Tygus Horx: Ulandar's Big Trap

 

Despite the message, I'd say the dungeon consisted of a series of small traps rather than one big one.

       

I had hoped to wrap up Horx in one more entry, but the game seems determined to linger a bit longer than its content warrants. In this session, I explored the three levels of the Temple of Ulandar, but it appears that I'll need to explore at least two more dungeons before the end.

   

Like the game's first dungeon, the Temple of Ulandar consisted of three 15 x 15 levels. Their geography is slightly more interesting than the three maze levels (which, to be fair, were explicitly called "mazes"). Upon entry on Level 1, a message warns: "This is the Temple of Ulandar. His big trap lies before you. Evil creatures guard the shrine. Be careful!" Early on, the first level splits into two paths. The rightmost one takes you along the south wall and up the east wall to a large room.

    

Ulandar's domain, Level 1.

      

To get into the room, you have to answer a riddle posed by an "old person" standing in the hallway. I don't know what keeps us from just pushing past him. The riddle is: "It is colourful, and the half of a circle. You can see it, but if you wanna take it, you can't reach it." It takes some analysis of the awkward English, but the answer is (RAINBOW) (repeated at the bottom of the entry for those on a mobile browser). The author is fond of "wanna" and "gonna." My iPhone is always transcribing my "want to" and "going to" to those variants, which drives me crazy. I have never said "wanna" or "gonna" in my life.

       

MOON kind of works, at least some days.

      

Beyond the old person is a room full of traps--the kind that drain health or magic points or both with every step and turn that you make. The developer is fond of these traps, too, perhaps to add more of an element of danger since you can avoid almost all combats. In the corner of the room is a "Rainbow Star." I'm not sure what it did for me--perhaps I needed it at some crucial point later in the dungeon, and the game just didn't call attention to it.

   

The other path through the first level leads through a long series of 2 x 2 rooms and a series of switchback corridors to the stairs down. The rest of the dungeon has you explore most of Level 2, then go down to half of Level 3, then back up to the rest of Level 2, then back down to the rest of Level 3.

       

Level 2.

      

Level 2 introduces dark squares for the first time. In most Bard's Tale variants, dark squares aren't that hard to navigate. You just follow one wall. Here, they're a bit tougher because there's always a delay of a few seconds when the game decides it's time for combat. Since dark squares give you no feedback unless you bonk into a wall, it's thus hard to tell when the game is a) allowing you to pass through an open dark area, or b) paused while it's loading combat. I'd think I'd walked for three squares only to find I never left the original square. I had to use TEPL ("Tell Place") often to figure out where I was.

      

I'm either moving forward or the game is loading a combat.

    

Level 2 has a series of 3 x 3 rooms with a one-square room in the middle of them. Each offers a clue:

   

• The first is ABLE
• The second is FRESH
• The third is FAR
• The fourth is IGNOBLE
• The fifth is RUNAWAY

   

It was a somewhat tough puzzle until I realized that you want to substitute in for is, at which point it becomes clear that the answer is (ARROW). I'm guessing that's an intentional obfuscation rather than a bad translation, as making those words in from the outset would make the puzzle too easy. Then again, this is the game that clued FIRE with "It is hot" and "It is red and yellow."

   

This password gets you through the final door in a series of concentric squares, all of which have health-sucking traps on both sides of the doors. The first half of Level 3 takes you through some random rooms and corridors to the stairway in the southwest corner. Along the way, you learn that "Illusions are made of nothing" from a random message. The remainder of Level 2 has another dark area and a square where you see a message in a blue light: "You can find me in Xe-Tje's domain."

        

Level 3 of Ulandar's domain.

     

The second half of Level 3 is almost all dark squares. A long maze through them ends in a small room in which you meet an "old man." I'm not sure if he's the same "old person" from earlier or not. "Leave this room mortals," cries the old man. "You passed my problems, but you are not able to solve my last question: To kill me!" The old man is apparently the god Ulandar. He summons 18 headhunters, 16 slaughters (not "slaughterers"), and 14 gravediggers to fight alongside him.

      

Killing you isn't really a "question."

     

The first time I reached this area, I was far too weak to even come close to defeating him. The problem is that the near-100% success of fleeing from combats means that you're encouraged to flee from all of them while you map dungeons. Otherwise, you'll just weaken yourself for no reason. But it also means you don't build up the necessary experience for the rare fixed combat. I probably erred too much on the side of avoiding combat during exploration; a player who fought occasionally-but-not-always would set himself up for less grinding later.

   

I reloaded from outside the dungeon and began to grind. Grinding is so mindless in this game that I began to wonder how I could write a macro to do it for me. Normally, I wouldn't countenance such a thing, but this is a somewhat minor game and I thought the puzzle posed by writing a macro was more interesting than sticking to my usual rules. I don't have macro software sophisticated enough that it can read what's on the screen--I'm not sure that even exists--so I had to find a combination of keystrokes that would: 1) produce a favorable outcome in combat no matter what enemy party composition; 2) ensure that each combat would be followed by another one; and 3) not cause anything to interrupt or otherwise screw up the sequence of combats while the party was not currently in combat.

        

Achieving the highest spell level.

       

This wouldn't be possible for some games. Imagine that inside combat, "D" defends but outside combat it opens the "Disk" menu. Using the software I have, which wouldn't be able to distinguish whether I'm in or out of combat, I wouldn't be able to use the "D" key in the macro, because once combat ended, it would just open the "Disk" menu and get stuck there (or, more likely, wreak some havoc involving the rest of the keys). Fortunately, this game didn't have any commands that posed quite that problem. With some trial and error, I discovered this sequence worked:

   

• "F": If the game is on the initial encounter screen, which gives you the option to (F)ight or (R)un, this key causes you to fight. Outside of combat, or once combat is engaged, it does nothing.

• Eight "A" keys in a row. Once combat begins, this has the first four characters (A)ttack, and then choose to attack the monsters in group A. Elsewhere, it does nothing.

• "S" followed by "D" twice. This was a tricky one. In combat, after the first four characters have chosen to attack, I needed to cause the last two to (D)efend, since it's their only option except to cast a spell, which you can't do forever while leaving the macro running. But outside of combat, "D" loads a saved game. Thus, I had to make sure to hit "S" to save the game first (which does nothing while in combat).

• "Y": In combat, it acknowledges your previously-selected actions and executes the combat round. Elsewhere, it does nothing.

• <SPACE>: At the end of combat, it acknowledges the experience/gold reward screen. Elsewhere, it does nothing.

     

With this sequence of keys on an indefinite loop, the game automatically fought when an enemy appeared but otherwise just threw away unused keypresses when it didn't. It mostly worked. The problem is that even in the city, where enemies are weak, they get a lucky hit often enough that you still have to monitor your health. In the dungeons, you have to stop and heal often enough that it's hardly worth running the macro. Experience rewards from city combats are so low that it takes functionally hours between levels, even with the emulator and macro speed cranked. So if I wanted to get any use out of it, I had to keep it running for hours, but in a way that I could still keep half of my attention on the computer to stop characters from dying. I've been trying to spend more time on the treadmill this fall, so I had some success setting the macro running on a table next to the treadmill, but I still had to spend most of my grinding time manually grinding in dungeons.

   

With Level 6 in all spellcasting levels and 20 in all attributes, this character has gone as high as he can go. This screenshot is actually from a few hours after the end of this session.

     

Once my conjurer and magician got to Level 15, which gave them Level 6 spells, I switched them both to the other class. They rose rapidly through the first few levels of their new classes, soon significantly outclassing the rest of the characters in hit points and attributes. If you wanted to create an ultra-powerful party in this game, you'd go with all spellcasters, even though it would make the initial game difficult.

Eventually, they got to Level 15 in their new classes, at which point I rolled them over to the wizard class, which you can only do after the characters have been both conjurers and magicians. Once I had them high enough as wizards that they got Level 4 spells, I decided to try Ulandar again.

   

Let me pause to note that the spell list isn't terribly useful in this game. Each class only gets 11 (wizard) or 13 (conjurer and magician) spells, and a lot of them are just more powerful versions of early ones. For instance, the conjurer's 13 spells include three levels of "magic compass," three levels of "magic torch," and three levels of healing a single character. Most of the rest are simply group damage spells of varying power. Thus, once you get the highest level of spell as a conjurer, you only ever cast MATO ("Magic Torch"), MACO ("Magic Compass") and EVPO ("Evil Power"). There's supposed to be a Level 6 conjurer spell called MEAL that fully heals a character, but it doesn't work. I assume it's a typo, and the real spell is a different selection of letters, but I haven't figured it out.

   

The wizard's selection of 11 spells includes the game's sole resurrection spell (BALI) but is otherwise solely damage spells. The highest is MAHA ("Malu-Krli's Hammer"), which does 40-65 points of damage to a group. There are no spells that damage all opponents in all groups, unlike The Bard's Tale.

       

Ulandar's party. Notice I have a compass, a shield, and a torch activated.

       

Ulander's group still slaughtered me the first time I faced them after grinding. I had to try a few times before I realized that I needed to concentrate damage spells on one group at a time until they were gone, and that one of my two spellcasters would have to cast HEAL (heals all characters) every round. Even then, I couldn't save two of my characters. 

         

Worst last words ever.

       

At the end of the battle, the old man shouted: "Here is the second key, you fools! But you never can use it!" and died. The game then made me suffer the indignity of turning around and retracing my steps all the way back to the surface. Once there, I resurrected my dead characters, healed everyone else, restored my spell points, and sold my excess goods (even though I have millions of gold pieces now and will never run out). I then made my way to the southwest corner of the city and, in defiance of the god's dying words, used his key to go through an ornate door and gain access to a new dungeon: Xe-Tje's Domain. I assume that there I'll find another key that lets me through the door in the southeast corner of the city, where I hope I'll face the final dungeon.

       

Time so far: 15 hours

RAINBOW

ARROW