clouds encased in metal.

    

A4 had no dungeons. It was an icy tundra full of combats with snow beasts and cyclopes. There was no one huge giant the way the map depicts; it's clear now that the beasts on the game map are just decorations, not indications of special encounters the way they were in the first two games. An altar offered a temporary +50 boost in cold resistance, and a fountain gave 250 spell points. Destroying the cyclops camp got me a message that "Glom will be pleased." I wasn't sure who that was, but I didn't have to wonder for long; he was a few squares into A3. Glom the Gnome King. He gave me several treasures, plus experience, for destroying the beasts.

       

The monster portraits in this game really are terrific.

       

A3 continued the wintry theme in the southern squares and then became more mountainous. I met the Winter Druid, who said that he could give me the Last Snowflake of Winter if I could give him the Last Fallen Leaf of Autumn; that's clearly some questline I'll encounter later. Enemies in the area were barbarians and ninjas; I was rewarded by Kai Wu the Monk for destroying the latter.

  

More important, A3 offered the fourth city: Winterkill. As we arrived, Randon the Mayor told us that ghosts had driven out the city's population. Sure enough, we started encountering barely-visible "spirit bones." They were the first of three waves of undead we had to face. We had to completely clear the city of each wave, then bang a gong, then talk to Randon. After the spirit bones were gone, "polter-fools" appeared, followed by ghost riders. They were all pretty tough, but the town offered plenty of bottles of "Holy Word" that we could throw at the enemies for instant deaths. I tried to save the potions for when we faced three at a time.

   

A ghost rider momentarily becomes visible as we blast him with a lightning bolt.

You'd think that this would be enough to level up. Guess again.

       

Banging a few gongs activated a fountain that provides +50 might. Between that, the fountain in Nightshadow that offers +10 levels, the fountain in Vertigo that boosts hit points, the fountain in Rivercity that boosts spell points, and the temple blessings, I can gather a pretty powerful series of buffs by just using the magic mirrors.

A2 and A1 transitioned into a desert landscape, with sandworms, giant scorpions, and sand golems. A sphinx said, "You do not have my amulet. Be gone!" A guy in a wagon named "Saul the Prayermaster" taught the "Prayer Master" skill for 10,000 gold. Arie the Apprentice, living in a tent, asked me to avenge his master by killing the wizards of Castle Basenji and retrieving the Insight Scroll. A shrine offered temporary +50 energy resistance, and a fountain in the far northwest corner of the map conferred +250 hit points.

      

A Basenji is a hunting dog; the castle has werewolves.

      

I noticed a little island off the edge of the map in the northwest corner. I reached it with "Teleport." A sign called it the "Air Reflector" and I was asked if I wanted to activate it. I left it alone for now. I suspect these little islands were there in A4 and F4, too, and I just didn't notice them.

       

At first, I thought there would be a portal to the Air Domain.

     

I end this session having just entered the aforementioned Castle Basenji in A1. The place is crawling with werewolf guardians of the wizards. Once I complete this area, I will have explored the entire southern row and western column of the map, although with two dungeons and a few other items in my backpath.

These are the burliest werewolves I've ever seen in an RPG.

       

Miscellaneous notes:

  

• Early on, I made some noise about changing party members, but I never did. Even now, I recognize I don't have the "best" combination, but I think I'll stick with it anyway.

• You cannot fire into mountains, but you can fire out. One easy way to kill wilderness enemies is to sit on a mountain square and fire outward until they die. They apparently don't have "Mountaineering." 

• So far, only the starting town of Vertigo and Rivercity have offered services. The other cities have no training, inns, temples, taverns, or equipment shops.

      

Based on your advice, I'm banking as much as possible--not that these guys look very trustworthy.

      

• I could do without the "broken armor" mechanic. Rarely does everyone have an unbroken set.

• I haven't been talking much about them, but equipment upgrades have been regular. It just feels like equipment in this game doesn't matter quite as much as innate attributes. As with Might and Magic III, there is a wide variety of weapon and armor types, each made from different materials or blessed with a different enchantment. Some of them make no sense, like "leather plate armor" or "silver sling" or "wooden boots."

• Wow, did leveling slow down once I hit 11. I didn't level up once this entire session.

• Time is passing fast. My characters are 21 in real years, three years older than when I started. Some of them have magically aged beyond that. I discovered belatedly that every time you visit a service in town, it costs an entire day. I had been in the habit of popping into the store, identifying some equipment, popping out, rearranging it, going back in, and so forth. Now I'm much more careful about visiting as rarely as possible.

     

The malaise I felt last time I played has mostly lifted. I'll never not wish the game didn't take itself more seriously, or that it tried harder to construct a believable world, but I can still live with the result. Xeen is packed with content. It's rare to complete more than two rows or columns of one of the game maps without a treasure or special encounter. This will always be the primary strength of the series.

Time so far: 19 hours.