Excelsior, Phase One: Lysandia: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

 

Matt, I want to see this "Registry of Fixers."

       

Excelsior, Phase One: Lysandia

United States

Castle Software (developer); published as shareware
Released 1993 for DOS, 2000 for Windows

Date Started: 17 October 2025 

Date Ended: 14 December 2025

Total Hours: 32

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5) (Combat easy after the first few hours; puzzles still hard.)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

    

Summary:

 

Excelsior is a better-than-average Ultima clone, with an iconographic interface and single-key commands. The main character is a "fixer," arrived from another dimension to correct an aberration in the timeline of the land of Lysandia; this turns out to be a demon who has possessed King Valkery. The player must solve a multi-stage quest to banish the demon that takes him through cities, dungeons, and castles, including multiple conversations with NPCs.

     

Mechanics and combat are trifle bland. The detailed character creation ends up mattering little, NPC interaction is one-way only, and character leveling stops being rewarding well before the end of the game, which takes a smidge too long. Interesting interior layouts and challenging puzzles keep things lively.

    

*****

    

When I last blogged, the Resistance and I had pieced together that to banish the demon from King Valkery, we would need a Gem of Severance, a Crystal Jar, and a third unknown item. I had obtained the jar and had discovered that to make the Gem of Severance, I would need individual gems that would be left behind when I killed the most evil and most good people in the land. I had identified the "most good" as a friar living in isolation in the Royal Keep, but he would only consent if I stabbed him with a dagger dipped in holy water. The "most evil" person was a sorcerer named Fevez in the dungeon Daivenhoven; he wanted me to kill the leader of the Order of the Crescent.

   

These two sub-quests came together when I visited the Forgotten Pits, knowing that I'd find a priest there who could make holy water. He confirmed this, but said he could only give it to a member of the order of the Crescent.

      

Trying to save the world here, buddy.

    

I had no idea where to find the leader of the order, but commenter Scott had alerted me that there were two more levels to the Seventh Keep, which I had abandoned after exploring only two. The third level had one of the more difficult puzzles in the game, and I think I would have needed a hint to solve it if I hadn't encountered a similar puzzle in an escape room game just a couple of months ago. The level had eight messages on signs, plus a ninth talking sign that asked me for a password. The eight messages were:

     

• Tea is served promptly at three.
• One blue jay sat in the tree.
• Sail the seven seas.
• To be good is the goal.
• The eye can wander for days.
• Oh no! Something ate my cat!
• Each philosopher asked "Why?" five times.
• A hex on you! 

     

If you can figure it out, I tip my hat. The key realization is that each sentence has one word that sounds like a number (or is a number) and one word that sounds like a letter (e.g., "2 B good is the goal"; "The I can wander 4 days"). The password is discerned by ordering the phrases by the numbers and then spelling out the letters, which in this case is JBTIYUCO. I figured such a nonsense word couldn't possibly be right and that I was overlooking something, but to my surprise, it opened the way forward.

     

I want to know how I pronounced that.

       

On the fourth floor, I met a frail-looking woman who said she was hiding from King Valkery's minions. Apparently, the Order of the Crescent is some do-good organization, and the king outlawed it. The woman had run out of food and asked for half mine, which I gave. In turn, she put a brand on my palm and welcomed me into the Order.  

    

Knowing I eventually had to kill this woman, I tried to do it while I was here anyway, but the brand disappeared. Thus, I had to make my way back to the Forgotten Pit for the umpteeth time, descend to the priest, get him to sprinkle some holy water on my dagger blade, and then return to the Seventh Keep to kill Lady Jasmine.

    

Well, the good news is that you don't have to worry about that.

          

Before doing that last part, I returned to the Royal Keep and killed the friar. He was ready for it. After killing Jasmine, I returned to the dungeon Davinhovin and killed the evil sorcerer Fevez, who like the friar was ready and willing to die. It's notable that for both of them, I just had to T)alk to them, and the game took over from there. For Lady Jasmine, on the other hand, I had to do the deed myself with the A)ttack key right after the old woman complimented my generosity. I was sure that the game would give me some kind of "out," some way of tricking Fevez, but I couldn't find it if it did. It's an interesting moral question that I wish the game had milked a bit more.

      

How affable of him.

       

Killing the friar and Fevez rewarded me with the two halves of the Gem of Severance, but I needed to unite them. All I had been told was that I would need to find a statue of the demon Xoxiro in a deep dungeon and stick the two gems in his eyes. A return visit to the Resistance got me nothing new. I checked my notes, but I had already been to the bottom level of every dungeon I'd found.

    

I checked the map of Lysandia that Matt Engle had sent me and saw a dungeon I'd missed in the middle of the continent. I found it at the top of a river, through some poisonous fens. The dungeon was full of poison, too, so before exploring, I backtracked through several magic shops until I found the "Pure Blood" (PB) spell. (I'd been dealing with occasional poisoning up to this point at healers.) I took the opportunity to buy some other spells I'd neglected. I ended up casting virtually none of them and regretting that I'd spent the money.

    

A new dungeon entrance.

     

The dungeon of Draxen had four large levels, with sections full of water in which I needed to navigate by ship. Fortunately, there were ships in the appropriate places.  I found Eramel Plate Mail, the best armor in the game, at one point. There was also a sword called Avenger, but my paladin couldn't use it. There were a few secret doors. Naturally, I got attacked by hordes of dragons and undead and such, but combat hadn't posed any difficulty since about Hour 3, and it didn't pose any difficulty during this session, either. I think the only time I died during the last 24 hours is when a wizard hit me with a lucky "Sleep" spell that I just never woke up from. For everyone else, as long as I cast a healing spell once my hit point total got to, say, 300, I was fine.

    

Moving through Draxen.

        

Now, given the sheer number of enemies that you face as you move from one place to another, I wouldn't have wanted combat to be a lot more challenging. Nonetheless, I think an easy fix to the game's balance would be to have spell points regenerate about half as fast. The player would have to conserve a bit more, and potions would be more valuable.

    

Anyway, I made it to the bottom of Draxen and found a demon statue. I couldn't get near it, so from the altar in front of it, I U)sed the two individual gems. The game narrated how I threw them into the statue's eye socket and they fused into the Gem of Severance.

     

That looks less like a statue than a skull.

       

From here, the surface was a few "Instant Elevation" spells away. I stopped in Castle Excelsior for what turned out to be my final promotion; the game has a level cap at 10. 

    

Back at the Resistance HQ, Sebastian told me that the final item I would need to defeat the demon in King Valkery was the Banishment Sword. He sent me to Aldno. Fortunately, Aldno had the sword on him and just gave it to me with no fuss.

      

I think I should have noticed this place earlier.

        

No, of course that isn't what happened. Aldno told me that the sword was in Ironthread Keep, the only place I hadn't entered, because a sign next to the door kept asking for a password. Aldno related that the two sub-kings, Amanthor in Infinitum and Rodagarn in Griswold, each knew half the password. Of course, it wasn't as easy as just asking them. Each of them wanted me to do a little quest first.

   

Amanthor's quest was to cure the land of a drought. His sage, Horance, said I would have to do it by spreading Storm Dust into the atmosphere. I would first need to find the rock, then somehow get it up into  the stratosphere, then somehow cause a bolt of lightning to strike it. This quest sent me from person to person to find the rock, find a scroll that would summon a lightning bolt, and purchase a balloon with which I could hoist it into the atmosphere from the highest mountain. Everyone who knew something valuable wanted me to do a little sub-quest for him.

       

My patience wore a bit thin at this point.

               

I don't feel like relating all of it, but it took a while, mostly because the two guys selling the balloon wanted 5,000 gold pieces for it. Since I'd recently gone on a spell-buying binge, I had to ignominiously grind for the money. I did it in front of Oooblyae, which has shops that buy everything except bows. I got to the goalpost a lot faster by selling items than by looting gold itself.

     

Yay! 235 more battles to go!

       

But I confess I needed the hint book for the location of the rock. I couldn't find anyone to tell me. It turned out to be in the middle of a very obvious landscape pattern south of Infinitum. I can't believe I didn't notice it.

     

Amanthor gave me his half of the password (the nonsense IBBR) and had me see one of his servants, Heltimer the Obscure, about a key that I would need in Ironthread. The key turned out to go to a clock I had bought ages ago, turning it into a "Wound Clock."

      

Amanthor is happy.

      

Rodargan, meanwhile, didn't want to give me his half of the password while a king's spy, Peffley, was hanging about nearby. Valkery had recently given Peffley something called the Miracle Ear, an automatic translation device which Griswold depended on to negotiate trade with the monster-inhabited city of Grethal.

     

I had to conduct a world tour of several towns, one NPC sending me to another, before I learned Peffley's big weakness: He's a coward. With that intelligence in mind, a little threatening caused him to cough up the Miracle Ear, which Rodargan now wanted me to take to Grethal to work out a new trade deal. On my first visit to Grethal, I had been unable to speak to most of the NPCs. This time, I could. The goblins and trolls and whatnot protested that they were just as civilized as humans and elves, just misunderstood.

       

Your argument would be more sympathetic if you didn't attack me everywhere I go.

       

A gorn named Bleh gave me a password that I would need in Ironthread (CAVENGBER), and a golem named Hurmst told me I would definitely need a clock in the tower. I parlayed with Mayor MgMemble and got the favorable trade deal Rodargan was asking for. When I returned to Griswold, Rodargan gave me his half of the password: IGBL. That means that the final password was, yes, IGBLIBBR. No one was going to brute-force their way into that tower.

       

"Mayor MgMemble" sounds like the villain in a bad Christmas movie.

              

I have no idea how many levels Ironthread was. It had multiple up-and-down ladders, and no light source worked, so I could only see one square around me at any given time. I thought I'd probably have to map it, but instead I just followed the right wall, going up or down as I came to ladders. It worked. I eventually came to a dead-end amidst walls of fire.

   

Here, alas, I needed the hint book again. I'm not sure this was a fair puzzle. I had to pair Bleh's clue (CAVENGBER) with the wound clock, which when U)sed, could be set to 13 different positions. The trick was to associate each letter with a number on the clockface in alphabetical order: for instance, C was 3 and A was 1. V is, of course, 22, but 22:00 on a 26-hour clock would be 9 on a 13-hour clock (with AM and PM). I get the logic, but not how the player could possibly have stumbled upon it on his own. Since the hint book shipped with the game, though, I can't ding the authors too hard for this one.

      

Why would any society settle on a 13-hour day?

        

When I had finished entering the sequence, the fires heated up and presented me with the Banishment Sword.

   

"Instant Descent" got me out of the dungeon in a few seconds, and all I had left was to go to Castle Excelsior and confront Valkery. I stopped to visit Sebastian just in case. "The Day of Renewal has arrived," he proclaimed. "Begone and may the stars shine brightly upon you."

   

I entered Excelsior and marched up to the king. He wouldn't talk to me. I tried attacking him, but all the attacks missed. I needed to use the Gem of Severance first. A couple of text paragraphs explained what happened: I smashed the gem in half, which caused Valkery to vibrate and then split in half himself, a noble king in the rear and "evil incarnate" in the foreground. The evil version drew his sword and attacked.

     

So, it's the literal type of Gem of Severance then.

      

We traded blows for a while. The Banishment Sword did several hundred points of damage per hit, but the Dark King must have had a few thousand. His sword, meanwhile, hit me for about 115 per hit. I think I could have won by just casting "Flesh Mend" every so often, but the easier way was to use the Glistening Elixir, which raised my health to 999. That lasted long enough to see the battle to the end, which was only a few more rounds.

      

It's a good thing the two kings didn't end up in the opposite order.

      

More narration: the Dark King fell to the floor, still threatening me with his dying breaths: "True chaos is not a material being. It will live on, stronger than ever, for your anger toward me merely strengthens it!"

       

I hope I remembered to poke some air holes.

         

Fortunately, "true chaos" could be captured in a jar. When I used the Crystal Jar, the narration described how the incorporeal entity that came out of Valkery's body was "ripped apart and pulled inside the jar."

   

The "good" Valkery had his Theoden moment, slowly coming to his senses and thanking me for banishing the demon and restoring his wits. He offered a reward, which I declined. In fact, I didn't even get to stay long enough for the banquet. Instead, the Great Council immediately sucked me back to Fixer headquarters, congratulated me on a job well done, and promised me a promotion.

      

This framing story is a nice meta-commentary on CRPGs. You could assume the role of the Fixer in just about every game that you play.

        

You will be tempted from my description to think that the main quest is too long, with too much back-and-forth, and too many stacked sub-quests. There is an extent to which this is true, but I don't want to over-emphasize it. Like the best of the Ultima games, Excelsior does a superior job with writing, plotting, and use of its graphics, such that its areas are never boring. Like, it would have been nice if Rodargan had just given me the password, but the idea of a human society needing a fragile magical item to engage in trade with a monster society is compelling, and it was fun to talk to the NPCs who had only been able to grunt on my first visit. Superior writing kept the long text passages from risibility (I would never call the Dark King's dying speech a "Trandle Oratory," for instance). Interesting layouts and puzzles kept the dungeons from falling to tedium.

     

Good writing (including dialogue) and use of graphics distinguish Excelsior from dozens of similar Ultima clones.

         

Where the game really disappoints is in character attributes. Excelsior is hardly the first game to offer numerous character options and then never actually use them in encounters, NPC dialogue, quests, or puzzles, but it somehow cuts more deeply here given the game's more unusual options (sexless golem paladin, male imp pirate, female giant bard). Similarly disappointing is the alignment system, which only seems to affect the number of spell points required to cast certain spells, and naturally gravitates towards the spells you use most often anyway.

   

I do think the different classes could create very different gameplay experiences, however. I didn't use much magic in the game, and if I were going to replay it, I would choose a magic-heavy class to see how some of the more expensive, higher-level spells performed versus the weapons that I relied on. I also note that intelligent spell use can make aspects of the game faster. I never bothered to explore "Mortimer's Pinpoint Relocation," which uses a magic skull to perform a sort of mark/recall. Very late in the game, I discovered that I had bought something called "Air Walk" at some point. It literally allows you to fly, rendering other forms of transportation obsolete. Overall, I only explored about 10% of the spells available to me.

        

My late-game character. I guess I could have gotten 1 more point of dexterity.

       

On the other hand, I think a purely-martial character would have a nightmare of a time, relying on rare potions and natural regeneration to heal (maybe even paying for healing!), having to walk back out of every dungeon. Rogues and assassins would have a particularly difficult time, with no actual stealth mechanics. On the other hand, I think the author did a good job seeding the game with high-level weapons and armor for each class. 

     

In a GIMLET, I give the game:

    

• 4 points for the game world. Its main plot may be a bit derivative, but its framing story (involving the Fixers) is at least original. The world is well-constructed, although it doesn't have a ton of lore. It would have been nice to know something about where all those dungeons came from. Why is the Seventh Keep called that, for instance?

• 4 points for character creation and development. As discussed, an extensive creation process gives way to not much use of the character attributes. Advancement is relatively satisfying in the early stages.

• 3 points for NPC interaction. There are lots of NPCs, but alas all the interaction is one-way.

     

NPCs have a lot to say, but you never say anything back.

      

• 4 points for encounters and foes. The foes are nothing special. They mostly come from Dungeons & Dragons, with a few associated special attacks. I would have liked them to be individually harder but rarer. The game earns some credits with the interesting puzzles, even though I thought a few were unfair.

• 3 points for magic and combat. An easy melee system makes combat unbalanced and discourages experimentation with spells. The Ultima-derived spell variety is otherwise impressive.

     

Battle with some zombies near Ironthread Keep.

        

• 4 points for equipment. You get a decent number of equipment slots and regular upgrades. I always like when games allow me to dual-wield. There are some fixed item locations, but a lot of your inventory comes from random battles.

• 4 points for the economy. The fact that I had to grind 95% of the way through the game shows that it at least never gets out of control—and I didn't buy more than half the spells. Most games offer too few ways to spend money; I think this is one of the few that offers too few ways to make money. Cash drops from slain enemies are paltry; you really have to load up your inventory space (which you don't have that much of) and sell things if you want to get rich.

• 3 points for a branching main quest with lots of sub-quests. I do not think there are any side-quests or optional areas, however, and unless I missed something, there are no alternate paths or role-playing choices. (One exception: solving a cryptogram on your own instead of paying for it.)

    

This was a well-constructed sub-quest that had the misfortune of appearing too late in the game.

        

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The game makes fine use of its iconographic graphics and its single-key approach to commands is exactly what I want from an interface. But the sound effects are basic and rare, and the footstep effect is annoying enough that I turned all sounds off. I would have liked an in-game map and an option to dump NPC dialogue to a note file, neither of which is a big ask by 1993. I should note here that the authors did include an in-game map in version 2.0, released the following year, so I think you could bump up this category and the final score by 1 point for that version.

• 4 points for gameplay. The world is nonlinear, but the plot is mostly linear. There is some mild class-based replayability. It was a bit too easy and a bit too long, but only a bit in both cases.

   

That gives us a final score of 36. Going into this entry, I thought to myself that it ought to just crest my "recommended" threshold, and that's what it did. I also thought it should get about the same as Enchantasy from the same year, which I rated at 35, and Antepenult (1989), which I also rated at 36. These games form a trilogy of superior Ultima clones.

     

Part of the game's thorough documentation.

           

Excelsior was written by Matthew Engle, who handled most of the graphics and design, and Daniel Berke, who handled most of the programming. ("Digital Antiquarian" Jimmy Maher has an extensive rundown of Engle and Berke's backgrounds and the game development process in this November 2020 entry.) The two had met in high school but did most of the development while they attended college in different states, occasionally meeting to trade notes and disks. They sold the game through bulletin boards and the occasional ad. When the Internet era came along, they switched to web-based sales (also switching their brand to 11th Dimension Entertainment). Nearly 30 years later, their site still offers Excelsior and its sequel along with an award-winning text adventure they wrote in high school called Skyland's Star. 

         

They began working on Excelsior, Phase Two: Errondor almost immediately, but exacerbated physical distances made development slow. Rather than simply re-use assets from the first game, Engle and Berke replicated the Ultima VI interface. The plot has the Fixer tracking down a missing colleague on the subtitular world while also completing her mission.

   

Berke became a software engineer and remains one to this day, based in the Seattle area. Engle became a game producer for Disney and Knowledge Adventure, then switched careers by going to law school. He practices in the Phoenix area.

    

My new approach to going through the years may mean we actually get to 1999. We just have one more game to wrap up 1993. 

Game 563: Telnyr III: The Four Runes (1993)

 

         

Telnyr III: The Four Runes

Australia

Independently developed and released as freeware; republished in Loadstar 193 in 2000

Released c. 1993 for Commodore 64

Date Started: 13 December 2025

Date Finished: 13 December 2025

Total Hours: 3
Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

    

Australian Peter Boothman (1944-2012) was best known as a guitarist in the Sydney jazz scene. (See here for an album of his music.) But in his 40s, he developed an interest in computer programming, selected the Commodore as his machine of choice, founded Brunswick Publications, and released several games and utility programs through a local newsletter for Commodore enthusiasts. He put a copyright of 1990 on his first game, The Stone of Telnyr, but did not do the same for the two sequels. They may have been written and released all at once or spaced out by 1-2 years. We only know that all three games were available by 1993.

     

The Telnyr titles are all afternoon quasi-RPGs with similar mechanics. Boothman experiments a bit with screen sizes and layouts throughout the series but otherwise doesn't make many advancements. I found Telnyr III easier and shorter than the first two.

     

The king gives me a mission.

        

Telnyr is once again in trouble—monsters roaming the land and such—and the solution this time is not to find the Stone of Telnyr or the Golden Chalice but rather the Four Runes (Air, Earth, Fire, and Water). Character creation consists of only a name; all characters start with 250 hit points, 250 food, a +5 sword, and 0 crystals, herbs, potions, gems, or spells. The interface uses the joystick along with a few keyboard commands that the game always displays at the appropriate time.

       

Starting out on the main continent.

        

The plot takes place across five islands, four accessible from the first via a ferry, all of which fit entirely in the exploration window. As the character moves about, he gets attacked every few dozen moves by rogues, thieves, orcs, ghouls, et cetera. There are between one and six in each party. In combat, the player can choose to manually attack, automatically attack (make manual attacks until the battle is over), cast a spell, take a potion, or run away (works about half the time). Potions increase the number of the character's attacks to three per round for the duration of the battle. When there is more than one enemy, they attack individually, so facing six enemies is the same thing as facing one enemy six times in a row.

        

Battle with a bunch of ghouls.

        

Enemies drop gold, food, potions, crystals, and gems. These same items are also found randomly as you explore; their icons pop up nearby, and you have a limited amount of time to go and collect them before they disappear. 

   

There is no experience or character development. The only way to get stronger is to buy better weapons, buy spells, amass potions, and to cast "Heal" or "Revive" (like a double-"Heal") repeatedly to increase current hit points (if there's a maximum, I never reached it). Weapon upgrades (Sword +10, Sword +20, Sword +30) come in the king's castle on the first island, but before long, you find a Sword +40 in a treasure pile and that remains your only weapon for the game. In the previous two Telnyrs, spells were inventory items, purchased individually. Here, you pay to learn them and spend crystals to cast them. On Tropicania, you find a shop where you can pay money for crystals, uniting the two parts of the economy. The game is dangerous in the beginning, before you've found this store, and before you've found some other lodes of crystals. You can easily lose more health than you have the crystals to restore.

           

"Exploring" Telnyr Castle.

         

The starting island has the king's castle, a dungeon, and the ferry terminal (these, like all locations in the game except the dungeons, are purely menu locations). The castle offers the opportunity to visit the king, a grocer, a weapon shop, and a library. On your first visit, the king gives 15 crystals and asks you to bring the runes back to him for further reward.

          

The ferry terminal. One of the caches has a ferry pass that makes travel free.

       

The weapon shop sells not only the aforementioned swords but also a sextant, which is necessary to identify your coordinates on the various islands. This, in turn, is necessary to find three treasures whose locations are given in three library books. It must not be a public library because you have to pay for them individually. They give the coordinates to three caches on three different islands, one of which has the Rune of Earth.

      

One of the books. I guess I didn't care about the plot.

        

The other three runes are found in dungeons. When you enter a dungeon, the perspective switches to a side-view showing multiple levels with ladders, like a game of Donkey Kong in which the challenges have mysteriously vanished. You get the same encounters every few dozen steps like on the outside, except with harder enemies like vampires, ghosts, and demons. The dungeons on the main island, Forest Isle, and Lamentia have two levels; the one on Devils Peaks has three. All have a treasure at the bottom; three of them are runes.

      

Finding the Rune of Air at the bottom of a dungeon.

        

As you return runes to the king, you're rewarded with crystals and gold.

   

Forest Isle has a magic shop along with a dungeon. Here, you can buy "Strength," "Confuse," "Heal" (50 hit points), and "Teleport," the latter of which gets you out of dungeons without having to crawl back up. It's vital. Lamentia's magic shop offers "Nutrition" (creates 20 food), "Revive" (heals 120 hit points), "Flee," and "Missile." "Missile" is the equivalent of "Banish" in the previous games; it kills most of an enemy party, leaving just one or two for you to finish off in melee combat. But it's expensive, and I found that I needed most of my crystals for "healing," which is a bit of a misnomer in this case, as the spells just add hit points to your total regardless of how many you started with.

      

My inventory late in the game, when I have all the spells.

      

Tropicania has a potion shop (hardly necessary, given that enemies drop them a lot) and an outpost with a jeweler, a grocer, and a casino. The jeweler sells crystals for gold or gems, the latter of which you almost never find. The casino lets you bet between 10 and 50 gold on a moronically simple game in which you roll three numbers between 1 and 20 and win if the third number is "between" the first two (including the first two). So if the first two rolls are 5 and 15, you win if the third roll is anywhere within that range, and lose if it's 1-4 or 6-20. The obvious strategy is to bet big if the range is greater than 10 and less otherwise, but in practice, the casino shuts down after a few wins, so it's not a huge factor.

             

Tropicania. Note that a bag of food has appeared next to me.

         

I found that the island near the outpost was a good place to grind, since I could trade looted gold for crystals and then heal the damage. 

    

The last two dungeons are difficult, delivering multiple combats with demons who swat away over 100 points per round. I didn't even attempt them until I had my hit point total well above 1,000 and plenty of crystals in reserve for the "Revive" spell, the "Flee" spell (works 100% of the time in case fleeing regularly does not), and the "Teleport" spell to get out.

      

This is a time to run away.

        

After I found the third rune, the game said a pack of ghouls followed me out of the dungeon. They apparently continued to tail me as I made my way home, because from that point, every grocer got scared and closed his shop before I could buy anything.

       

Navigating the multiple ladders of the final dungeon.

            

Once you bring the fourth rune to the king, you get some fireworks while the central icon quickly cycles through all of the enemies you faced. The king says, "Thanks a million." You can keep playing if you for some reason want to.

      

The second game had chalices appear everywhere, so I guess maybe these are runes.

      

The game gets a 16 on the GIMLET, doing best (3s) in "Magic and Combat" for its variety of options and spells, "Economy" for its continuing relevance. It gets a 0 for NPCs and 1s and 2s for everything else. This rating is consistent with the 15 I gave to the first game and the 17 I gave to the second. These were quick diversions that came on free disks—appetizers for more elaborate titles. To which we will now return.

   

The Fates of Twinion: A Bunch of Filler

 

These are the most terrifying-looking dark elves in any game so far.

           

At least once every long game, I like to do an extensive walkthrough for at least one map or level. As I sat down to this session of Fates of Twinion, I decided that this was going to be that session. It turned out to be the laughably wrong map for this kind of approach, as we'll see, but by the time I figured it out, I had already typed so much that I don't want to go back and re-write it.

      

We open with the hero, a Level 13 male orc ranger of chaotic alignment, entering the keep. I need 11,995 experience points for my next level. I have already defeated the queen's proving grounds and have been tasked with finding the four pieces of a map, at least one of which will be found in the Kingdom of the Night Elves. I carry a silver bow, a war-hat, a breastplate, and a blood shield. In my backpack, I have four scrolls of protection, four elixirs of health, and a mana elixir. I have 52,972 gold, but not much to spend it on.

            

This is the map that I start out discussing here.

        

From the "Main Entrance" (L1), I turn right and enter a door with the Queen's Key. "Find your fate in the portal east of here," a message suggests as I pass by. In the hallway beyond the door is another message: "Destiny awaits. It will be here for you when you are ready." One step away is a portal with yet another message: "Enter the Kingdom of the Night Elves . . . and beware."

       

Aren't the "night elves" the fairies that helped the shoemaker?

      

On the other side of the portal, I find myself on map L4: "Night Elf Ingress." From here, I'll switch to coordinate-based annotation, with coordinates from A1 (southwest square) to P16 (northeast).

 

A1: Arrival. Nothing special for a few squares, as I follow my usual "hug the right wall" pattern. Speaking of wall patterns, the textures suggest mortared stone.

 

C2: My first battle of the map, with 2 wraiths. They kill me. On a reload, they kill me again. They can do up to 250 damage per round, less if I can get "Energy Field" (through my Scroll of Protection) cast, but they typically go first. They also have their own "Aura" spell, which reduces my attacks to 0 for a few rounds. (I'm convinced there's a bug by which this spell sometimes never wears off. I've had a few battles where I went round after round and couldn't do any damage at all until I just quit the game.)

        

It's nice for the wraiths to bring a torch.

           

Fortunately, on my third reload, there's only one of them, and I'm able to kill him in three rounds. 

     

D1: A locked door. None of my keys work. (Technically, lockpicks, but they look like keys.) This means I have to go back through the wraiths. They get me this time.

   

F7: Starting here is a long east-west chasm on the north side of the passage. Falling into the chasm means instant death (I had to try once). I don't believe the game offers any kind of jumping ability or spell, so I suppose I'll have to come at this area from the other side. Meanwhile, on my side of the chasm are a number of single-square cells.

         

I think the artists could have been clearer that this is a chasm and not a carpet, canal, or trackbed.

        

G6: An "old seafarer" occupies this cell. "Beware of Lake Despair," he warns me. "Many a foolhardy adventurer has sunk into its treacherous depths. A special jacket helped me cross the lake once, but I lost it somewhere in the dungeon." I guess I'll have to find that. 

     

As I continue to move forward, I note that this dungeon is mercifully free of battles. I've only fought the one against the wraiths so far.

   

N6: A thief named "Snicker" tells me that he has two brothers. "Courtesy is very important to all of them. One will show you the true path to what you seek. But all are fond of red gems." When I enter this square again, Snicker steals a few hundred gold from me but gives me a Ring of Thieves, which he says will show paths that I "might have missed without its magic."

        

My first ring of the game!

       

P6: The path ends at a teleporter that takes me to L5: "The Enclave." I'm immediately attacked by a night elf monk, which has a lot of hit points. When I finally kill him, I get 150 gold and 800 experience points. That's a lot more experience than enemies on the previous levels, so perhaps leveling up won't slow to a crawl. Anyway, it's too early to be here—I want to finish the previous map first—so I "Teleport" back to town and re-enter the dungeon.

   

There were no other obvious ways to go in "Night Elf Ingress," so I hope that the Ring of Thieves opens some new options.

   

C4: There's a message that I didn't get the first time: "A few walls in this area seem to have been altered by construction." The ring finds a secret door in the adjacent wall space, at D4.

   

You have to watch carefully for this. If you don't go forward immediately, you have to do the search again.

      

Three "illusions" (they look like ghosts) attack while I'm fiddling around. They hit hard with "Lightning," "Confusion," and "Fireball" spells, but I'm able to kill them.

    

C6: Past the hidden door, my next encounter is with a wraith and 3 brown bats. Of the two, only the wraith is dangerous, and I make short work of them. More on combat in a bit.

   

D7: On the other side of a door, the view shows no wall to my right, but there was a wall on the other side when I was there previously. Sure enough, it's a one-way wall. I have to wind my way back to this position after testing it out.

   

D8: A message on a wall plaque reads: "SRAHMC," which anagrams to CHARMS. 

 

D9: A message on a wall plaque reads: "LALF." That anagrams to FALL.

        

Or ALLF.

         

E10: In front of a door, a battle with one "sinister wizard" and two "recluses." I believe both enemies are new for me. Since I'm not sure what they can do, I start off the battle using a Scroll of Protection, which casts "Energy Field," which protects against most attacks.  The recluses pound away 120 hit points and try to paralyze me, which fails. The sinister wizard casts "Death Darts" for 15 damage. I'm down to 372 from 565 hit points.

    

My ranger's default is a physical attack. I sometimes get somewhere with my own "Petrify" spell, but it's clear I can withstand at least a couple of rounds, so I doubt I'll need it. I attack the recluses first, and kill them both within two rounds. I'm down to 235. The wizard takes another two hits. I get 700 gold pieces and 1,200 experience, plus a Shaman Scroll, which I believe casts an offensive spell. It's my first of the game.

    

E9: In a room, a bard says, "Music will open new doors for you," and gives me a "Key of C." A wizard and a recluse are waiting for me again outside the room. I really wish that the game let you clear levels. I wouldn't mind if it re-stocked them after I left and returned, but I would like to not hit the same encounters repeatedly if I have to backtrack.

 

G10: At the end of a corridor, a plaque says "OT." I guess that's TO. Since it's a dead-end, I have to turn around, and guess what I have to fight again?

   

B8: There's a door here. "The entrance to Sneer's Pawn Shop" is locked, it says. None of my keys, including the "Key of C," open it.

     

A7: A "friendly but puzzled" ranger is trying to piece together the same clues I have, but he thinks a wizard has been tampering with them. He shows me a piece of paper on which he's written "SPAS." Maybe ASPS? Or PASS? PASS CHARMS TO FALL? CHARMS FALL TO ASPS? 

   

A3: Oh, here's another one: "EPRY." That's probably PREY, not PYRE, but either way it doesn't fit well into the sentence. 

   

F10: Searching for secret doors in the area, I find one here, next to the sinister wizard/recluse battle. The corridor on the other side has a teleporter that goes to "The Enclave" again.

    

D1: The Key of C doesn't open this door. I get killed by the wraiths nearby.

   

Back in the guild, I rise to Level 14. I add one point to "Defense" and one to "Agility." I started with "Strength" and "Defense" significantly higher than "Agility" and "Initiative," and I've basically kept the starting variance. Eight new spell points get evenly distributed. With 5 new skill points, I maximize "Stamina" and then pour the rest into "Intimidate." "Furtiveness," which allows a melee character to attack any rank, seems redundant with my bow. I don't find "Read Tracks" helpful, and I don't understand "Reverie." 

    

I need about 120,000 more experience points for Level 15. I re-stock on Scrolls of Protection, mana potions, and Elixirs of Health. I should note that potions are good for 10 sips each, so a backpack full of them lasts a long time. Eventually, I hope to be able to keep at least one Heal-All Potion with me at all times, since some enemies do more than 125 damage per round (which is what the Elixir of Health heals), but at 20,000 gold pieces, I can't quite afford it yet.

    

Unfortunately, this is where my plan breaks down, as I have nowhere else to go on Level 4, so I cannot complete my blow-by-blow account of the entire map. Through later exploration, I come to realize that the various maps on Levels 4, 5, and 6 are interrelated and probably cannot be solved in a linear order. 

         

As much as I mapped of "The Enclave."

       

Leaving behind two locked doors for which I do not have keys, I head towards L5: "The Enclave." I have three ways to get there from Level 4, and each dumps me in a different part of the lower map. I end up exploring three areas of "The Enclave" while only filling in about half of it:

   

• A southwest region of windy corridors. NPCs here are seeking a skeleton key and an emerald lockpick. There are a number of statutes to various gods, one unfinished ("perhaps you can come back later and see it completed"). A teleporter goes back up to Level 4, but not to "Night Elf Ingress." It goes to a different map: "aMAZEing."

      

One of the god statutes. En-Li-Kil was the final boss of Shadows of Yserbius.

         

• A middle-north region that has a bunch of single-square rooms surrounded by pits and lava. The series of rooms ends in a vault where a safe is secured with a diamond-shaped lock. A teleporter leads down to Level 6, as do several of the pits.

    

That was predictable.

         

• The Lake of Despair in the northwest corner. Despite the fisherman's warning not to navigate it without the special lifejacket, I do my best to map the entire thing, taking damage from every water square and dying from about half of the "land" squares. The "safe" land squares indicate that they're not "land" but rather the backs of underwater creatures. Anyway, I need to come back here when I have the jacket.

         

Exploring this area was a mistake.

       

Enemies on the level include gray oozes, ghouls, clay golems, flesh golems, druids, Mindarian zealots, and acolytes of Luapia. The golems, which usually attack in parties of three, give me a little trouble. Overall, though, my basic approach to combat hasn't changed for hours:

   

1. If I know from experience I can kill the enemies with regular attacks before they kill me, I just attack them until they're dead and then use my potions to heal.

   

2. If I can't kill them before they kill me, but they do less than 125 damage per round on average, I do #1 but stop to take a sip from an Elixir of Health (which heals 125 damage) every other round. 

    

This guy needs to come to his senses.

       

3. If I can't keep up with the damage from elixirs, I start off the battle with a Scroll of Protection to cast "Energy Field." I may need to refresh this during the battle.

 

4. If that isn't enough, I cast "Petrify" on the enemy stacks during the first couple rounds, then go to #1 or #2.

    

Trading spells with a wizard.

        

These four options cover 95% of the battles in the game, at least so far. Where I have trouble is when I meet enemies for which it doesn't work. Then I have to experiment with the more expensive items in the shop, like Shaman Scrolls, Scrolls of the Sun, Cursed Scrolls, Crystal Scrolls, and what have you. Sovereign Scrolls (18,000 gold) and Heal-All Potions (20,000) are too expensive for regular use right now, but that probably won't always be the case.

     

From "The Enclave," I choose to go back up to "aMAZEing," which is the last time that I'm going to spell it that way. True to its name, the level is a complicated maze of several branches. As with the previous two maps, I wasn't able to explore all of it during this session, but I got about 3/4 of it finished. 

          

That was forced.

        

New enemies include desperadoes, vampire sorceresses, Salosian zealots, winged pythons, winged asps, and knaves. Golems remained common enemies. Golems and vampire sorceresses were by far the worst, seemingly immune to any of my protection spells, highly resistant to "Petrify," and easily able to do more than 125 damage per round. When I faced more than one of either enemy, I only had a few rounds to do some serious damage. If they could get me down to 300 hit points or less, there was no way I could keep up with healing faster than they could deliver the damage. I fled a lot and died a lot. 

        

They're pretty, at least.

        

These were the encounters I faced in the order I encountered them: 

    

• An NPC who was trying to find the ballroom. "If I ever find myself there, I'll make sure I have the musical key ready." I assume this is another reference to the Key of C.

• A section of the maze where loose bricks kept falling on me and mists kept sapping my mana.

• An NPC thief with a black-and-white shield: "It's aMAZEing how this shield guards against the dangers of this maze." 

• A whirlpool that increased health and mana. 

       

This guy is not pretty.

        

• A square had a message that said "West: Chaos Only" and "North: Harmony Only," referring to two adjacent doors. My character was chaotic. I took a save and tried going north; I was punished by a loss of experience. Reloading, I went west (my character is chaotic) into a very hard battle with three vampire sorceresses. At the conclusion of the battle, I got a Chaos Guardian shield (which has a black-and-white pattern). There was also a secret message: "Do not enter the gardener's shed." By the time it was relevant, I forgot it.

• I guess maybe the Chaos Guardian lets me see some secret doors. I found one where there was a blank wall before, went through it, and discovered 25,000 gold pieces and a Glass Bow, the first weapon upgrade in many hours. There was also a Lance of Darkness, but I have no skill for that.

• An NPC Knight: "I have traversed the Night Elves' Domain and have found the locations of Snicker's three brothers. Now off to find the item they desire!" I assume that's the red gems I was previously told about.

      

A candy bar?

         

• Inside a bag, a scribbled note to another adventurer: "Rumor has it that the treasure might still be hidden in a safe." I suspect this relates to the vault in "The Enclave."

• An aging NPC magician: "Be sure to open all doors in the dungeon. I have learned many a spell by being curious."

• A worn journal suggesting I could become more skilled by scaling cliffs.

• Several teleporters that took me to inconvenient parts of the maze or to "Night Elves' Ingress."  

• A knight searching for a stone that will allow him to "detect what is otherwise undetectable." 

       

Sounds like something I need.

      

• A group of adventurers lugging ropes.

• A message in a room: "Some rooms should be accessed only by certain guilds, races, or alignments. Oft times you could lose something of value by not heeding a warning."

• A gardener's shed. I am "jumped by harmonic adventurers who steal 2,000 gold pieces."

           

Should have re-read my notes before starting this session.

      

• A series of messages on the walls written in different languages. The only one I can translate (I assume because it's in orcish) is "Use Coral before Topaz." 

• A locked door, "Manufactured by Aeowyn's Slateworks. Zembolinee Bromerique, Esquire." 

            

Note that it spells MAZE down the side.

        

I've almost finished this level when another teleporter sends me back to the beginning and saps any remaining energy I have to continue. I hit Level 15 about this point. It's been a while since I got any new spells or skills while leveling up, and that doesn't change now.

        

At an average of about 800 experience per battle, it will be a long while for the next one.

        

I'm aware this is a disjointed, boring entry that brings no resolution to any of its puzzles and serves more to help me track my notes than to entertain my readers. I apologize. I knew that if I didn't get something out there related to my progress with this game, my blog would continue to stagnate. 

      

Since my playing over the last couple of weeks has been so scattered, I really can't say whether I like the game or not. Several commenters have encouraged me to abandon it. While that's tempting, when I only have 15-30 minutes at a time to play, it's easier to fire up Twinion and map a dozen squares than to learn a new game from scratch. Final exams are next week; after that, I'll be able to take better stock.

   

Time so far: 25 hours