Citadel: Save Me From Myself

 

Props to the other bloggers who remember to take enough screenshots. I can go two hours before I realize I haven't captured anything, and when the game gets interesting, like a tough fight, I immediately focus on playing. Here's one where I accidentally discover the bartender is interactive. Maybe this is a lost party indicator?

           

Guest post by Quirkz: 

       

I ended the last entry looking at the hint guide, as it was the only source for information about experience and leveling. It's also the only source for weapon and armor statistics. The weapons list isn't huge, maybe 40 items, half of them available in the shop from the start. It also seems deeply redundant: two thirds of the items are non-magical and do either 1–6, 2–7, or 2–8 damage. There might be a couple of spoilers on the magic items side, but there are less than a dozen of those. On average, they do one whole point of extra damage, and maybe provide a tiny amount of magical protection. The body armor list is even more brief. It's weird that it's not in the regular manual, though you can see these stats in-game by identifying items. Not even the hint book has information about the other equipment, including helmets, gloves, shields, and accessories.

    
I'm down on the fourth level now. Here, the walls are filled with sconces, and in every sconce is a torch. I pull them all out until my inventory is overflowing, and then I throw the rest on the floor to help remind me to collect them later. While I'm messing with that, I'm brought into combat.

       
This one is a larger group with three monster types, including a couple of spiders. I know there's poison in the game because there's a level 8 "Cure Poison" spell, but these spiders don't seem to be poisonous. They are harder to hit and seem to do more damage, though. I get through the fight okay, with a couple of strategic maneuvers to pull back an ailing character for healing in the middle. There are two more bags of gold. Everyone is mostly healed, but I'm out of spells, so I return to town to stock up.

    
While in town, I offload half a dozen torches to the party stash. I remember that I picked up a dagger on the first floor and take a moment to investigate selling items at the shop. The manual notes a high mien characteristic helps with bargaining. Most of mine range from 6-10, but during my creation phase, I held onto one character whose mien ended up at 14. The rest of his stats were terrible so I'm not adventuring with him. He just hangs out in the tavern. Let's pretend he's the band manager. I named him Meanie, because I was plum out of creativity juice at the time.

   
As an experiment, I have Meanie and one of my low-mien characters approach the shop. It's quickly clear that mien doesn't affect the purchase price of anything. That dancing sword is 20,000 for both of them. But when it comes to selling, the ugly duckling is offered only 1 GP, while Meanie is offered 3 GP, which is equal to the purchase price of the dagger. That's a much better exchange ratio! I think I remember from my 1995 replay that if you have high enough mien, you can exploit an infinite money glitch, selling for more than the purchase price. For now, that's not an issue, but having a dedicated haggler is going to be valuable.

     

It pays to be charming. With high enough mien, you can sell bags of gold for more than their literal value.

       
Back underground, I find my first key on the floor, and shortly after that a locked door on which the key works. You can edit item names in this game so I change the label on the key to reference the floor. With the key, you have to select the character who is holding it, have the key in inventory (not a pocket), and then have them click the door. The icon does change to show the key in hand, but it's easy to forget and try with the wrong character first. Doors are weird in this game, too. They take up a full square on the map, but you automatically move into them when you open the door. I've already had to redo maps twice because I don't properly count that space.

     
On the other side of the door, I find a large talking head in one nook, which asks the riddle the Addict already documented. This gives me two separate stairs down from this floor, once I'm ready. Since this one was being gate-kept, I'll probably explore the other first as the more natural path. There's another door and a long hallway with free unlit torches in every square. A bonanza! Except that at the end of the hall there's a bend and a dead end. If this were Skyrim, you'd need to do something like light every torch on the hall to open a secret door. As I'm testing that theory, I drop my torch on the floor and find myself in darkness once again.

     

Speaking of darkness, I once stayed at a VRBO that had a little basket full of finger puppet characters. Most of them were normal, and then in the mix there was one labeled "Darkness." I can't fathom why, but I've been wondering about it for 10 years and I need more people to share my bemusement.

        

Here I discover how night vision works. The actively selected character controls the view screen. Thus far, I must have been keeping the humans active. But when I click on a hobbit, the murk brightens a little, and when I switch to a dwarf character it's only barely dim. Do I really need all these torches? 

        
Yes. Yes I do: Mostly in case of character loss, in case I only have humans left. But also because I'm not sure if they help me find things like hidden buttons and secret doors. I honestly don't know if there are many of those, but one of my three clear memories from 30 years ago is that there's at least one very important secret door.

     
I'm attacked again by monsters, another mixed group, this one with more spiders and some kind of worm, plus the crab-blobs.

     

Fighting a pair of executioners.

       

The difficulty ramps up steeply on the fifth floor. While exploring a small waffle grid, we see what looks like the imprismed queen, but turns out to be an illusion. We're attacked by three shirtless men wearing executioner hoods. Now that's a fashion choice. It's a tough fight, but we scrape through. Afterward, the reward is a chalice full of some kind of sticky liquid, plus a nearby sword. There are two floor pits in this area, and I don't remember exactly how they work, so I take a save and jump in one to see.

       
There's an animation of falling to the next floor. I take minimal damage, which seems nice, and even sweeter are the four 100-gold piece bags sitting at my feet. Problem is, I've got a locked door to my back and in front of me there's a prowling monster that is either a feisty squirrel or a dragon. With only one direction to go, we step into a fight and are immediately slaughtered by what I'm assuming were not squirrels. It's my first full-party death. I'm sent back to the tavern but all my heroes are either totally gone or left behind in the dungeon—I'm not sure which, but I won't find out because I reload instead.
      

The first but far from the last.

       

I backtrack and then take the stairs behind where the talking head used to be. This dumps me into a perfectly symmetrical 3 x 3 room with doors in the middle of each side. I take a few steps before I realize I don't have a compass and could get turned around here easily. The answer comes to me in a minute, which is to drop a used torch on the floor by the entrance door. While I'm trying to do that I'm attacked by a pack of 6 Tasmanian devils. They hit me more often and seem a little harder to hit, but I get through with some healing. Then as I try to high-tail it out of there, I'm attacked by a second group and moitalized, as the Looney Tunes say.

      
This is when I realize I've been making a mistake with the save files. If you launch the game from the main app, it runs off the main save file, but when you restore a game by launching from a backup file, the game then continues writing to that backup file. To be fair, the manual warns you that this is how it works and tells you to immediately back up again if you restore from one of these files, but my instincts are all wrong and I keep forgetting to do it. For me, saving in an old blobber like this is for towns. You don't want to trap yourself in a walking dead scenario. Save files are supposed to be re-usable, and only a madman (or a mad god) would save immediately after restoring.

       

Enough treasure to make a gamer forget to save first, even when it's an obvious trap.

        

In this case, I'd also saved just before hitting this floor, so I lose a little progress and have to redo the fight with the executioners, but it's not a big deal until I get sloppy and my lead fighter dies. I've just tainted all three of my rolling save files, so I suck it up, roll up six new fighters to get one with more than 5 hit points, and dive back in.

       
The next time through that square room, I don't see any Tasmanian devils at all, but I do find a stairwell up to a different part of the previous level. Thinking this will be safer, I start exploring, mapping a large and twisting room uneventfully. In the back of the room I detect a gleam of treasure, what looks like a full set of armor. I rush to grab it but am jumped by a trio comprising a sorceress, an executioner, and a minotaur. The minotaur is very tough, seeming to get twice as many attacks as everyone else. We only barely win the fight, but it's worth a ton of XP—over 400. One more fight and a couple of my base class characters will go up a level. 

      

The game's first very difficult battle.

      

On the way back, we pass through the square room and get eaten by those Tasmanian devils. Four dead. Might as well reload. I'd saved just before the trio, so I try again for the treasure, but this time the odds go badly and the minotaur kills two of my characters in the opening round and eventually the whole party falls. I reload again, don't see the trio in the room with the treasure anymore and think maybe I can just grab the loot and run, but they jump me a third time, killing me swiftly again. At this point I realize I've just done the same thing with the save files I had 30 minutes before. When I finally locate a good save file, it's my starting party, from before I had entered the dungeon even once.

     

Sigh. 

      

I'm starting to see why Chet quit this one. I also don't understand why I'm not saving right. I have plenty of space and zero reason not to save before risky moves, other than it feels wrong. Starting over is rough, but at least I have some maps.

     
I've also learned a couple of things. One, mien is a little erratic when it comes to sales prices. I considered selling the sticky chalice, and was offered 2,000 GP. A nice haul, but I wasn't sure if this was a valuable item, so I declined. When I checked later the same character was only offered 1,400 GP. Then on successive inquiries it bounced between 1,600 and 1,800, before giving me an all-time high of 2,040. I said yes, and when I looked in the shop I could buy it back for 2,000. Honestly, it's a little weird and annoying that I would need to try to sell items a handful of times, take down the best price, and then maybe keep trying for a while to get or beat it.

      
I also was reminded that when a character dies, you can't move or do anything while the dead characters are "unsupported." In the party window, you need to drag the icon of a dead character onto that of a living character, to indicate who's carrying whom. Also, whenever you select a dead character, the screen goes black, because you're seeing what they're seeing. Every time this happens, I think the game has crashed or we've all died before I remember to click back.

      
I decide to ditch my magus, who hasn't been very effective as a fighter, has only 5 HP, and will require 50% more XP to level up in the long run. I don't need two magicians without spellbooks. I make a second pure fighter instead, DV, this one with 8 HP, so I have a stronger front line. If or when I find a second spellbook, I'll consider swapping him out.

     
As frustrating as it feels to lose progress, it only takes me 15 minutes to get back to the same spot I was in before. More of the time is spent mapping and dealing with unfamiliar territory. Once you know what you're doing, it's easy to repeat.
         

My map of Level 5.

        

Back on the fifth floor, I enter a cycle of grim deaths. Six times in a row, I earn enough XP from fights for most of my characters to level up, but then die trying to exit the dungeon. I really don't want to save after every single fight, but I'm clearly still not saving often enough. Part of the problem is the difficulty level ramping up here. My characters have made literally zero tangible progress. They're all still level 1. One of my clerics has an armor class of 8 because the shop still hasn't restocked with armor, and he only has a helm and shield. There have been no weapon upgrades and barely any gold. Meanwhile, opponents are showing up in groups of 4-8, often of multiple types, many of them tougher than the early monsters. Some of the strongest, like minotaurs and mummies, attack twice per turn, and usually hit both times. That's only 2 HP per round, but when your fighters have 8 HP and a Haelan generally only heals 2-3, fights are deadly. This game was clearly influenced by Wizardry, The Bard's Tale, or the like, where merely reaching second level is designed to be a tremendous accomplishment.

      
On the fifth floor, the map has really opened up, and I have multiple unexplored paths, including what seems to be most of a 28 x 28 grid (this game works with the "worm tunnels" model, with a solid square of rock surrounding the explorable space) plus multiple up and down stairwells. I keep trying different paths and make good progress on the map, even if my characters aren't getting any benefit. I find so many torches that my party stash in town actually fills up, and I stop collecting them. I have burned through exactly two so far. I don't know why I'm being so paranoid.

     
It becomes clear some areas have fixed combats, but there are also a decent number of random encounters. This implies there isn't a fixed limit on XP or gold in the game. I've seen at least a dozen different types of monsters, though as far as I can tell all attacks so far are physical. I still don't have monster names and all combat gives is hit/miss sounds; there's no way to tell how much HP they have or how much damage I'm doing. Some combats drop multiple weapons, a few drop gold sacks in amounts varying from 50 to 200. 

      

Four game hours from now, I will find this combat message window and be forced to retract my complaints. Instead, I'll complain that this window covers too much of the screen.

    

Because I'm feeling stuck, I keep trying different paths, seeing if maybe there's an easier zone I've been missing. In one case, I try dropping down a different floor pit to the sixth floor. I'm rewarded with some armor and a magic dagger called Sting. Since I'm not immediately devoured by dragons, I go in search of a stairwell and get pretty far before running into a fight with a couple of what looks like a combination Venus flytraps and hydras. I survive and get 400 GP and 500 XP. Good stuff, if only I can get out. There's a long, bending tunnel, another pair of flytraps that knock everyone down to a 1 or 2 HP and use up my healing spells. There's a sign on the wall with a worrying message, "Once fallen you must rise again or forever join my evil reign," which does not bode well because I don't have the level 3 "Levitate" spell, but for now I continue. I find a room with some pits and more flytraps that lurk in the corner but don't come after me. I enter a very large room that has a "Templus" something sign overhead. It appears to be mostly empty, but there's an altar at the back. I don't mess with it for now. But there's also no way out.

       

Not an encouraging sign when you don't know how to levitate.

         

I backtrack and take my chances with the path left open to me: falling down another pit. One character dies, but the rest surprisingly survive. I've earned so much XP my characters should be nearly to level 3, and I've got more gold than I've ever seen, so I don't want to give up yet. I come to a dead end at the locked door to the elevator shaft. Shoot. But when I turn around there's a key ring on the wall. I take it and confirm this is the key to the elevator. Excellent! Except when I unlock the grate I'm staring at an empty pit. The elevator is up on level 2, and there doesn't seem to be a way to call it. Crud. Figuring I'm doomed, I jump down the elevator shaft, which prompts scenes of falling several floors and provides a unique death message. I'm back to where I started. 

    

[Ed. Quirkz may object to my using this as a breaking point, but I couldn't otherwise find a natural one in this area. Suffice to say that things start to look up from here.] 

   

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 09/22/2026